i think i prefer a culture where one is rewarded for automating their job.
moves like musk's are bad for the industry. they produce more systems with "job security" built in.
Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
51–60 of 1001 posts
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#52Excellent article. However!, software, like everything, is subject to laws of physics. Entropy always wins in the end. No matter how good the original engineering and planning, without maintenance it will all fall apart soon enough.
Turning it off and then back on again probably fixes the issue. There’s very unlikely a grand ticking time bomb just waiting to bring it all down. Recycling servers will probably keep it running. Things do still need to be fixed of course.
> Turning it off and then back on again probably fixes the issue.
Turning a large scale system entirely off and on is never simple. Invariably you’ll run into some kind of circular dependency that must be manually investigated. And even tracking those down becomes tricky.
Classic examples are things like DNS, service locators, or authentication systems. And large tech companies are notorious for NIH-syndrome for all of those.
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#53All this does is point out that smart people worked at Twitter who may now no longer work there, whether on their own accord, or due to Elon’s bulldogging tactics. Elon thinks he knows what he’s doing, but what he is going to be left with are people who are willing to work hard by his standards, but not necessarily smart. The simple truth is Elon knows nothing about the actual work involved in tech. He knows words or…
Nothing beats an internet random telling us how much a successful person is silly and also can't meet their own superior standards.
It's not about being a fan or not, it's that you're not actually providing any real insight other than signalling how smart you are.
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#54All this does is point out that smart people worked at Twitter who may now no longer work there, whether on their own accord, or due to Elon’s bulldogging tactics. Elon thinks he knows what he’s doing, but what he is going to be left with are people who are willing to work hard by his standards, but not necessarily smart. The simple truth is Elon knows nothing about the actual work involved in tech. He knows words or…
You aren't wrong, but his playbook is familiar to anyone who's gone through acquisitions (especially leveraged ones) and many companies were in a strong enough position to start with that they do manage to limp through and get sold off despite all the abuse.
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#55Excellent article. However!, software, like everything, is subject to laws of physics. Entropy always wins in the end. No matter how good the original engineering and planning, without maintenance it will all fall apart soon enough.
software, like everything, is subject to laws of physics I disagree; math would be a closer analogy. And indeed, arithmetic still works like it did a millenia ago. Closer to the present, I have binaries from the late 80s that still work today (and I use them semi-regularly.) Indeed, much of the impetus of the software industry seems to be to propagate the illusion that software somehow needs constant "maintenance" an…
But patching
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#56All this does is point out that smart people worked at Twitter who may now no longer work there, whether on their own accord, or due to Elon’s bulldogging tactics. Elon thinks he knows what he’s doing, but what he is going to be left with are people who are willing to work hard by his standards, but not necessarily smart. The simple truth is Elon knows nothing about the actual work involved in tech. He knows words or…
And Twitter's problem are nowhere near technological. The site needed to make more money, not reengineer the whole thing while advertisers are fleeing because Trump is back on on a whim!
Was Twitter 'good' aside Musk purchased it? Without that event, would it still need substantial changes to be profitable and useful going forward?
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
What law do you think is being broken?
Breach of contract possibly. Usually companies don't want you revealing their internal infrastructure publicly unless you get permission. Who knows though.
Wouldn't that be a civil claim and not actually a law being broken then?
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#58I think people's expectations became so exaggerated it was inevitable they wouldn't be lived up to. I'm sure Twitter will experience degradation from the drastic cost-cutting, but it was never going to happen overnight and I'm not sure why news outlets were saying that (except that their sources were employees with slightly inflated senses of their own importance, which we're all sometimes guilty of). And people beca…
It wasn't only news outlets. A majority of my... politically-noisy tech friends on Facebook went through a recent phase of intensely posting about Twitter on fire and collapsing.
Now just because they're "in tech" doesn't mean they have any idea about Twitter, but they should at least know enough to know they don't know what's going to happen, but obviously they're not actually using their brains when posting comments like that. Point is a lot of people opposed to Musk have been participating in a spiraling echo chamber of fairy tales and wishful thinking, it's not just journalists (although clearly they're printing lies with ulterior motvies too, as usual).
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
What law do you think is being broken?
Breach of contract possibly. Usually companies don't want you revealing their internal infrastructure publicly unless you get permission. Who knows though.
Yes exactly this. Maybe they did but I didn't find it stated in the writeup, which was actually pretty good. If it were my company though, I'd want the intellectual capital protected and we programmers usually have to sign non-compete agreements so I think my original comment stands, it was my opinion and initial gut reaction, not an indictment or judgement in any way.
Re: Why Twitter didn’t go down: From a real Twitter SRE
#60I think people's expectations became so exaggerated it was inevitable they wouldn't be lived up to. I'm sure Twitter will experience degradation from the drastic cost-cutting, but it was never going to happen overnight and I'm not sure why news outlets were saying that (except that their sources were employees with slightly inflated senses of their own importance, which we're all sometimes guilty of). And people beca…
It wasn't only news outlets. A majority of my... politically-noisy tech friends on Facebook went through a recent phase of intensely posting about Twitter on fire and collapsing. Now just because they're "in tech" doesn't mean they have any idea about Twitter, but they should at least know enough to know they don't know what's going to happen, but obviously they're not actually using their brains when posting comment…
I'll put my cards on the table and say I would have been just as happy to see him fail as anyone else, but it did begin to take on the tenor of the constant, never-came-true stories about how any minute now they were going to spring the trap on Donald Trump and he'd get thrown out of office.
e: I did not mean for this to be an invitation for everyone to argue about the merits or demerits of Donald Trump.