{"id":3681,"date":"2023-02-21T23:27:51","date_gmt":"2023-02-22T05:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:10043\/?p=3681"},"modified":"2024-07-18T08:42:52","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T14:42:52","slug":"best-companies-figure-out-how-to-manage-the-infinite-loop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/best-companies-figure-out-how-to-manage-the-infinite-loop\/","title":{"rendered":"Best companies figure out how to manage the &#8216;infinite loop&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This article originally appeared in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tennessean.com\/story\/money\/tech\/2023\/02\/19\/best-companies-figure-out-how-to-manage-the-infinite-loop\/69906919007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Tennessean<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Well, Super Bowl Sunday wasn\u2019t much fun for my wife.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">It wasn\u2019t because her team lost (she was neutral this year) or because she ate too many potato chips during the game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Earlier in the week, she got a fraud alert from her credit card company. It was for a random charge of $3.56 from a strange website she\u2019d never heard of before. It was immediately caught and credited back. And it only took a few minutes on the phone before a replacement card was on the way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">All was good, or so she thought.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">She\u2019s a big fan of the Apple Pay digital wallet.\u00a0 With her iPhone and Apple Watch she pays for everything from coffee to subway rides with a simple swipe of her hand.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of those small conveniences in life that once you start using it\u2019s hard to go back.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"gnt_m gnt_x gnt_x__lbl gnt_x__al\" aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<div id=\"ad-slot-7103-tn-nashville-C1056-native-article_link-tech-2\" class=\"gnt_x_sl gnt_x_al\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-method=\"lazyLoadX\" data-google-query-id=\"CJzw-t-tqP0CFR709QId9z4G3Q\" data-integralas-id-a0f2c785-7d8a-12e6-8082-5c6433d229b4=\"\">\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">It was 1 p.m. on Super Bowl Sunday when she tried to add her new credit card to Apple Pay (without a credit card, Apple Pay doesn\u2019t work.)\u00a0 When I left to run some errands before the big game everything seemed fine.\u00a0 But when I returned two hours or later, I found my usually mild-mannered wife pacing the kitchen with a hint of irritation in her voice. I knew something was off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">She had been stuck in a classic case of \u201ccircular dependency\u201d &#8211; a challenge that in my day job as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/how-to-choose-a-software-development-company\/\" data-wpil-monitor-id=\"275\">software developer<\/a> I know all too well.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">In software development, a circular dependency occurs when two systems depend on each other to function properly.\u00a0 Ultimately, it can create an \u201cinfinite loop\u201d that will cause an application to hang.\u00a0 It\u2019s not fun in the software development world, and it\u2019s even worse in real life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Apparently, my poor wife had been caught in an infinite loop between Apple and her credit card company.\u00a0 Apple said that the issue was with the credit card company and the credit card company claimed that the issue was with Apple, and she was stuck in the middle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">By the time I walked in the door, she had talked to Apple four times, and she\u2019d been transferred to her eighth service rep with our credit card vendor, each time having to re-explain the issue.\u00a0 Between getting caught in multiple phone trees and being transferred multiple times to different departments, she was polite as always, but I could tell she was at her wit\u2019s end.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Dependencies between systems, people, and companies are common.\u00a0 Small companies may have a heavy dependency on a single employee. Large companies may depend on a single supply chain vendor. \u00a0And most every organization has a dependency on their technology platforms to keep their businesses going.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"gnt_m gnt_x gnt_x__lbl gnt_x__al\" aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<div id=\"ad-slot-7103-tn-nashville-C1056-native-article_link-tech-4\" class=\"gnt_x_sl gnt_x_al\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-method=\"lazyLoadX\" data-google-query-id=\"CJ7w-t-tqP0CFR709QId9z4G3Q\">\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">And in my wife\u2019s case, she was dependent on two companies that had a circular dependency on each other to resolve her issue &#8211; everyone was stuck.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">To a large extent, dependencies in business are unavoidable. \u00a0No company operates in a self-contained bubble.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">But constantly and proactively managing dependencies is often what separates a good company from a great one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Great companies mitigate their dependence on single points of failure.\u00a0 They have redundancy and backup systems in place, so they are never at the mercy of one vendor.\u00a0 They have processes and procedures documented so that if a key employee is out someone else can jump in and help.\u00a0 And they diversify their revenue sources so that no single lost customer can sink the entire ship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">My wife, of course, wasn\u2019t dependent on Apple Pay to go about her daily life.\u00a0 Evidently my pointing that out wasn\u2019t the best thing to say after her hours-long quest for a resolution.\u00a0\u00a0 As she always does in the face of adversity &#8211; she stuck with it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">After a few more calls and transfers the issue was finally resolved right after kickoff, and just in time to use Apple Pay to buy our pizza for halftime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\"><em>JJ Rosen is the founder of <\/em><a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|${u}\"><em>Atiba<\/em><\/a><em>,<\/em><em>\u00a0a <\/em><a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|${u}\"><em>Nashville custom software development firm<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0and <\/em><a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|${u}\"><em>IT support company.<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0Visit <\/em><a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/atiba.com\/\" data-t-l=\":b|e|k|${u}\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Atiba.com<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0for more info.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article originally appeared in\u00a0The Tennessean. Well, Super Bowl Sunday wasn\u2019t much fun for my wife. It wasn\u2019t because her team lost (she was neutral this year) or because she ate too many potato chips during the game. Earlier in the week, she got a fraud alert from her credit card company. It was for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":3682,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-tennessean"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}