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Topfi • yesterday at 10:23 AM • 20 replies • view on HN

Depending on what your job is, this is either the adult equivalent of a snow day or some of the greatest stress in a long time.

I have experienced, half a decade ago during some more frequent but less lengthy O365 errors that there are some higher ups who get when this is not something you can fix and some you very much can't. Wishing strength to any "but it's our mail" and "but we bought the Claude" meetings that happen today.


Replies

Rebuff5007 • yesterday at 10:49 AM

There is a third option where it is a minor inconvenience and you learn to adjust and be productive in other ways.

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samiv • yesterday at 11:08 AM

People already forgot how to do their work without Claude?

That's a scary thought.

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swiftcoder • yesterday at 12:25 PM

If you are that reliant on LLMs for your workflow, then how do you not have any redundancy in place? Assuming you've have any kind of basic abstraction in place, swapping in API keys for a different provider should be a simple config change...

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pimeys • yesterday at 10:34 AM

Or if my DeepSeek provider goes down, I switch to the backup and continue working.

999900000999 • yesterday at 11:26 AM

If today is a stressful day it’s probably due to bad management.

I’ve been in this situation before, an external API is basically down and my managers solution is to blame me.

Didn’t last there too long.

pilooch • yesterday at 6:16 PM

This why every corp should have an always on fallback. Self hosted, single dgx spark qwen flash next level. It's like the 5G backup line on optic fiber router, because when it's down, you're out.

BodyCulture • yesterday at 2:14 PM

It is also a good occasion to better understand how the people leading your processes are prepared for independence.

streetfighter64 • yesterday at 10:36 AM

I think it should be fine for most people. Hopefully people don't rely on Claude for Ops, and if it's not Ops-related but just regular coding, I can't see why it shouldn't be able to wait a few days. I mean, even if Claude is down for a month, people should have enough competent developers to keep going, just at a slightly slower pace, right?

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dango369 • yesterday at 11:41 AM

Just as you described. Snowday for some... I was caught in between snowday and stress today with these things. Got too used for claude to just do most things.

But at the same time was surprised I could still google and resolve things myself when I started thinking again lmao.

Betelbuddy • yesterday at 12:07 PM

The most likely scenario, is their team of high achievers, deployed a massive pile of stinking technical debt, against the advice of the experienced folks who are constantly overridden.

On a normal environment the old Graybeards would fix it, after grumping on being taken away from playing with their latest Emacs config.

But this is the Valley, and we dont do experience only VibeOps. And half reading this post, are wondering if Emacs is a new frontend framework they never heard about....

codeduck • yesterday at 10:47 AM

> but we bought the Claude

My soul just dry-heaved from laughter. Nice.

kristianc • yesterday at 11:04 AM

I have fond memories of the “we’re a tech company, why can’t we get a video conferencing call going” and gently reminding them that reliable, synchronous, multiparty video conferencing was a lot harder than anything this company was trying to do.

kasperni • yesterday at 10:47 AM

> O365

O364...

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spystath • yesterday at 1:13 PM

We are now in year 3-ish of LLMs going mainstream. Do people immediately forgot writing code manually the moment Claude was out? I understand the LLM acts as a multiplier but does coding immediately stop when Claude is down? My line of business is not in software development so this is a truly genuine question.

fergie • yesterday at 12:19 PM

Anybody who has based their workplace on MS and Claude having 100% uptime kind of should take responsibility though

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goalieca • yesterday at 12:55 PM

This hopefully means fewer 1000+ line PRs to review

gabucino • yesterday at 10:58 AM

>check my local qmail, dovecot

yeah, couldn't be me

vonneumannstan • yesterday at 3:27 PM

What scenarios are there where Execs need to have a "Claude is down" meeting? Surely we aren't far enough along in the singularity where this needs to happen anywhere yet.