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Days without GitHub incidents

dayswithoutgithubincident.com

101–110 of 178 posts

Re: Days without GitHub incidents

#101
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have. You could argue the scales are different, but computers are also faster now. So, argument to credentialism out of the way... What should we do as consumers if a provider that is a defacto monopoly due to network effects stops functioning? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947719 https://www.linkedin.com/in/jharasym/

> You could argue the scales are different, but computers are also faster now. Scale is everything and a faster computer doesn’t always help. Vertical scaling has limits, and complex distributed systems are complex. Since you seem to possess a diagnosis and remedy with a reasonable amount of certainty, I’m sure they’d love to hear from you and have you fix all their problems for them. Especially if you can do it whil…

The link in my previous comment answers the credentials question in detail- including specific technical post-mortems on horizontally scaled stateful systems. Vertical scaling wasn't the topic.

Re: Days without GitHub incidents

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe that's good-will doing the work? Of course. GitHub has been an enormous gift to the open source community. Arguably more than Git itself. They deserve a lot of good will.

they are not the non-profit. they make money of it and devs expect certain kind of service in return. GH failed to deliver on the service expectation.

What money do GH make off open source projects on the free tier? I haven’t seen ads, micropayments to clone repos, etc?

Re: Days without GitHub incidents

#103
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t know that it was “their mistake.” Unless you’ve personally successfully scaled a suite of nontrivial services equivalent to GitHub’s to accommodate an unexpected 14x increase in traffic, you respectfully have no basis for such an assertion.

I have. You could argue the scales are different, but computers are also faster now. So, argument to credentialism out of the way... What should we do as consumers if a provider that is a defacto monopoly due to network effects stops functioning? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47947719 https://www.linkedin.com/in/jharasym/

> I have.

I skimmed your profile. Working on the infrastructure for a couple mid-tier video games is a cool accomplishment, but equating this to having solved GitHub level scale rings hollow.

GitHub has a couple orders of magnitude more daily active visitors than the games you worked on had at their peak.

You can make valid criticisms of GitHub without trying to reduce their scale or inflate your credentials to create a false equivalence.

Re: Days without GitHub incidents

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two options, either they are lousy at their jobs, or they are incapable of pushing back against unrealistic demands. Neither is a good indicator of their skill and talent as engineers. I know I am speaking from a position of some privilege, but I have previously left workplaces that did not allow me to practice good engineering, and I do expect others to do so.

In a SWE job market like this, do you really want to be seen as the "conscientious objector"? There are literally thousands of people who are ready to ride up the totem pole, it would not be a difficult decision for a bad manager to swing his axe and replace the new head

Talented engineers shouldn’t have much problem finding another position even in this market (of course they should find one before leaving I’m not discounting family responsibilities and whatnot), so if your argument is they’re not able to leave and find another job then you’re essentially agreeing with the person you’re replying to.

Re: Days without GitHub incidents

#107
post #8

Lots of apologia for Github here. Aside from the fact that defending a billion-dollar company is a bit strange; especially one that is steward to the the overwhelming majority of open-source software. Maybe that's good-will doing the work? For me it's always been a sour pill to swallow that I have to buy in to a large companies internal politics and practices in order to work on projects I love. I don't feel like I o…

> Aside from the fact that defending a billion-dollar company is a bit strange More than a bit strange. This is an HNism that I'll never get. Why would you go to the comment section anywhere to passionately try to defend the honor of a trillion dollar company, unless 1. you're being paid to astroturf or 2. you own that company's stock? Satya Nadella isn't going to read a post here and say, "Gosh, how nice of that com…

1. Telling that you think the only possible motivations are financial (getting paid, stockholder, or foolish expectations of a gift from Satya).

2. Maybe you know a bunch of people who work there, could be ex-colleagues etc. and you think overall it’s mostly good well-intentioned people there. Therefore you want to see them succeed, and also you might disbelieve that the company is deliberately being awful.

I don’t have any specifically warm feelings about a corporate legal entity, but I know people who work at various companies and partly for that reason I am not rooting for those companies to fail and I also don’t believe the least charitable explanations for all their failings.

Re: Days without GitHub incidents

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you consider telling this to the people working at GitHub directly? I’m sure they’d appreciate your evaluation of their skills and talent.

There are two options, either they are lousy at their jobs, or they are incapable of pushing back against unrealistic demands. Neither is a good indicator of their skill and talent as engineers. I know I am speaking from a position of some privilege, but I have previously left workplaces that did not allow me to practice good engineering, and I do expect others to do so.

Or, they've been given crap primitives to work with. There's only so much lipstick you can put on a pig. I don't know what database they're using or what their pub sub and streaming looks like, or even what their system diagram actually looks like. But, well, you don't see Google having these kinds of problems. Other ones, sure, but between Chubby and Spanner, if Google had bought GitHub we wouldn't be having these problems.

Re: Days without GitHub incidents

#110
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could argue the scales are different, but computers are also faster now. Scale is everything and a faster computer doesn’t always help. Vertical scaling has limits, and complex distributed systems are complex. Since you seem to possess a diagnosis and remedy with a reasonable amount of certainty, I’m sure they’d love to hear from you and have you fix all their problems for them. Especially if you can do it whil…

The link in my previous comment answers the credentials question in detail- including specific technical post-mortems on horizontally scaled stateful systems. Vertical scaling wasn't the topic.

You’re missing the point: a doctor doesn’t diagnose and practice medicine on a patient he hasn’t thoroughly evaluated himself. This is the sort of wisdom that a staff engineer and CTO is expected to have earned.
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