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Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

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Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#101

Post by moralestapia »

vb-8448 wrote: post #98
tristanj wrote: post #8

Github is struggling because AI-boosted coding increased the number of commits 14x in the past year, and the pace is still accelerating. The site is struggling to keep up. Github's COO confirms it here: https://x.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878 Platform activity is surging. There were 1 billion commits in 2025. As of three months ago, it was 275 million per week, on pace for 14 billion this year if growth rema…

I'm curios what is the bottleneck then? Because github(ms) has enough resources to hire competent people and provision needed hw to solve scaling the issues.

Yeah, aren't they super geniuses with infra that scales with a button, etc.?

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#102

Post by moralestapia »

traviswingo wrote: post #18
bhouston wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Github is struggling because AI-boosted coding increased the number of commits 14x in the past year, and the pace is still accelerating. Sure, but how is OpenAI, and Claude handling the increased usage? They are handling it a lot better than Github. Just because you have fast growth does not mean you can not handle it. Instead you have to realize that you are entering into a high growth phase and design around that…

GitHub is on Azure. Azure is notorious for being terrible. There was a post here recently from an ex-Azure engineer explaining all of this in a multi-part series. Edit: Found the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47616242

Q. how can someone publish an article like that, with their name, etc...

Don't they sign NDAs? Do they not care? Are they not enforceable?

Very curious to know.

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#103

Post by aleph_minus_one »

moralestapia wrote: post #101
vb-8448 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curios what is the bottleneck then? Because github(ms) has enough resources to hire competent people and provision needed hw to solve scaling the issues.

Yeah, aren't they super geniuses with infra that scales with a button, etc.?

> infra that scales with a button

That is how Microsoft markets Azure. :-)

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#104

Post by ornornor »

moralestapia wrote: post #102
traviswingo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub is on Azure. Azure is notorious for being terrible. There was a post here recently from an ex-Azure engineer explaining all of this in a multi-part series. Edit: Found the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47616242

Q. how can someone publish an article like that, with their name, etc... Don't they sign NDAs? Do they not care? Are they not enforceable? Very curious to know.

Maybe they didn’t take the severance part that makes the NDA valid? IIRC for an NDA to be enforceable there has to be a monetary consideration to it. Or maybe it’s for no competes?

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#105

Post by watt »

zeafoamrun wrote: post #81
sharts wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly yes. Do it in a way that doesn’t violate outright or cover your tracks. Customers deserve to know the truth of the type of company they are dealing with.

So someone should potentially get fired and face legal action to satisfy your curiosity which you'll get sated anyway when you read the postmortem in a few days?

It's not the postmortem du jour that we want, the whole pattern is a mystery. Do they push releases every day and bring down the site every day by botched rollouts? What really is it why they can't GH keep the core service running (e.g. pushing commits and pulling changes)?

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#106

Post by ornornor »

herpdyderp wrote: post #2

non-helpful answer: the "Microsoft Acquires GitHub" line in this graph answers all questions https://damrnelson.github.io/github-historical-uptime/

I’ve noticed the same thing with computers, whenever I install MS windows on them uptime tanks ;)

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#107

Post by ornornor »

zeafoamrun wrote: post #81
sharts wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly yes. Do it in a way that doesn’t violate outright or cover your tracks. Customers deserve to know the truth of the type of company they are dealing with.

So someone should potentially get fired and face legal action to satisfy your curiosity which you'll get sated anyway when you read the postmortem in a few days?

It’s not like OP is putting a gun to anyone’s head!! If they want to share we’d appreciate but there is no obligation.

Are you also shocked that you can stand in the middle of the highway and get hit by a car and die? You can do it if someone asks you but you’re not forced to.

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#108

Post by blipvert »

pluc wrote: post #12
tristanj wrote: post #8

Github is struggling because AI-boosted coding increased the number of commits 14x in the past year, and the pace is still accelerating. The site is struggling to keep up. Github's COO confirms it here: https://x.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878 Platform activity is surging. There were 1 billion commits in 2025. As of three months ago, it was 275 million per week, on pace for 14 billion this year if growth rema…

Nobody at Microsoft could've predicted AI was going to be so popular!

Like the way that they shipped ‘95 without a browser?

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#109

Post by darkr »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #48
tristanj wrote: post #8

Github is struggling because AI-boosted coding increased the number of commits 14x in the past year, and the pace is still accelerating. The site is struggling to keep up. Github's COO confirms it here: https://x.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878 Platform activity is surging. There were 1 billion commits in 2025. As of three months ago, it was 275 million per week, on pace for 14 billion this year if growth rema…

If that's the superficial cause, then the root cause is a lack of limits. Any production system in the world will go down from too much load if you don't limit the load. You have to do performance testing to determine what the system's peak utilization is, and put limits in place to prevent exceeding that limit. There are multiple kinds of limits you need. First you need the raw i/o limits on things like networking,…

> until the train went off the rails

Ironically the core application is written in rails, which may be part of the issue

Re: Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?

#110

Post by lallysingh »

vb-8448 wrote: post #98
tristanj wrote: post #8

Github is struggling because AI-boosted coding increased the number of commits 14x in the past year, and the pace is still accelerating. The site is struggling to keep up. Github's COO confirms it here: https://x.com/kdaigle/status/2040164759836778878 Platform activity is surging. There were 1 billion commits in 2025. As of three months ago, it was 275 million per week, on pace for 14 billion this year if growth rema…

I'm curios what is the bottleneck then? Because github(ms) has enough resources to hire competent people and provision needed hw to solve scaling the issues.

Probably contention on databases.
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