Gregory's ServerIan Muir explains the context for the Crowdstrike Microsoft disaster.
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45 comments
  @wendynather @Infrogmation @ReticentTurnip - I absolutely hate being right. I hate seeing these patterns. I hate seeing where they go. That said, right now is a good time to build actual community and mutual aid. I dont want to be right about this either.  @Infrogmation @TerryHancock Perhaps replacing some of these gigantically-expensive CEOs with an AI model would help the companies save money, hire their productive staff back, and deliver a better and more reliable product? Heck, we know general AI can spout as much bullshit as a real live CEO can, so what does corporate America have to lose? @mjf_pro @Infrogmation @TerryHancock Great idea! Have a short story about it:   @Infrogmation oo i tried to see if they'd done layoffs too. Amazing how all those people everyone fired were probably doing something  @Infrogmation i remember the mcafee blooper well. Had no idea the same CEO is in play, that's interesting I have been a working computer programmer for nearly 50 years. Over, and over, and over again, I have seen snake-oil products sold with the pitch (sometimes utterly literally), "Fire the programmers!" Yet here we still are, writing the code that makes the world run. Until, in its latest round of log-rolling, management decides to "cut out the deadwood." This always works in the short term, because our code runs well by itself. For a while...  @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation One of the things non-techs (such as myself!) have to have painfully explained to us is: machines need maintenance. They don't run forever by themselves. As you say, they run "for a while," but then when they stop working, we're like WTF? But that's just what happens. It's predictable. It ought to be written into budgets and regarded as an immutable operating cost. But like the OP says, that "doesn't make money," so shit breaks down. All. The. Time. @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation There's a directly parallel problem of "it doesn't get votes," too. A badly misguided management paradigm divides operational units into "profit centers" and "cost centers." This, in turn, leads to badly misinformed managers thinking, "Hey, let's increase profits by getting rid of all the cost centers!" If a center isn't part of why your business is profitable, yes, get rid of it. But it was probably created in the first place because you needed it to make a profit. Tech support? Yes, if you use tech, then that's a profit center. @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation And they will NEVER regard management itself as a "loss centre," but it very often is. At best, they're paid disproportionately to how much they (allegedly) generate, but class solidarity keeps them in high-paying jobs bc once you're A Boss, that's your identity (to them), so you'll get saved from your own incompetence over and over again. @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation Fired from one firm for a huge fuck up? No problem, another will hire you and convince themselves it's a steal based on how much you got paid at that last job... that you fucked up. @Professor_Stevens @orionkidder @Infrogmation that assumes the primary purpose of all/most business is to make a monetary ptofit. @SergKoren @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation I think it is the purpose of most business, but I also think it shouldn't be. @orionkidder @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation It's still an assumption that needs to be stated. @SergKoren @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation I'd agree, ultimately. Organizations do lots more than "business." @orionkidder @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation Otherwise, people will believe that is the only way. @Professor_Stevens either way, you have not stated your assumptions. Your argument is, therefore, specious. @orionkidder @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation there's a saying "if you don't schedule time for maintenance, the machine will schedule it for you" @KormaChameleon @Professor_Stevens @Infrogmation Oh, that's very good. That said, the machine won't schedule it at all. It's be more like an unannounced emergency meeting. @Infrogmation @trochee This explanation treats “replacing skilled tech workers with AI” as something that is actually possible with some effort Which makes me wonder what else it gets wrong  It says that the managers **think they can** get away with replacing workers with AI but they haven't found a way to do it yet I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the symmetry of all the other arguments. Making AI "work" isn't possible because the current crop of AI tech actually isn't ever going to functionally replace skilled programming labor. But this is beyond the horizon of the management consultants who imagine that it _might_ be "good enough" @trochee @fivetonsflax @Infrogmation Friendly amendment, it says they *desperately want to* bc by and large, bosses HATE labour with a white-hot gut-level rage that is hard to believe even when you see it directly (I have; I was a union negotiator for a bit). They will jump at any chance, not matter how hair-brained, to eliminate workers. It's become pathological, but it started as ideological. They *believe* workers merely reduce profits rather than *producing* wealth, which is what we do. @fivetonsflax @Infrogmation @trochee Management has been using underpaid offshore runbook-readers instead of onshore support for years. And it works for a while. @Infrogmation @akosma Tech people are not only expensive, they are also difficult and obstructive the more expensive/senior they are. An industry with quality motivation would call this the value of experience and listen to signals.   @Infrogmation This describes my pain. It doesn't mention how the people who warned management about the dangers of austerity were ignored or shouted down, and are now probably being blamed for the results.  @Infrogmation Why does he go back to 2010? It literally happened with the LINUX version of CROWDSTRIKE 3 MONTHS (THREE) AGO! https://www.neowin.net/news/crowdstrike-broke-debian-and-rocky-linux-months-ago-but-no-one-noticed/ THREE. MONTHS. AGO. Same software, same problem, just with the linux version... @Infrogmation gosh, the author forgot to mention that 95% of tech people think that they're qualified professionals, but they are not. And it happened more than a decade ago, because of IT bubble.  @Infrogmation funny how he doesn't mention compliance requirements that caused this anti-virus or whatever it is to be installed in the first place
@Infrogmation maybe us tech people should start to frame information along the lines of preventing losing more money (and marketshare) than it costs  @Infrogmation @rysiek For several of those services, it should be mandatory to have adequate fault tolerance, isolation & redundancy (and criminal to fail that).
It doesn't make you money, but if you fail to implement it you are spending the next decade in prison while your company gets reposessed as a public utility or liquidated.  Sounds right. What could go wrong? Note: this also applies in higher-ed and probably any other place that “has computers” … which is everything.  @Infrogmation As a side note, since LLMs are not actually AI, "AI" is not actually a replacement for people generally speaking. So really the plan was to just pretend away the need for humans to fill those positions.  they don't pay the price for their mess. society does. also see: data breaches. regulatory capture. climate change. disaster capitalism. move fast and break things. Short-termism. too big to fail. @Infrogmation the missing piece of the puzzle for me is the risk to shareholders. Shareholders don't care about systems being down if the lost revenue and repair costs are less than the money they made through the layoffs. CEOs mostly spend their time trying to delight their real customers, the shareholders. |
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