Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Impact the Ability to Run Microsoft
Recently, Microsoft's XBox had several long outages. It wasn't just that, there's a bunch of incidents similarly impacting availability of Azure, Outlook etc.
Can Microsoft still run Microsoft? Remember that in the interest of "cost-savings" Microsoft gets rid of older (experienced) workers. It's not even a question of staff retention; Microsoft tells these people to take a hike because they're "expensive".
What can we expect to happen next?
Well, Microsoft shut down (permanently) several offices of GitHub and had several rounds of mass layoffs there. The media didn't keep abreast, but we did.
This week? "GitHub Down"!
To quote:
GitHub, the code-hosting platform used by millions of developers, went down for users across the US, India and other countries on Monday, August 17, 2026. Downdetector logged thousands of reports within hours, and GitHub confirmed the disruption on its status page.
They are not denying it. They're incompetent and this keeps happening. This is hardly the first such downtime in recent months. Some people quit GitHub specifically because of these downtimes.
What will be left in GitHub? Slop code and bots doing slop? It's fast becoming a slopfarm, just like LinkedIn.
Loyalty to these 'disservices' will continue to wane and Psydroid told us today: "I have seen even Microsofters getting their feet wet with GNU/Linux on sites such as Tweakers, something you wouldn't have seen them acknowledge before..."
"I think it was easier to abandon Microsoft back then because there wasn't so much Microsoft-only software and it didn't have so many specific features [...]they've really used those 25 years to create stickiness, which is finally coming undone now, but what a road trip it has been" (same for games).
Another person worries that those who flee Microsoft will export Microsoft stuff to other companies and communities.
"I mainly refer not to those directly employed by Microsoft but for those more commonly found in place of company and college IT departments who are using their employer's budget and salary to work full-time against any and all non-Microsoft," he says, referring to "products, services, protocols, and formats."
"Those are many and not the small numbers actually getting a paycheck directly from Redmond. Besides, anyone who as voluntarily worked within Microsoft for any length of time had to be morally bankrupt to even get through the interviews. Then add to that the harm they do on the job and there are not enough years left in their current lives to work off all that bad karma."
We already see many former IBMers doing much harm (like Hovsepian inside Novell, where he was the last CEO). It's part of how this industry works - companies spread their vendor lock-in like a cult or a religion. I worked in companies where new managers tried to shoehorn Google, Microsoft, or both.
Some even conflates Amazon (AWS) with servers, thinking that outsourcing our servers was an actual accomplishment rather than a colossal step back that saved no money and compromised security (ours and customers'). █