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by zamalek 50 days ago
There was somewhat recently a post here about how priorities, pressure, and management subverted Dave Cutler's vision for Azure (which was to have near zero human involvement) - my Google fu isn't strong enough to find it. Supposedly, someone running over or opening a serial to a rack/VM is now typical operational procedure.
2 comments
ok_dad 50 days ago
This one?

https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporize...

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zamalek 50 days ago
That's the one!
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consumer451 49 days ago
Amazing read. Thanks to both of you for finding that.

> I later researched this further and found that no one at Microsoft, not a single soul, could articulate why up to 173 agents were needed to manage an Azure node, what they all did, how they interacted with one another, what their feature set was, or even why they existed in the first place.

This reads like a description of the SLS-based (aka Senate Launch System) Artemis program, which somehow ended up deciding that the insane Lunar Gateway should be a thing.

Destin (SmarterEveryDay on YouTube) [0] called out the entire nutball scheme to NASA, at NASA. This includes the SLS/Orion/Lunar Gateway insanity, and calling out the number of unknown, but very large number, of on-orbit refuelings that Starship would need to get to the moon.

In that video's comments, I believe there is someone who worked on the Orion-related system, who says ~"Yeah, we thought the delta-v was too low, we could have increased it, but no one was speaking with each other at a whole system level."

The mission drift at large orgs, gov and corp, is a huge problem that might one day be solved?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU

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zamalek 49 days ago
Large orgs aim to produce some type of output. Their entire existence stems from a "perverse incentive."[1] Governments produce bills and laws, corps produce short-term profits, etc. I am pretty sure that preventing this type of waste consumes significantly more energy than creating the waste - e.g. the agile manifesto, the rework book.

Jobs was probably a good example of this. In my opinion, his image of an innovator is vastly exaggerated. What he did do well was to not invent things. E.G. liquid glass would have never seen the light of day under him: he was adept at saying "no" and preventing waste - Apple is now at the whims of anyone with the next stupid idea, the ideal example of wasteful behavior.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

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pbronez 50 days ago
perhaps https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporize... ?
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