The software I write runs on the telephone network, where downtime not only costs us thousands of dollars of unbillable time, but penalties our company has to pay to the Monopolistic Phone Company for violating our SLAs. Even a simple change (like zeroing out a few variables in a certain condition---nothing critical to the call path but would make billing much easier for us) can take months to work its way through the process of two companies (six months so far and still waiting for this patch to be deployed).

Yes, it sucks. Then again, I'd rather not cost our company more than my yearly salary for a simple mistske.