My last place also called it promotion-driven-devevlopment.
It got to the point where some dude built a system that completely floundered but got him a promotion. He then re-wrote it so it sucked slightly less and got another promotion. Last I heard he was working on v3.
Never mind that someone with actual domain knowledge would have either not built the system (since it didn't _really_ need to exist) or would have built a much simpler/more reliable system to get the job done.
It got to the point where some dude built a system that completely floundered but got him a promotion. He then re-wrote it so it sucked slightly less and got another promotion. Last I heard he was working on v3.
Never mind that someone with actual domain knowledge would have either not built the system (since it didn't _really_ need to exist) or would have built a much simpler/more reliable system to get the job done.