AOL was down (1996)

In a reflective exploration of the 1996 AOL outage, the author examines the event's broader implications on site reliability engineering (SRE) and its socio-economic context. The outage, which unexpectedly became national news, highlighted the growing dependency on the internet and the fragility of systems that people increasingly relied upon. The author argues that the incident underscores the need to prioritize human impact over purely technical or economic considerations in reliability engineering. Emphasizing the importance of understanding personal stories affected by such outages, the piece critiques how economic forces often prioritize profit over quality, leading to a phenomenon termed "enshittification," where cutting corners becomes the norm. By drawing parallels between past and present, the author advocates for creative approaches within SRE to uphold reliability and quality, despite economic pressures, by focusing on individual impact and proposing innovative solutions to prevent the erosion of service standards.

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