alt Hacker NewsTo be fair, before the aquisition, GitHub was super stable, but also it felt like they rarely changed or added anything.
After Microsoft acquired them, they started rolling out new features at an incredible pace. And if you look at the breakdown of the downtime, most of the downtime is in features that didn't exist before the acquisition.
Though not all of the downtime is in new features. The core is also less stable than ever.
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My (actuarial) read on this is that pre-Microsoft GitHub acknowledged that the complexity inherent in their technology stack imparted a lot of change risk, and that probably informed their decisions around shipping new features.
My (not-so-actuarial 1990's-experience-colored) feeling is that this is Microsoft doing what Microsoft does best, namely including a lot of seemingly compelling features in a product to get people hooked and to keep competitors in a position of trying to keep up.
But I just want stable hosting for my shit. I barely even interact with the web UI, other than commenting on PRs.
Nobody wants to trade stability for feature, especially for a product like Github...
This is no excuse. Prioritizing new features so far above reliability is exactly what makes most Microsoft products infuriating to use.
> To be fair, before the acquisition, GitHub was super stable
Having been through a couple of acquisitions (as a cog in the machine being acquired, not a founder or purchaser or such), the last one at the end of 2025, and seen others as an unofficial close observer via friends/family, I think this is quite normal. No matter how thorough the due diligence and other investigations are pre-purchase, there will usually be an information gathering time before any significant changes are made. Even without that there are a couple of months being very careful not to rock the boat too much, so as to not put the willies up shareholders and key human resources. The first significant changes often won't happen for 3-to-6 months, unless part of the reason for the acquisition is that the company was on the verge of failing or was growing too fast to cope. During that time, unless key people jump ship early forcing change to an extent, things below certain management levels are much more business-as-usual than you might expect.