Banking is particular in the sense that there is often a large number of legacy systems that need to communicate reliably, at the same time that major business/

Banking is particular in the sense that there is often a large number of legacy systems that need to communicate reliably, at the same time that major business/technology decisions are made by leaders who do not have technical understanding. (Even in my native Norway, lauded for good digital banking services, almost no banks have a single technologist in their executive team -- the culture is changing, but most places still consider technology a service that is purchased and mostly separate from business concerns). In a good case, top leadership will listen to architects and leads on the tech teams before making critical decisions, but in some cases, "business goals" will trump concerns from the technologists. This is of course a huge failure of communication, but it is an even bigger failure of organization. If technologists have to threaten to quit just to get their point across, the organization is broken. Let's say I'm a senior banking developer i Europe. I'm being paid a fixed, moderate salary with a fixed number of hours each week, and I get no part of the bonus if this €100 million initiative succeeds, and I suffer no loss if we incur another €100 million of extra costs due to this failure. If I quit, it's with 3 months notice and it's a big PITA to find new work that suits my interests. What incentive do I have to do anything but do my best to alert the leadership to these problems, and then do my best to move the train of failure along? The exact scenario described in this story -- an expensive service contract terminated at a hard date, with costs to re-instate this contract therefore becoming even bigger, and the development team being pressed to deliver on this deadline whether it is realistic or not -- does not surprise me at all, and must have happened dozens of times all over the world. If it goes wrong on a small scale, you will only see a few hundred or thousands of customers affected in a non-catastrophic manner (e.g. see the wrong balance in their accounts, but with the correct number being accessible in the back-end system), but it stands to reason that this example would at some point happen at a spectacular scale with no easy way back. I'm not holding my breath, but at some point the boards of these banks should realize that technology is a core competency, and get people with tech skills in a position to make critical top-level decisions. (Not to mention get pay to have some semblance of connection with the sums involved in the success or failure of the work -- I get the impression that this is the case elsewhere in finance).