That time when you ruin Christmas nationwide for missing a single character of code… (with Andy Reinhold)

There’s nothing crazier than Andy Reinhold’s client horror story, and you’re gonna want to listen.

A few years ago, Andy, founder of Studio Spark, was working in the tech division of a major consulting firm, maintaining outdated government software. With each change in administration, the system grew harder to decipher—so much so that they had to track down long-retired employees just to understand the codebase.

Andy and his team manually reviewed over a million lines of legacy code to help determine who qualified for Social Security checks. For three weeks, everything ran smoothly—until it didn’t.

One day, Andy received a call warning him of a serious issue with the SSI system—and, strangely, to avoid watching the news. Naturally, he did the opposite. Headlines revealed a holiday disaster: people were receiving significantly reduced Social Security checks right before Christmas. While the team scrambled and successfully patched the issue within a week, the cause remained a mystery.

It wasn’t until after the holidays that they discovered the culprit: a single missing character buried deep in the code.

Tune in to hear how one tiny oversight led to a nationwide ripple effect—and how this experience reshaped Andy’s understanding of accountability, precision, and career purpose.

 

Morgan Friedman

Andy's Company Website