It's hard to say that something is going to scale smoothly up an order of magnitude until you're there. 900K requests is a lot of room for things to go wrong.
I'm assuming there are many NS fans on HN, so I'll ask this here.
The only NS book I've read is Anathem, and while I enjoyed the story his writing style seemed too self-indulgent for me to really get into. Renaming/redescribing major mathematical and philosophical theories in a parallel dimension? Look how smart NS is. Quantum monk space ninjas? Oh man that's so cool can they be pirates too?
That being said, he's been lauded so consistently that I'd like to read more of his work and figure out what I'm missing. What would HN'ers recommend?
Honestly, it's just another symptom of the depersonalization in the employment market. As long as there is a surplus of qualified* workers, then there is little reason to treat people humanely.
*for values of qualified from "keyword-rich resume" and up.