Basically, FM put a bunch of entry to mid-level people into a blender, tossed in some IT buzzwords, hit the "ON" button and hoped a real e-commerce system would pop out. That's kind of like throwing a lot of car parts, gas and oil into a cement mixer and hoping a car will pop out.
It's interesting that the spinoff has now spawned its own spinoff. Maybe they hired real developers this time but I doubt it. I never saw evidence that any management at Staples had a clue about software development. I know the insides of the legacy system better than 99% of the employees and Staples just doesn't have the skill level to reproduce it.
Many bad decisions while I was there, a major one in my first month and after that, a new one each month. Choosing technologies for spurious self-promotion instead of applicability, contractor turnover which creates huge gaps in domain knowledge, disjointed interfaces because of no continuity in design, etc. Imagine 3,000 employees responsible for $1 billion sales but it's all balancing like a upside-down pyramid on one part-time contractor dude in Mumbai.
I wonder how much of this Sycamore has figured out so far.
I'm totally enjoying this circus show, though, because I was pretty sure it would come to town.