As someone with extensive IT experience, I can almost guarantee the AT&T outage yesterday was over some certificate expiring somewhere and nobody knowing how to regenerate it because Carl got laid off seven years ago and the only machine with the keys decommissioned in 2019. –@sisterinferior
Absolutely the most likely scenario. I am not Carl but could be. In my case there were reports considered critical—prompting executive escalation if not delivered—that landed in my lap because the team that created and maintained them were let go.
Then I myself was let go, and I left behind the code for the reports to consultants halfway around the world. Good luck with that, fellas.
Apparently these reports would no longer be valid if kicked off from a home office. This would now require driving three hours into a Dallas office. I chose not to live that designation or "follow that work." (But thanks to being outside a 50 mile radius, the rules said it was "involuntary separation" and I got me some severance.)
After I left I'm sure there were some veepees running around with hair on fire because The Report had not been put before them on time. Womp womp.
For the Big Outage I can just hear the Teams call: "Carl used to handle that" followed by silence. Womp³. And I'm nearly certain it was on a bridge; the key people needed to fix this were unlikely to standing around the same watercooler.