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Can we stop with the uptime percentages?

146 points · 115 comments · surprisetalk

  1. proxysna · · focus · HN ↗
    Wider audience started to use status pages because the service unreliability became so much more noticeable than before and not the other way around. I never had to use a status page for bear blog or protonmail because i never had and issue with it or just i never noticed.

    I am now _required_ to consult status page of github, circleci or MS services etc because i need to know why a build is not passing, why i cannot open a repo, why is my work stalling.

    Percentages matter, it is just so much more obvious why they matter when it comes down to important pieces of the internet like github. And i highly doubt the number of 12 hours in the last month. MS has been downplaying the issues they have with GH performance for a while now and i don't think it is time to start to believe them yet. Maintaining these pieces of infrastructure is responsibility and a burden.

    Overall i would be careful with "nonlinear significance of numbers near 100%" we are talking gh being well into the 90's this year and one number that infra people are also often being reminded about is that "1% is 3.5 days".

    Things are tough for gh people and i feel for them but they are not a startup or a underdog of some sort to receive sympathy in that case.

    1. nwallin · · focus · HN ↗
      Microsoft has absolutely gone to shit in the past ~year. Github, Teams, Windows, Azure, Exchange, it's all been fucking trash. Github was running at 80% uptime for a few months, and if they're telling me they're at 98% or whatever now, then they're cooking the books, period. There's no way they're even that reliable.

      What's going on at Microsoft? Are they just copy-pasting their github issue reports into copilot and hitting send it without doing code reviews?

      1. VirusNewbie · · focus · HN ↗
        About four years ago I did interview loops at GCP, Netflix, and Azure at the same time. The latter was a “hiring event” so all my interviewers were from different teams, either managers or TLs.

        It was the interview equivalent of the multi-headed dragon meme, where the last one looks absolutely stupid. The contrast was insane, microsoft was an absolute shit show compared to the other two companies in terms of talent, personality, organization and more.

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