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Ask HN: What's the longest running project you've had cancelled?

6 points by lugged ↗ HN
I've had projects axed 6 months in and it's never really bothered me (I still get paid).

Recently we had a team project cancelled and it really took the team down. I don't really understand why this is such a downer for everyone. Do people in general feel more attachment to their work perhaps? Is this normal?

Please share your experiences with cancelled projects and how you managed to reconcile the situation. Was it a big deal to you or did you move on without any concern for the "wasted work"?

4 comments

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codevark
In the '90s-'00s I worked on a seminal ecomm product for 9 years. It won several awards, blew the competition out of the market, and sold 50K units in the first 8 months. We were bought by a clueless (Canadian) company whose first move was to fire all our graphic designers and stop development of the product. Our doors closed less than two years laters. Bomb Canada. (jk, but I still rue the day my friend (CEO) came to me and said the sale was a good idea, and that I, as employee number one, needed to let him know what I thought. Had I known the eventual outcome, I would have said no.) -- veteran of the psychic wars :)
airbreather
our family motto - it seemed like a good idea at the time...
greenyoda
A product I was working on got cancelled after 3-4 years. Fortunately, some of the work we did on that product was useful for another product, so some of the team (including me) got reassigned to that other product. It was disappointing to not see our original work released, but it didn't bother me too much.