4 ms·

I don't think so. GitHub was bought by Microsoft 8 years ago and people have only started complaining about its uptime in the last year or so - exactly correlat

I don't think so. GitHub was bought by Microsoft 8 years ago and people have only started complaining about its uptime in the last year or so - exactly correlating with the surge in LLM use.

pluralmonad 3mo ago
Didn't github also migrate at azure recently? That certainly can't help.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
onraglanroad 3mo ago
I don't think so. I've seen those complaints for more than a year. I have an Ops background and I strongly suspect they were given a stupid timeline for the Azure migration. I've got to believe Microsoft have decent Ops people but the management wanted to move faster than was reasonable and screwed it up. Move one thing at a time and double check it all works and you can do a migration like this.
- macintux 3mo ago
  Hotmail redux.
- tempest_ 3mo ago
  Even on a large timeline there is just a lot of risk when migrating legacy infra to an entirely new system, especially if the original arch grew "organically" and has tones of edge cases. I always figured these problems were directly related to the migration.
- crabbone 3mo ago
  I've lived through two acquisitions by the world-largest companies (and few more smaller ones). Here's my impression of what often happens in situations like this: * There's a huge disconnect between the actual product and what was sold to the buyer. It could be that the product was a borderline fraud, or it could be that the product was actually much better quality than the expectation on the buyer's side, but the buyer isn't interested in most of the product. * Fear spreads in the acquired company that their product will be discontinued or reshaped into something else. * The pay is good, probably much better than before the company was bought. * Many internal teams end up lacking real purpose and try to insert themselves into every new internal project only to obfuscate their irrelevance. This leads to some pathological developments, where the teams previously working on acquired products start doing a lot of useless, for-show work. Internal initiatives sprout like mushrooms after a summer rain, but they are all plagued by very broad (and mostly irrelevant) team involvement, duplication of existing products / services, and fear of being discovered. And while there are plenty of such initiatives, their role is to be a superficial distraction. In reality, everyone is afraid to touch the old code or do any sensible integration because it could lead to blanket firing of a lot of people. The middle-management behavior becomes a sort of exchange of favors, where everyone is afraid that the other can blackmail them into losing their job, and so everyone is trying to be extra nice by offering a slice of a pie to another manager. What this leads to, in reality, is insane inertia (often despite highly shortened software release cycles), astronomic amounts of unmitigated tech. debt, opacity in communication with management, persecution of those who genuinely want to improve the system. Based on this, my prediction is that Github will not survive. Just like Skype didn't. Somehow or other, Microsoft will find a way to replace the product with... MS Outlook with a new skin.
axod 3mo ago
https://damrnelson.github.io/github-historical-uptime/ https://damrnelson.github.io/github-historical-uptime/ Seems pretty conclusive. Very similar story when they bought skype.
- willio58 3mo ago
  God that's sad. I almost feel bad for all the engineers there, though I'm sure they made good money and probably left
  - axod 3mo ago
    Do they still have any engineers? From the downtime it seems like they don't any more. Yep - the competent ones likely all left.
- gtowey 3mo ago
  It's not the whole story. The biggest change is actually the internal rules for how downtime was reported, it wasn't actually such a large change in the actual reliability then.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Hosting that on GitHub Pages is ballsy.
- zamalek 3mo ago
  That's missing a some of the LLM era? Maybe the author is working on a logarithmic view?
- Izkata 3mo ago
  Heatmap of the past year: https://isgithubcooked.com/ https://isgithubcooked.com/ It got worse around April/May this year, while that graph stops at February.
miyoji 3mo ago
> people have only started complaining about its uptime in the last year or so I'm sorry but this made me laugh out loud. That isn't true at all, this has been going on for years. This conversation[0] from six years ago has discussion about the outages starting to become much more frequent in December 2019. It has never gotten better in that time, it's just continually degraded. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22935941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22935941
- everfrustrated 3mo ago
  Yup. GitHub has easily the worst human-noticable downtime for all SaaS services I've used going back over 10 years. Most people work around it by self-hosting github (which has other problems but uptime aint one).
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    What problems does it have?
- IshKebab 3mo ago
  Ok I should have said people have only started constantly complaining in the past year or so. Of course there was the odd complaint in the past, but now I see a thread about it at least ever month on HN, and loads of articles about migration off GitHub.
Melatonic 3mo ago
Isnt it also in the past year when they started to move Github fully to microsoft infra? Off whatever they were doing before

I don't think so. GitHub was bought by Microsoft 8 years ago and people have only started complaining about its uptime in the last year or so - exactly correlating with the surge in LLM use.

pluralmonad 3mo ago

Didn't github also migrate at azure recently? That certainly can't help.

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]

onraglanroad 3mo ago

I don't think so. I've seen those complaints for more than a year. I have an Ops background and I strongly suspect they were given a stupid timeline for the Azure migration. I've got to believe Microsoft have decent Ops people but the management wanted to move faster than was reasonable and screwed it up. Move one thing at a time and double check it all works and you can do a migration like this.

macintux 3mo ago
Hotmail redux.
tempest_ 3mo ago
Even on a large timeline there is just a lot of risk when migrating legacy infra to an entirely new system, especially if the original arch grew "organically" and has tones of edge cases. I always figured these problems were directly related to the migration.
crabbone 3mo ago
I've lived through two acquisitions by the world-largest companies (and few more smaller ones). Here's my impression of what often happens in situations like this: * There's a huge disconnect between the actual product and what was sold to the buyer. It could be that the product was a borderline fraud, or it could be that the product was actually much better quality than the expectation on the buyer's side, but the buyer isn't interested in most of the product. * Fear spreads in the acquired company that their product will be discontinued or reshaped into something else. * The pay is good, probably much better than before the company was bought. * Many internal teams end up lacking real purpose and try to insert themselves into every new internal project only to obfuscate their irrelevance. This leads to some pathological developments, where the teams previously working on acquired products start doing a lot of useless, for-show work. Internal initiatives sprout like mushrooms after a summer rain, but they are all plagued by very broad (and mostly irrelevant) team involvement, duplication of existing products / services, and fear of being discovered. And while there are plenty of such initiatives, their role is to be a superficial distraction. In reality, everyone is afraid to touch the old code or do any sensible integration because it could lead to blanket firing of a lot of people. The middle-management behavior becomes a sort of exchange of favors, where everyone is afraid that the other can blackmail them into losing their job, and so everyone is trying to be extra nice by offering a slice of a pie to another manager. What this leads to, in reality, is insane inertia (often despite highly shortened software release cycles), astronomic amounts of unmitigated tech. debt, opacity in communication with management, persecution of those who genuinely want to improve the system. Based on this, my prediction is that Github will not survive. Just like Skype didn't. Somehow or other, Microsoft will find a way to replace the product with... MS Outlook with a new skin.

axod 3mo ago

https://damrnelson.github.io/github-historical-uptime/ https://damrnelson.github.io/github-historical-uptime/ Seems pretty conclusive. Very similar story when they bought skype.

willio58 3mo ago
God that's sad. I almost feel bad for all the engineers there, though I'm sure they made good money and probably left
- axod 3mo ago
  Do they still have any engineers? From the downtime it seems like they don't any more. Yep - the competent ones likely all left.
gtowey 3mo ago
It's not the whole story. The biggest change is actually the internal rules for how downtime was reported, it wasn't actually such a large change in the actual reliability then.
inigyou 3mo ago
Hosting that on GitHub Pages is ballsy.
zamalek 3mo ago
That's missing a some of the LLM era? Maybe the author is working on a logarithmic view?
Izkata 3mo ago
Heatmap of the past year: https://isgithubcooked.com/ https://isgithubcooked.com/ It got worse around April/May this year, while that graph stops at February.

miyoji 3mo ago

> people have only started complaining about its uptime in the last year or so I'm sorry but this made me laugh out loud. That isn't true at all, this has been going on for years. This conversation[0] from six years ago has discussion about the outages starting to become much more frequent in December 2019. It has never gotten better in that time, it's just continually degraded. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22935941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22935941

everfrustrated 3mo ago
Yup. GitHub has easily the worst human-noticable downtime for all SaaS services I've used going back over 10 years. Most people work around it by self-hosting github (which has other problems but uptime aint one).
- inigyou 3mo ago
  What problems does it have?
IshKebab 3mo ago
Ok I should have said people have only started constantly complaining in the past year or so. Of course there was the odd complaint in the past, but now I see a thread about it at least ever month on HN, and loads of articles about migration off GitHub.

Melatonic 3mo ago

Isnt it also in the past year when they started to move Github fully to microsoft infra? Off whatever they were doing before