28 ms·

There was a thundering herd e-mail at Amazon about 10 years ago that I’ve heard stories about. It went on for days. There’s a funny internal talk with lots of d

by cmckn 4y ago

There was a thundering herd e-mail at Amazon about 10 years ago that I’ve heard stories about. It went on for days. There’s a funny internal talk with lots of data about it, maybe it’s on YouTube by now…

spike021 4y ago
Something similar happened at Cisco something like maybe 5 years ago? Someone sent the Bay Area employees or whatever list (probably at least some tens of thousands of employees) an ask for a cook/chef they could hire to make meals for their family, IIRC. I think the reply-all's happened all week.
- kenrose 4y ago
  MS in 2005 as well.
  - Sirened 4y ago
    And Apple in 1991 [1]. It's a very fun story actually, good read if you're in the business of writing "reliable" or "recoverable" software (aka pretty much everyone). A bad design choice in sendmail caused a cascading explosion of emails. I also highly recommend reading the rest of the book (?), the Unix Hater's Handbook is a wonderful bit of history and discussion of the design issues of the NIXs we all know and love/hate today. [1] https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf page 85
    - idontpost 4y ago
      "Bad design choice" described basically every design choice involved in email.
  - rstupek 4y ago
    Compaq in the mid 90s on banyan vines a friend leaving the company sent a company wide email listing his house. It wasn't supposed to be possible to email *
- imadethis 4y ago
  That was sometime in 2015-2016. People still post recipes in big reply-all chains or when cisco-flame gets too heated.
  - spike021 4y ago
    Dang that really takes me back.
heyitsguay 4y ago
When i worked at the NIH, a couple times an entire institute was accidentally cc'd instead of bcc'd on an email, and for weeks after the chain would continue, consisting only of people writing "please stop responding to this chain". I don't know what you do for that...
- Geezus-42 4y ago
  Where I work we create a policy that drops the messages. To: soandso@domain.tld Subject: blah Action: block
- tomjen3 4y ago
  Mute the thread in your email app?
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  The people responding with “please stop” should bcc the institute so that if someone replies to them the institute won’t be copied in?
delecti 4y ago
Would that happen to be the "wallet" incident? It was slightly before my time, but I also heard legends of it. During my time there, any email thread that looked headed for another reply-all storm had people replying-all to it with simply the word "wallet", apparently in an attempt to deliberately cause chaos.
thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
Wallet?
sverhagen 4y ago
Looking around, everyone has a story like this, so I don't want to just pile on with my similar experience at Verizon. But what stood out at me there was the low quality responses from low-level managers in far parts of the world, demanding, by the power vested in them, to be taken off the email chain... you know... IMMEDIATELY!
- flurdy 4y ago
  Yeah that is one thing that I remember from one or two that I was copied into in roughly 2000s with more than 200,000 CCed. Mini-kings and also people with enough technical skills to know better keeping the threads alive and flooding the Exchange servers woldwide for days.
- geerlingguy 4y ago
  This happened at all my previous employers at one point or another. Most famously a thread about unsubscribing from a mailing list that nobody really knew about but had everyone in the company on it. For weeks there'd be some random field sales guy or a marketing person in random parts of the world replying all.

by cmckn 4y ago

spike021 4y ago

Something similar happened at Cisco something like maybe 5 years ago? Someone sent the Bay Area employees or whatever list (probably at least some tens of thousands of employees) an ask for a cook/chef they could hire to make meals for their family, IIRC. I think the reply-all's happened all week.

kenrose 4y ago
MS in 2005 as well.
- Sirened 4y ago
  And Apple in 1991 [1]. It's a very fun story actually, good read if you're in the business of writing "reliable" or "recoverable" software (aka pretty much everyone). A bad design choice in sendmail caused a cascading explosion of emails. I also highly recommend reading the rest of the book (?), the Unix Hater's Handbook is a wonderful bit of history and discussion of the design issues of the NIXs we all know and love/hate today. [1] https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf page 85
  - idontpost 4y ago
    "Bad design choice" described basically every design choice involved in email.
- rstupek 4y ago
  Compaq in the mid 90s on banyan vines a friend leaving the company sent a company wide email listing his house. It wasn't supposed to be possible to email *
imadethis 4y ago
That was sometime in 2015-2016. People still post recipes in big reply-all chains or when cisco-flame gets too heated.
- spike021 4y ago
  Dang that really takes me back.

heyitsguay 4y ago

When i worked at the NIH, a couple times an entire institute was accidentally cc'd instead of bcc'd on an email, and for weeks after the chain would continue, consisting only of people writing "please stop responding to this chain". I don't know what you do for that...

Geezus-42 4y ago
Where I work we create a policy that drops the messages. To: soandso@domain.tld Subject: blah Action: block
tomjen3 4y ago
Mute the thread in your email app?
dan-robertson 4y ago
The people responding with “please stop” should bcc the institute so that if someone replies to them the institute won’t be copied in?

delecti 4y ago

Would that happen to be the "wallet" incident? It was slightly before my time, but I also heard legends of it. During my time there, any email thread that looked headed for another reply-all storm had people replying-all to it with simply the word "wallet", apparently in an attempt to deliberately cause chaos.

thesuperbigfrog 4y ago

Wallet?

sverhagen 4y ago

Looking around, everyone has a story like this, so I don't want to just pile on with my similar experience at Verizon. But what stood out at me there was the low quality responses from low-level managers in far parts of the world, demanding, by the power vested in them, to be taken off the email chain... you know... IMMEDIATELY!

flurdy 4y ago
Yeah that is one thing that I remember from one or two that I was copied into in roughly 2000s with more than 200,000 CCed. Mini-kings and also people with enough technical skills to know better keeping the threads alive and flooding the Exchange servers woldwide for days.
geerlingguy 4y ago
This happened at all my previous employers at one point or another. Most famously a thread about unsubscribing from a mailing list that nobody really knew about but had everyone in the company on it. For weeks there'd be some random field sales guy or a marketing person in random parts of the world replying all.