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> A lot of the comments here are comparing bare metal/virtual servers to a combination of two+ products with literally dozens of built in capabilities, security

> A lot of the comments here are comparing bare metal/virtual servers to a combination of two+ products with literally dozens of built in capabilities, security controls, built in scaling, monitoring, logging, deployment mechanisms, and built in high availability. These are not apples to apples comparisons in the least. I'm not here to pick a fight against AWS. You guys have built a powerful ecosystem and it's definitely applicable to certain business cases. Your points about building the same ecosystem as AWS on traditional hardware are absolutely correct, this is very difficult to get right. A lot of places simply don't. I have always said that AWS is great for loads where you need to start be able to easily scale up and down, something which is prohibitively expensive to do with your own servers. But what you might not see in your position inside Amazon, is that for most companies it's much easier to hire developers/sysadmins for "traditional systems" than it is to find people with deep AWS knowledge. Because AWS is such a large ecosystem the market of individuals with the domain specific AWS knowledge that your business needs is much smaller than regular old sysadmin/developers. This means either it's very hard to find the right people, or you have to pay them multiples of what you would pay a standard developer/sysadmin. It's the difficulty of finding people to fill the role that vexes me most. > What now do you do for: high availability, nearly instant scalability, monitoring, logging, alarming, deployment and security controls. Ah, but you are assuming people who are using AWS are adhering to best practices and have all these set up, tested, and working in production. I've worked at a few companies with on site and AWS presence, and I can say that none of them followed best practices all the time...

munns 9y ago
These are all true and valid points. True story: having AWS (or any cloud experience) on your resume today is a major boost to your money earning potential: A. because its rare to have several years experience. B. because the space is growing rapidly (again all of cloud). If you haven't started teaching yourself the basics of cloud computing platforms start today because your next job or the job after that WILL involve you running applications on public cloud. In my experience from pre-AWS days hiring good Ops people for systems, networking, etc is hard no matter what. I'd argue that the developer's role/day to day changes little in the move from traditional "on-prem" type infrastructure to cloud, even with serverless platforms in play. Generally speaking though I'd aim to hire people who are hungry to learn and have enough fundamental knowledge of networks, operating systems, and hardware to be able to ramp up on public cloud technologies. If you learned it one way, you can learn it this way and there's a massive amount of people here at AWS at least to help you along the way (training folks, support folks, solutions architects) as well as 3rd parties like ACloudGuru, Linux Academy, and others with training/consulting capabilities. The future of technology is moving towards public cloud and I'd argue serverless application development models whether you want to get on board or not. No one cried for the last blacksmith in the town when cars replaced horses. Best practices are hard for people to follow no matter the technology, and the easiest solution is rarely the "best" (see people leave SG's wide open, open S3 perms, etc). We at AWS know its our job to make security best practices easier to grok and implement and there are tools that help with that today (IAM testing/reviewing tools, trusted advisor as examples). There's more we can do here. Thanks for your reply! - Chris
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > In my experience from pre-AWS days hiring good Ops people for systems, networking, etc is hard no matter what. No argument here, good talent is hard to find. I guess what I meant is, mediocre talent doesn't hurt you as badly with traditional on prem because there are more guides someone can follow, or there is a lot of institutional knowledge around to help someone in areas they're weaker. As you correctly pointed out, the cloud is going to be part of our lives going forward. We've already crossed the Rubicon when it comes to the cloud. Any steps Amazon takes to make AWS configuration easier and more secure out of the box are always welcome. > open S3 perms Man it's like every other week we read about some company exposing sensitive data via S3 misconfiguration (NSA contractor data, GOP voter data...). Have you considered selling liability insurance along side it? ;-)
  - munns 9y ago
    "Have you considered selling liability insurance along side it? ;-)" Sounds like an idea for the next YC class!! -munns

munns 9y ago

These are all true and valid points. True story: having AWS (or any cloud experience) on your resume today is a major boost to your money earning potential: A. because its rare to have several years experience. B. because the space is growing rapidly (again all of cloud). If you haven't started teaching yourself the basics of cloud computing platforms start today because your next job or the job after that WILL involve you running applications on public cloud. In my experience from pre-AWS days hiring good Ops people for systems, networking, etc is hard no matter what. I'd argue that the developer's role/day to day changes little in the move from traditional "on-prem" type infrastructure to cloud, even with serverless platforms in play. Generally speaking though I'd aim to hire people who are hungry to learn and have enough fundamental knowledge of networks, operating systems, and hardware to be able to ramp up on public cloud technologies. If you learned it one way, you can learn it this way and there's a massive amount of people here at AWS at least to help you along the way (training folks, support folks, solutions architects) as well as 3rd parties like ACloudGuru, Linux Academy, and others with training/consulting capabilities. The future of technology is moving towards public cloud and I'd argue serverless application development models whether you want to get on board or not. No one cried for the last blacksmith in the town when cars replaced horses. Best practices are hard for people to follow no matter the technology, and the easiest solution is rarely the "best" (see people leave SG's wide open, open S3 perms, etc). We at AWS know its our job to make security best practices easier to grok and implement and there are tools that help with that today (IAM testing/reviewing tools, trusted advisor as examples). There's more we can do here. Thanks for your reply! - Chris

kogepathic 9y ago
> In my experience from pre-AWS days hiring good Ops people for systems, networking, etc is hard no matter what. No argument here, good talent is hard to find. I guess what I meant is, mediocre talent doesn't hurt you as badly with traditional on prem because there are more guides someone can follow, or there is a lot of institutional knowledge around to help someone in areas they're weaker. As you correctly pointed out, the cloud is going to be part of our lives going forward. We've already crossed the Rubicon when it comes to the cloud. Any steps Amazon takes to make AWS configuration easier and more secure out of the box are always welcome. > open S3 perms Man it's like every other week we read about some company exposing sensitive data via S3 misconfiguration (NSA contractor data, GOP voter data...). Have you considered selling liability insurance along side it? ;-)
- munns 9y ago
  "Have you considered selling liability insurance along side it? ;-)" Sounds like an idea for the next YC class!! -munns