As others pointed out, version control is probably the best fix for this in addition to traditional backups. My goal in this post was to help others that have yet to learn responsibility save their ass and maybe learn their lesson in a less pleasant way.
rmrf
joined 2 weeks ago
100%. The organization wasn't there yet and seeing that I wanted to remain employed at the time I wasn't going to put up a fight against management 3 layers above me. Legacy business are a different beast when it comes to dumb stuff like that.
I'm not denying that stupid stuff didn't happen nor that this wasn't entirely preventable. There's some practical reasons that are unique to large, slow moving orgs that explain why it wasn't (yet) in version control.
The server we were working at the time wasn't configured with frequent backups, just a full backup once a month as a stop gap until the project got some proper funding. Any sort of remote version control is totally the preventative factor here, but my goal is to help others that have yet to learn that lesson.