Shipping Icebergs: The Quiet Triumph of User Merging

I’ll admit to overusing two analogies: bowling alleys (a post for another day) and icebergs.

Tech initiatives, especially the ones I refer to as Momentum Builders, Debt Paydowns, and Risk Reducers (see: Gambler or Scientist), often resemble icebergs. Only the part above the waterline is visible to the business. This makes selling and celebrating them uniquely difficult. Understandably, stakeholders can only appreciate what they see and grasp.

Mapping the size and shape of an iceberg, making the true scale and business impact clear, is a crucial leadership skill. Oversell and you risk trust; undersell and you miss the recognition that fuels culture and momentum.

One Account to Rule Them All

Since joining The Collecting Group, one initiative has been quietly looming beneath the surface: merging users. We’ve had two platforms, Collecting Cars and Watch Collecting, and a single ambition: one Collecting account to unify them.

On the surface, it might sound simple: “Just merge two sets of users.”

In reality, that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Beneath the surface, the team engineered an end-to-end solution that gracefully handles every user scenario:

• Many-to-one service relationships
• Edge cases and split identities
• Clean data unification (_including our analytics, CRM and CDP_)
• Handling passwords and first logins
• A guided, intuitive customer experience

And we did all of this while de-risking the business at every step. This wasn’t just a platform change, it affected every user. The pressure has been constant and heavy, and I’m incredibly proud of how the Tech team navigated it.

Done, Finally (Quietly)

In the first week of April 2025, within our planned outage window, we merged all our users into a single Collecting account. With minimal fanfare, we went live and entered two weeks of hypercare.

There were no complaints.

No critical bugs.

No headlines.

Well, almost… We spotted and quickly resolved a password reset bug that existed long before the user merge, triggered under very specific conditions. Other than that? Quiet. Solid. Done.

We:

• Went from 4% to 100% unified user accounts
• Improved developer experience & platform performance
• Paid down tech debt
• Unlocked the next wave of initiatives

The Hollow Afterglow

The strange part? We knew from day one that if done right, no one would notice. It would feel like business as usual.

And it does. That’s the point. But it also leaves a hollow feeling, not quite a breakup, but a release. The tension lifts, the work is done, and it’s time to move on.

This post is to celebrate that milestone, thank the team, and acknowledge icebergs.

Final Thought: Icebergs Are the Work

Tech is full of icebergs.

The visible part is rarely the majority. Below the water lies complexity, risk, and depth. Often many times greater than what anyone sees.

Done never feels exactly how you imagined it.

It rarely looks like a big bang.

It often fades into the quiet.

But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t significant.

Sometimes the quiet wins are the biggest ones.