This happened to me once on a much smaller scale. Forgot the "where" clause on a DELETE statement. My screwup, obviously.
We actually had a continuous internal backup plan, but when I requested a restore, the IT guy told me they were backing up everything but the databases, since "they were always in use."
(Let that sink in for a second. The IT team actually thought that was an acceptable state of affairs: "Uh, yeah! We're backing up! Yeah! Well, some things. Most things. The files that don't get like, used and stuff.")
That day was one of the lowest feelings I ever had, and that screwup "only" cost us a few thousand dollars as opposed to the millions of dollars the blog post author's mistake cost the company. I literally can't imagine how he felt.
That is pretty hilarious. I guess you can save a lot of money on tapes, if you do incremental backups only on files that never change.
Personally I felt bad when I deleted some files, that were recovered within the hour, and learned from that experience. But when you create a monumental setback as the OP by simple mistake, that's an issue with people at higher ranks.
We actually had a continuous internal backup plan, but when I requested a restore, the IT guy told me they were backing up everything but the databases, since "they were always in use."
(Let that sink in for a second. The IT team actually thought that was an acceptable state of affairs: "Uh, yeah! We're backing up! Yeah! Well, some things. Most things. The files that don't get like, used and stuff.")
That day was one of the lowest feelings I ever had, and that screwup "only" cost us a few thousand dollars as opposed to the millions of dollars the blog post author's mistake cost the company. I literally can't imagine how he felt.