The Pragmatic Engineer

The Pragmatic Engineer

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The Pragmatic Engineer
The Scoop #48: GitHub’s reliability issues
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The Scoop #48: GitHub’s reliability issues

Also: Amazon’s RTO on the way, Stack Overflow cutting down on product development,Google reducing perks and the story of Excalidraw.

Gergely Orosz's avatar
Gergely Orosz
May 18, 2023
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The Pragmatic Engineer
The Scoop #48: GitHub’s reliability issues
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The Scoop is a bonus series covering insights, patterns, and trends I observe and hear about within Big Tech and at high growth startups. Have a scoop to share? Send me a message! I treat all such messages as anonymous.

Today's topics are:

  1. GitHub’s stability issues. The source code hosting service has had a bad month in stability terms. But why are disruptive outages more frequent than normal, and what could the consequences be? I talk with software engineers at GitHub for more details. Exclusive.

  2. Amazon’s RTO underway. The 1 May deadline has passed, meaning employees must be in the office at least 3 days per week. How is the return going? I bring details from SDEs and SDMs at Amazon. Exclusive.

  3. Is Stack Overflow looking to “milk its cash cow?” The company cut 10% of staff, and is aiming to get back to profitability. However, most of the cuts were in engineering and product. Are we seeing Stack Overflow chase sales and give up on innovation? Exclusive details and analysis.

  4. By how much is Google really reducing perks? The Big Tech giant’s CFO sent an email more than a month ago, detailing which perks were to be cut. What are employees seeing of this? I talk to a current software engineer. Exclusive details.

  5. A bootstrapped success story: Excalidraw. While some Big Tech and venture-funded startups struggle and fire workers, many bootstrapped startups are thriving and hiring. Excalidraw – the open source drawing tool I use for illustrations – is one of these. I talk with the cofounder and CEO on what is working, why, and his advice to aspiring bootstrapped founders. Exclusive.

The Scoop sometimes delivers first hand, original reporting. I’m adding an ‘Exclusive’ label to news that features original reporting direct from my sources, as distinct from analysis, opinion, and reaction to events. Of course, I also analyze what’s happening in the tech industry, citing other media sources and quoting them as I dive into trends I observe. These sections do not carry the ‘Exclusive’ mark.

1. GitHub’s stability issues

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