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They definitely need a senior executive to stand up and say, "The Customer wants us to be transparent in billing, fix that now." Then they need to start a team

They definitely need a senior executive to stand up and say, "The Customer wants us to be transparent in billing, fix that now." Then they need to start a team dedicated to finding a good way to let customers halt spending at a given limit with minimal impact on their operations. They already win on UX (okay, okay, it's an opinion ffs), but unlimited liability makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. Those two actions would go a long ways towards demonstrating good faith in that area. If it would cost too much, maybe they could present it as an easy way to cut expenses at the same time that they introduce a small price increase. This is a common and long-standing complaint/feature request.

thedevelopnik 5y ago
I’m not trying to be snarky here, would like an honest opinion: how do they win on UX? Are there specific things you like there? I’ve used all three major clouds in production now and I dread using the AWS console. Or really any part of it, over Azure or GCP. I’ve always thought of them as purely winning the “nobody got fired for…” mindshare thing despite having a thoroughly mediocre product.
- judge2020 5y ago
  It either works great or barely depending on the service you're using - some AWS teams have dedicated dashboard teams, eg 'ec2 dashboard team' which solely focus on the dashboard experience, while others touch it as an afterthought. I'm pretty sure something along the lines of this^ was posted on HN by a former AWS employee but I can't find it now.
- XorNot 5y ago
  The AWS default view feels more crisp for me, compared to the GCP one which feels very "floaty". Their UI toolkit for that at least is on point.
- ufmace 5y ago
  Their web console UIs vary widely by service. IMO, the UX for most of their simpler services, specifically SQS, S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, are really easy to use and work nicely. If you want to start with a Docker image, send it to AWS, and have it get spun up and attached to a DNS, well that's a huge complex mess to get set up.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Unless you use something like Terraform or Pulumi, in which case it’s almost a one liner.
dotproto 5y ago
"They already win on UX" As someone that has tried and failed to get some small personal sites running on AWS a couple times, I'm going to have to tag this snippet with [citation needed].
- eli 5y ago
  It’s not you. It’s pretty rough for new users.
- murukesh_s 5y ago
  agreed especially when compared to say Heroku or Digital ocean. I see many new comers struggling to deploy a small website. It's overwhelming. I understand that Heroku exists for such users and they are using AWS under the hood, but is there any service which takes AWS cloud APIs and simplifies it with a leaner UX?
  - rorykoehler 5y ago
    AWS have a multitude of services that do this already. I’d recommend to go through their services one by one and learn what they offer.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > agreed especially when compared to say Heroku or Digital ocean. Funnily enough, I've never ever been able to understand what Heroku is, or how to deploy anything useful on it :) But I'm old, and I've always found it easier to tinker with nginx configs.
    - murukesh_s 5y ago
      Heroku is very simple - you just create an app and "push" code to a repository tied to the app. You need to write code of course, but they auto-detect the language and prepare the environment or platform for you (so platform as a service). They tried to appease the geeks by making everything powered by CLI - but otherwise its just point and click for deploying apps. Tinkering with nginx is good, but what if you want to add a database, a cache, a logging service? What if you want to automatically build code when you push to github? What if you want to easy clone multiple environments (for staging, prod etc) without never doing an SSH into server? What if you want to have versioned releases that you can easily rollback to a specified version or push a branch into one environment and another branch into another environment? And you get a workable subdomain for every environment you build with SSL enabled. All of that can be scaled down and up with literally few clicks.
twodave 5y ago
Have to agree with the others. For example, while setting up ELB it's possible to select at least one option (un-checking the Public IP box) that causes the setup to just fail with a nonsensical error message. Turns out ELB requires a public IP to communicate with the nodes. That's just the most glaring one off the top of my head. I also remember trying to set up SFTP whenever it was first released. It was literally impossible to do what they were advertising (S3-backed SFTP with jailed homes for each user) without writing a manual json config (I never got it to work). I had built my own solution for this exact thing on EC2, using a bash script more or less, and thought the hosted option would be less of a maintenance burden. Needless to say I quickly gave up.
- stadium 5y ago
  cdk is promising for things like this, way safer and easier than rolling your own scripts with bash or python.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    Even CDK sucks though because if you’re still kinda new to it all, you want to login and make sure that it’s all hooked together correctly. And you’re back using their shitty UI. Why you can’t look at the load balancer, look at the listener and then show what’s in the target groups is beyond me.
    - stadium 5y ago
      I have a different take on it. I started out doing everything through the console, then learned the cli and boto3, and very recently CDK. CDK is another tool that build on the cli and boto3 concepts, and also manages the orchestration and dependencies. Having to go back to the console isn't a fault of CDK. Learning the right tool to use for a situation is part of the learning curve. I go back to the console all the time to look something up quick or to understand what config options are available. Or I repeat the same steps in the console enough times that I get bored with it and automate Edit: also I tried and have given up on CloudFormation more than once. CDK is like a wrapper layer around it, and has been pleasant to use.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
"They definitely need a senior executive to stand up and say, "The Customer wants us to be transparent in billing, fix that now."" Health care shows there is big money to be made with billing non-transparency. I bet AWS senior executives don't want transparency because it would lose them money.
mathattack 5y ago
This gives the other vendors a wedge in.

thedevelopnik 5y ago

I’m not trying to be snarky here, would like an honest opinion: how do they win on UX? Are there specific things you like there? I’ve used all three major clouds in production now and I dread using the AWS console. Or really any part of it, over Azure or GCP. I’ve always thought of them as purely winning the “nobody got fired for…” mindshare thing despite having a thoroughly mediocre product.

judge2020 5y ago
It either works great or barely depending on the service you're using - some AWS teams have dedicated dashboard teams, eg 'ec2 dashboard team' which solely focus on the dashboard experience, while others touch it as an afterthought. I'm pretty sure something along the lines of this^ was posted on HN by a former AWS employee but I can't find it now.
XorNot 5y ago
The AWS default view feels more crisp for me, compared to the GCP one which feels very "floaty". Their UI toolkit for that at least is on point.
ufmace 5y ago
Their web console UIs vary widely by service. IMO, the UX for most of their simpler services, specifically SQS, S3, Lambda, DynamoDB, are really easy to use and work nicely. If you want to start with a Docker image, send it to AWS, and have it get spun up and attached to a DNS, well that's a huge complex mess to get set up.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  Unless you use something like Terraform or Pulumi, in which case it’s almost a one liner.

dotproto 5y ago

"They already win on UX" As someone that has tried and failed to get some small personal sites running on AWS a couple times, I'm going to have to tag this snippet with [citation needed].

eli 5y ago
It’s not you. It’s pretty rough for new users.
murukesh_s 5y ago
agreed especially when compared to say Heroku or Digital ocean. I see many new comers struggling to deploy a small website. It's overwhelming. I understand that Heroku exists for such users and they are using AWS under the hood, but is there any service which takes AWS cloud APIs and simplifies it with a leaner UX?
- rorykoehler 5y ago
  AWS have a multitude of services that do this already. I’d recommend to go through their services one by one and learn what they offer.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > agreed especially when compared to say Heroku or Digital ocean. Funnily enough, I've never ever been able to understand what Heroku is, or how to deploy anything useful on it :) But I'm old, and I've always found it easier to tinker with nginx configs.
  - murukesh_s 5y ago
    Heroku is very simple - you just create an app and "push" code to a repository tied to the app. You need to write code of course, but they auto-detect the language and prepare the environment or platform for you (so platform as a service). They tried to appease the geeks by making everything powered by CLI - but otherwise its just point and click for deploying apps. Tinkering with nginx is good, but what if you want to add a database, a cache, a logging service? What if you want to automatically build code when you push to github? What if you want to easy clone multiple environments (for staging, prod etc) without never doing an SSH into server? What if you want to have versioned releases that you can easily rollback to a specified version or push a branch into one environment and another branch into another environment? And you get a workable subdomain for every environment you build with SSL enabled. All of that can be scaled down and up with literally few clicks.

twodave 5y ago

Have to agree with the others. For example, while setting up ELB it's possible to select at least one option (un-checking the Public IP box) that causes the setup to just fail with a nonsensical error message. Turns out ELB requires a public IP to communicate with the nodes. That's just the most glaring one off the top of my head. I also remember trying to set up SFTP whenever it was first released. It was literally impossible to do what they were advertising (S3-backed SFTP with jailed homes for each user) without writing a manual json config (I never got it to work). I had built my own solution for this exact thing on EC2, using a bash script more or less, and thought the hosted option would be less of a maintenance burden. Needless to say I quickly gave up.

stadium 5y ago
cdk is promising for things like this, way safer and easier than rolling your own scripts with bash or python.
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  Even CDK sucks though because if you’re still kinda new to it all, you want to login and make sure that it’s all hooked together correctly. And you’re back using their shitty UI. Why you can’t look at the load balancer, look at the listener and then show what’s in the target groups is beyond me.
  - stadium 5y ago
    I have a different take on it. I started out doing everything through the console, then learned the cli and boto3, and very recently CDK. CDK is another tool that build on the cli and boto3 concepts, and also manages the orchestration and dependencies. Having to go back to the console isn't a fault of CDK. Learning the right tool to use for a situation is part of the learning curve. I go back to the console all the time to look something up quick or to understand what config options are available. Or I repeat the same steps in the console enough times that I get bored with it and automate Edit: also I tried and have given up on CloudFormation more than once. CDK is like a wrapper layer around it, and has been pleasant to use.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

"They definitely need a senior executive to stand up and say, "The Customer wants us to be transparent in billing, fix that now."" Health care shows there is big money to be made with billing non-transparency. I bet AWS senior executives don't want transparency because it would lose them money.

mathattack 5y ago

This gives the other vendors a wedge in.