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So they put a team of engineers on a problem and managed to save an amount roughly equivalent to the salary of one of those engineers? Also, don't AWS resources

So they put a team of engineers on a problem and managed to save an amount roughly equivalent to the salary of one of those engineers? Also, don't AWS resources generally get cheaper with time?

nstart 11y ago
hey there! One of the engineers from Buffer here :). Good spot on the numbers being roughly equivalent to the salary of one of the engineers. Thanks for bringing that up. This was something we were mindful about and so the work we did took us roughly 12-15 man days (3 of us working on it in fits and starts * some rough calculations :D ). As important though is we did take away a lot of lessons from this that will hopefully save us even more in the future which is one of the major goals here :)
tyingq 11y ago
Assuming a simplistic $132k to save $132k annually, a 2 year net ROI of....$132k isn't so shabby :)
mgkimsal 11y ago
nstart already pointed out that it didn't take long to do it, but... i've seen this attitude over and over again - "expenses are cheap, engineers are expensive, money will just keep flowing", etc. We don't all live in worlds of unlimited budgets. For them to have taken 2 weeks (maybe $5k of effort) to save $130k plus is phenomenal (and yet, also just mundane). This means more money can be spent on hiring someone else, or higher profit sharing for all, vs just continually and marginally increasing someone else's bottom line. As buffer grows, their needs will grow and expenses will grow. I hate to push out predictions too far in the future, but this $5k of effort is probably going to save them $500k over the next 3-5 years. What's a bit irritating in all this is that the folks behind it probably won't be rewarded correspondingly (although buffer seems a bit more open and egalitarian about these sorts of things).
- Mtinie 11y ago
  I'm glad you called out the cumulative savings benefit. I'll add that they also gain a benefit multiplier in the form of the knowledge they gained from the exercise. Something that will hopefully be carried through into their future infrastructure decision making processes.
  - mgkimsal 11y ago
    I was going to mention that too - the benefit to future projects, budgets and employers is potentially quite large.

So they put a team of engineers on a problem and managed to save an amount roughly equivalent to the salary of one of those engineers? Also, don't AWS resources generally get cheaper with time?

nstart 11y ago

hey there! One of the engineers from Buffer here :). Good spot on the numbers being roughly equivalent to the salary of one of the engineers. Thanks for bringing that up. This was something we were mindful about and so the work we did took us roughly 12-15 man days (3 of us working on it in fits and starts * some rough calculations :D ). As important though is we did take away a lot of lessons from this that will hopefully save us even more in the future which is one of the major goals here :)

tyingq 11y ago

Assuming a simplistic $132k to save $132k annually, a 2 year net ROI of....$132k isn't so shabby :)

mgkimsal 11y ago

nstart already pointed out that it didn't take long to do it, but... i've seen this attitude over and over again - "expenses are cheap, engineers are expensive, money will just keep flowing", etc. We don't all live in worlds of unlimited budgets. For them to have taken 2 weeks (maybe $5k of effort) to save $130k plus is phenomenal (and yet, also just mundane). This means more money can be spent on hiring someone else, or higher profit sharing for all, vs just continually and marginally increasing someone else's bottom line. As buffer grows, their needs will grow and expenses will grow. I hate to push out predictions too far in the future, but this $5k of effort is probably going to save them $500k over the next 3-5 years. What's a bit irritating in all this is that the folks behind it probably won't be rewarded correspondingly (although buffer seems a bit more open and egalitarian about these sorts of things).

Mtinie 11y ago
I'm glad you called out the cumulative savings benefit. I'll add that they also gain a benefit multiplier in the form of the knowledge they gained from the exercise. Something that will hopefully be carried through into their future infrastructure decision making processes.
- mgkimsal 11y ago
  I was going to mention that too - the benefit to future projects, budgets and employers is potentially quite large.