There was a comment on another GitHub thread that I replied to. I got a response saying it’s absurd how unreliable Gh is when people depend on it for CI/CD. And I think this is the problem. At GitHub the developers think it’s only a problem because their ci/cd is failing. Oh no, we broke GitHub actions, the actions runners team is going to be mad at us! Instead of, oh no, we broke GitHub actions, half the world is down!

That larger view held only by a small sliver of employees is likely why reliability is not a concern. That leads to the every team for themselves mentality. “It’s not our problem, and we won’t make it our problem so we don’t get dinged at review time” (ok that is Microsoft attitude leaking)

Then there’s their entrenched status. Real talk, no one is leaving GitHub. So customers will suck it up and live with it while angry employees grumble on an online forum. I saw this same attitude in major companies like Verio and Verisign in the early 2000s. “Yeah we’re down but who else are you going to go to? Have a 20% discount since you complained. We will only be 1% less profitable this quarter due to it” The kang and kodos argument personified.

These views are my own and not related to my employer or anyone associated with me.