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Without knowing their business model, it really doesn't matter how much money is moving through their system. It could very well be that they have a lot of buye

Without knowing their business model, it really doesn't matter how much money is moving through their system. It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. Saying you are "held hostage" might be a bit of a dramatic way to phrase it, but for some companies a change like this actually makes a difference. Such is the life of relying on any third-party services though. Also, pointing out "faults" is not helpful. It's unproductive conversation. Many companies are built upon third-party services that they are (probably falsely) under the impression will not change. It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. This is the real problem. From the sidelines, it's easy to dismiss an additional 0.5% overhead as trivial. After all, that's less than 1%, right? But it's not so simple. That 0.5% comes out of the profit margin. If a company has 50% profit margins, losing that extra 0.5% isn't a big deal. However, if a company is operating on 10% margins, that 0.5% suddenly becomes an extra 5% overhead.
robertlagrant 6y ago
> It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company. It's your fault if you chose lockin. If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :)
- kempbellt 6y ago
  Most people don't choose lock-in. They choose a provider that works for them on the budget and timeline that they have, and they build on that. Expanding to multiple providers isn't always feasible depending on a company's business model and financial state - it takes time and development resources to do so, which can both be very sparse for company with tight profit margins. You have to start somewhere. Unless you have been handed a substantial amount of starting money and baked "we need to be provider agnostic" into your company beliefs from the beginning, it's rarely an early priority. Becoming profitable is usually what comes first. Securing a stronger foundation for your platform comes over time. > If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :) What is the point of saying this?
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    Yeah, I know. What I'm saying is taking the seemingly low-hanging fruit of locked in technologies is a conscious decision to be competitive. It has very obvious pros and cons. The cons potentially materialising is part of the choice. > What is the point of saying this? Whatever criteria you used to justify asking this question probably also apply to it.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> It could very well be that they have a lot of buyers because of a very low profit margin and this actually has a notable impact on the company's finances. This is the real problem. From the sidelines, it's easy to dismiss an additional 0.5% overhead as trivial. After all, that's less than 1%, right? But it's not so simple. That 0.5% comes out of the profit margin. If a company has 50% profit margins, losing that extra 0.5% isn't a big deal. However, if a company is operating on 10% margins, that 0.5% suddenly becomes an extra 5% overhead.

robertlagrant 6y ago

> It's not your "fault" if you decide to use AWS services and become deeply integrated and they increase their prices by 10% and you can no longer afford their services... It's no one's fault. It's just unfortunate and all you can do is try to work around it, or close the company. It's your fault if you chose lockin. If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :)

kempbellt 6y ago
Most people don't choose lock-in. They choose a provider that works for them on the budget and timeline that they have, and they build on that. Expanding to multiple providers isn't always feasible depending on a company's business model and financial state - it takes time and development resources to do so, which can both be very sparse for company with tight profit margins. You have to start somewhere. Unless you have been handed a substantial amount of starting money and baked "we need to be provider agnostic" into your company beliefs from the beginning, it's rarely an early priority. Becoming profitable is usually what comes first. Securing a stronger foundation for your platform comes over time. > If you don't want to talk about fault, fine, but then don't go on to talk about fault :) What is the point of saying this?
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Yeah, I know. What I'm saying is taking the seemingly low-hanging fruit of locked in technologies is a conscious decision to be competitive. It has very obvious pros and cons. The cons potentially materialising is part of the choice. > What is the point of saying this? Whatever criteria you used to justify asking this question probably also apply to it.