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That's not true at all. Businesses want to reduce risk. Providing cost controls assuages a client's fears. If you're picking between two clouds, cost is a conce

by pradn 5y ago

That's not true at all. Businesses want to reduce risk. Providing cost controls assuages a client's fears. If you're picking between two clouds, cost is a concern, and cost risk is a big factor in that. Would you put your career on the line for a riskier cloud? That's not only cost, but also security, privacy, legal risk, compliance, etc. Clouds spend a great deal of resources to improve all these things, especially for highly-regulated industries which constitute a large part of the potential customer-base: health care, banking, government, polluters.

ineedasername 5y ago
And yet AWS has awful cost controls. My interpretation of why they have bad tools in this area might be wrong, but what is the alternative explanation? Incompetence? Certainly they must know it's a concern for a subset of their users. You also may not be cynical enough here: Lookup the Amex tax avoidance strategy that they pitched to companies for a while before a whistle blower tipped off the IRS [0]. Or pretty much any fraud that originates at a high level in a corporation. Companies make risk/reward decisions about doing bad things all of the time. ::ahem Theranos:: [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amex-pitched-business-customers-a-tax-break-that-doesnt-add-up-11637587980 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amex-pitched-business-customers...
- pradn 5y ago
  The likely explanation is that there hasn't been enough pressure put on them to improve these things. They care primarily about large customers, and they already have plenty of ways to resolve cost issues, and usually sign custom contracts. If GCP or Azure has a significantly better answer to this problem, AWS might start caring, but I don't think they do. (I work at GCP.)
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    I think that lines up nicely with my general point that AWS simply doesn't benefit much from putting resources into this area, although some C-level folks might be enticed by shiny marketing materials about "Best in Class Cost Controls & Monitoring" For other option, it does seem like GCP (I don't know much about Azure in this) is a little better in this area. Admittedly, I'm speaking from limited experience playing around with free tiers in both, along with the stream of stories that we hear about AWS. I think it's also fair to point out that cost controls may not have helped much in the example of this particular article: If your account gets hacked, presumably the hacker will also have some access to remove cost controls.
    - pradn 5y ago
      Realistically, this wont be a priority until Gartner has a category for this and places all these cloud players on a ranking scale. That sort of thing seems to really move the needle for execs.
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        Ah, yes. I always give a little internal eye roll when a vendor highlights their placement in a magic quadrant.
- anonymousab 5y ago
  From a few different devs at AWS I have heard a couple of common explanations: - Billing code/codebase and everything around it is (was?) a big crapshow and people are naturally reluctant to stick their hands in something so critical and hard to adjust (and equally reluctant to approve such projects). - Some teams believe that customers don't want such a feature and may have been explicitly told that they don't want that feature to exist. The latter part seemed like hyperbole to me but I don't have the context they have.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    naturally reluctant to stick their hands in something so critical and hard to adjust That pretty much lines up with my comment about engineers that would prefer to work on some bit of shiny new tech that's more glamorous than cost controls, and my general sentiment that AWS simply doesn't benefit from pursuing these changes.
    - urthor 5y ago
      I imagine it's also the fact that you are rewarded for working on complicated projects that impact the bottom line positively. Driving this billing project is going to be thankless work, and at the end of it Amazon will lose money. It's a lose-lose.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    > - Some teams believe that customers don't want such a feature and may have been explicitly told that they don't want that feature to exist. The latter part seemed like hyperbole to me but I don't have the context they have. I have heard such reasoning many times to get away with all sort of BS. The argument is often impossible to refute, since you don't have any customer at the meeting and the feature is on the idea stage. So I guess it is some sort of argumentation fallacy, referring to a non-existing person?
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      So I guess it is some sort of argumentation fallacy, referring to a non-existing person? The person might exist, but either way I'd say the fallacy is an improper argument from authority, in two stages: First, AWS is claiming authority on the matter and citing other customers as their evidence. That evidence is an improper appeal to authority as well because the expertise (or even existence) of the person(s) behind it cannot be validated. Sort of like a celebrity endorsement where you don't even know who the celebrity is-- e.g., An unnamed person who endorses a basketball sneaker but you don't even know who if they play professionally and actually use the sneakers themselves. For that matter, even a proper appeal to authority (area of expertise is relevant to the topic at hand, expertise had been validated, there are no conflicts of interest like getting paid for it) are not very strong evidence for a claim. They are indirect evidence where the person is saying "You don't need the data, I've reviewed it and you can trust me".

by pradn 5y ago

ineedasername 5y ago

And yet AWS has awful cost controls. My interpretation of why they have bad tools in this area might be wrong, but what is the alternative explanation? Incompetence? Certainly they must know it's a concern for a subset of their users. You also may not be cynical enough here: Lookup the Amex tax avoidance strategy that they pitched to companies for a while before a whistle blower tipped off the IRS [0]. Or pretty much any fraud that originates at a high level in a corporation. Companies make risk/reward decisions about doing bad things all of the time. ::ahem Theranos:: [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/amex-pitched-business-customers-a-tax-break-that-doesnt-add-up-11637587980 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amex-pitched-business-customers...

pradn 5y ago
The likely explanation is that there hasn't been enough pressure put on them to improve these things. They care primarily about large customers, and they already have plenty of ways to resolve cost issues, and usually sign custom contracts. If GCP or Azure has a significantly better answer to this problem, AWS might start caring, but I don't think they do. (I work at GCP.)
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I think that lines up nicely with my general point that AWS simply doesn't benefit much from putting resources into this area, although some C-level folks might be enticed by shiny marketing materials about "Best in Class Cost Controls & Monitoring" For other option, it does seem like GCP (I don't know much about Azure in this) is a little better in this area. Admittedly, I'm speaking from limited experience playing around with free tiers in both, along with the stream of stories that we hear about AWS. I think it's also fair to point out that cost controls may not have helped much in the example of this particular article: If your account gets hacked, presumably the hacker will also have some access to remove cost controls.
  - pradn 5y ago
    Realistically, this wont be a priority until Gartner has a category for this and places all these cloud players on a ranking scale. That sort of thing seems to really move the needle for execs.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      Ah, yes. I always give a little internal eye roll when a vendor highlights their placement in a magic quadrant.
anonymousab 5y ago
From a few different devs at AWS I have heard a couple of common explanations: - Billing code/codebase and everything around it is (was?) a big crapshow and people are naturally reluctant to stick their hands in something so critical and hard to adjust (and equally reluctant to approve such projects). - Some teams believe that customers don't want such a feature and may have been explicitly told that they don't want that feature to exist. The latter part seemed like hyperbole to me but I don't have the context they have.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  naturally reluctant to stick their hands in something so critical and hard to adjust That pretty much lines up with my comment about engineers that would prefer to work on some bit of shiny new tech that's more glamorous than cost controls, and my general sentiment that AWS simply doesn't benefit from pursuing these changes.
  - urthor 5y ago
    I imagine it's also the fact that you are rewarded for working on complicated projects that impact the bottom line positively. Driving this billing project is going to be thankless work, and at the end of it Amazon will lose money. It's a lose-lose.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  > - Some teams believe that customers don't want such a feature and may have been explicitly told that they don't want that feature to exist. The latter part seemed like hyperbole to me but I don't have the context they have. I have heard such reasoning many times to get away with all sort of BS. The argument is often impossible to refute, since you don't have any customer at the meeting and the feature is on the idea stage. So I guess it is some sort of argumentation fallacy, referring to a non-existing person?
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    So I guess it is some sort of argumentation fallacy, referring to a non-existing person? The person might exist, but either way I'd say the fallacy is an improper argument from authority, in two stages: First, AWS is claiming authority on the matter and citing other customers as their evidence. That evidence is an improper appeal to authority as well because the expertise (or even existence) of the person(s) behind it cannot be validated. Sort of like a celebrity endorsement where you don't even know who the celebrity is-- e.g., An unnamed person who endorses a basketball sneaker but you don't even know who if they play professionally and actually use the sneakers themselves. For that matter, even a proper appeal to authority (area of expertise is relevant to the topic at hand, expertise had been validated, there are no conflicts of interest like getting paid for it) are not very strong evidence for a claim. They are indirect evidence where the person is saying "You don't need the data, I've reviewed it and you can trust me".