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Ex Amazon SDE here. I would pick the first method a hundred times. People would be surprised at how simple the internal infra is, given the fleet size, compar

Ex Amazon SDE here. I would pick the first method a hundred times. People would be surprised at how simple the internal infra is, given the fleet size, compared to stuff like k8s. (I'm talking about the infra that runs on bare metal, not AWS)

paulryanrogers 6y ago
You mean the infra behind non-AWS services like retail Amazon.com? Or the infra underlying AWS itself?
- ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
  The first one, but I'm trying not to divulge too many details on the architecture of Amazon - as you can imagine.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Fascinating because I would have thought the whole idea is AWS is dog-fooded by retail. Yet in truth AWS is itself too expensive and / or complex for Amazon itself! (Or at least the original part of it.)
    - ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
      The majority of retail is dog-fooding AWS, but a lot of code was written before AWS existed or before it provided many of the required services.
fremanator 6y ago
Amazon SDE here. I'm not sure what internal infra you're talking about. Amazon's certainly isn't one of them. And AWS, with its design by accretion, makes that an impossibility. Kubernetes by comparison is a paragon of clarity.
- bfrog 6y ago
  I can't even imagine, sometimes I feel like AWS offers this pretty facade of "scale it up easy" and in reality its like "wait, I can't even see why this thing is failing because its a layer below, and AWS support costs mega bucks"
- emptysongglass 6y ago
  Why does AWS insist on building this way? Has anyone tried to get the teams together and say, "stop, let's evaluate and simplify where we can?" As an AWS customer, I find AWS a huge pile of overcomplicated offerings that is dense with its own jargon and way of doing things. IAM is a trash fire. Everything built on IAM like IRSA is also a trash fire. Why are there managed worker nodes, spot managed worker nodes, Fargate worker nodes, self-managed worker nodes, and spot self-managed worker nodes? Why are there circular dependencies for every piece of infra I stand up making it almost impossible to delete any resources? Why can't I click on a service and see how much it costs me in one or two clicks? This is a completely insane way of building software to me and I have to eat it.
  - ahoka 6y ago
    As if they are trying to tie them to their proprietary platform to make migration to other cloud providers hard.
  - ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
    > "let's evaluate and simplify where we can?" Amazon has "Invent and Simplify" as one of the leadership principles. However, each team has its own hiring bar and culture, so some will take it seriously and some will not. > I find AWS a huge pile of overcomplicated offerings I fully agree. I'm speaking exclusively about the internal infrastructure, not about AWS.

paulryanrogers 6y ago

You mean the infra behind non-AWS services like retail Amazon.com? Or the infra underlying AWS itself?

ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
The first one, but I'm trying not to divulge too many details on the architecture of Amazon - as you can imagine.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Fascinating because I would have thought the whole idea is AWS is dog-fooded by retail. Yet in truth AWS is itself too expensive and / or complex for Amazon itself! (Or at least the original part of it.)
  - ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
    The majority of retail is dog-fooding AWS, but a lot of code was written before AWS existed or before it provided many of the required services.

fremanator 6y ago

Amazon SDE here. I'm not sure what internal infra you're talking about. Amazon's certainly isn't one of them. And AWS, with its design by accretion, makes that an impossibility. Kubernetes by comparison is a paragon of clarity.

bfrog 6y ago
I can't even imagine, sometimes I feel like AWS offers this pretty facade of "scale it up easy" and in reality its like "wait, I can't even see why this thing is failing because its a layer below, and AWS support costs mega bucks"
emptysongglass 6y ago
Why does AWS insist on building this way? Has anyone tried to get the teams together and say, "stop, let's evaluate and simplify where we can?" As an AWS customer, I find AWS a huge pile of overcomplicated offerings that is dense with its own jargon and way of doing things. IAM is a trash fire. Everything built on IAM like IRSA is also a trash fire. Why are there managed worker nodes, spot managed worker nodes, Fargate worker nodes, self-managed worker nodes, and spot self-managed worker nodes? Why are there circular dependencies for every piece of infra I stand up making it almost impossible to delete any resources? Why can't I click on a service and see how much it costs me in one or two clicks? This is a completely insane way of building software to me and I have to eat it.
- ahoka 6y ago
  As if they are trying to tie them to their proprietary platform to make migration to other cloud providers hard.
- ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
  > "let's evaluate and simplify where we can?" Amazon has "Invent and Simplify" as one of the leadership principles. However, each team has its own hiring bar and culture, so some will take it seriously and some will not. > I find AWS a huge pile of overcomplicated offerings I fully agree. I'm speaking exclusively about the internal infrastructure, not about AWS.