APAD: Deus ex machina

Meaning:

   Something or someone that comes in the nick of time to solve a difficulty,

   especially in works of fiction.

 

Background:

 

   This Latin term is a translation from the original Greek and owes its origin

   to Greek drama. 'Deus ex machina', literally 'god from the machina' refers to

   the machina - the device by which gods were suspended above the stage in the

   Greek theatre. This began being used in English texts from around the middle

   of the 17th century.

 

   ...

   In the Greek dramas a common plot device was to lower the gods into the

   action to sort things out and bring about a tidy conclusion. The modern-day

   version would be the cavalry riding over the horizon, or some character

   awaking and realizing the previous action had all been a bad dream.

 

   The term is used these days as an implied criticism of implausible happy

   endings when the intervention of some improbable fairy godmother-like figure

   is considered too easy or clich [sic].

 

- www.phrases.org.uk

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I used to debug, i.e., to find errors in software that caused crashes, as part

of the job. It was like detective work, and could feel hopeless once in a while

after fruitless efforts. When everything failed, managers had to play the role

of deus ex machina. Wielding powerful rhetoric, he could point the finger at

someone else, kick the can down the road, or propose an upgrade to get around

the problem. As one of them used to say "there are non-technical solutions to a

technical problem."