Hot Potato

Definitions

1. A problem, task, or responsibility that people keep passing to someone else because nobody wants to hold it. In engineering slang, hot potatoes often appear around legacy systems and cross-team boundaries.

   In plain English: A problem or responsibility that keeps getting passed around because nobody wants it.

   Example: "The old batch importer was a hot potato between data engineering and platform, which is why it stayed broken for so long."

Related Terms

• Code Cold War
• Code Inheritance
• Code Kingdom
• Cut and Run
• Deploy and Disappear
• Shift Blame
• Solo Flight
• Take the Wheel
• Too Many Cooks
• You Break It You Fix It