Microsoft's outage exposes how deeply the world depends on it
Big tech is here to let us down
A Microsoft outage took down Outlook, Teams, and Copilot, and the fallout spread far beyond offices: schools, universities, and courts were affected too. The author argues that mass layoffs of engineers make such failures more likely and harder to fix, that Microsoft will offer no compensation, and that Europe's drift toward open source is a sensible hedge against dependence on a single US vendor.
When Microsoft services go down, you cannot fix it! You have to wait for Microsoft to find a competent employee who wasn't let go to try and fix what was broken by some inept leftover who was deluded enough to think that Copilot can do everything.
- epistasis
In the age of AI there's ZERO reason for "the global North" to continue using Microsoft. Wean your finance guys off of Excel, somehow. Replace the CTO with somebody that can hire IT that doesn't depend on the crutches of Microsoft.
If people's MS subscription revenue were funneled into on-site devs and devops for open source solutions, we'd all live in a better world. Sure, the money wouldn't be funneled to a single ledger in Redmond, but the overall productivity would be higher and there'd be greater GDP growth in other areas.
I've heard of so many small companies with a slightly technical bent replacing their SalesForce with better CRMs that make everyone happier, thanks to AI. MS is next.
Let's make sure that dollars get funneled away from economic rent and into more productive efforts. Schumpeterian rents might exist for a bit, but they should never exist long. Microsoft's rents have lasted for too long to be economically optimal.
- jam0wal
I feel this is missing the role we play. Choosing free, flashy, new and jumping on the new best thing in droves.
Unfortunately the most effective way to learn about what is important is to have it taken away. So I don't believe this is going to change ... ever.
- dgrin91
> Now, are Microsoft going to offer any compensation for either lost business or additional accrued costs? I highly doubt it, even though it is literally their fault and they do still have the cash reserves, despite increasingly wasting it on loss-making AI adventures.
Aren't they? I know that they, and other big techs, have clauses in their terms that say if they don't meet service requirements they will offer refunds/credits. I've never been in a position where I was the one requesting the refund but I always presumed they actually did it.
- socketcluster
Some of us software engineers have been predicting the software apocalypse since over a decade so what's going on now is not surprising.
What else won't surprise me is the government trying to step in and making it their problem. That's what I'm worried about. The only right thing to do is remove regulations, remove government intervention from every aspect of the economy, and let the market fix the mess which the central planners have created.
Designing the entire software industry as a giant government-supported oligopoly was not a good idea. It was unethical and it was not going to work in the long term.
- coffeebeqn
It’s interesting I have been 0% affected by this big outage at home or work
- erelong
backup plans should be discussed (both backing up the data and alternative services to use when services go down), and also switching to better alternatives to Microsoft when possible
- j2kun
Hot take: most people, in most industries, should be able to tolerate a day of downtime in the sense that there are still useful, productive things to do even when all the computers die.
The fact that the world relies on four 9's of availability and throws a hissy fit whenever there are outages is an antipattern.
And also, people should get a snow day every once in a while.
- bsenftner
Trust in others, across the board, is tanking. I expect in the not to distant future every company will have a completely proprietary stack, or they will be facing competition circling them while they can't keep their shit running. It is the mono culture that is too easily attacked.