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> Years ago, companies owned their own servers, and the penalties for inefficient systems weren’t that great—just buy some more racks of computers and throw tho

> Years ago, companies owned their own servers, and the penalties for inefficient systems weren’t that great—just buy some more racks of computers and throw those at the problem. Now that everything has shifted, or is shifting, to the cloud, and companies are paying for computing a la carte, those inefficiencies mean bills that are, on average, double what they could be if old systems were optimized, says Ben DeBow, chief executive of Fortified, a consulting firm that helps companies manage and update their database systems. I've found good success in the past with associating my optimizations directly into the cloud bill. This looks like "Improved efficiency of {MyService} by optimizing {cache hit rate}, reducing the number of pods required of the service by 25%, saving {$300k/year} in AWS costs." I look for these types of wins every time I am on a new team.

singingfish 3y ago
The other week I saved my company a grand a year by reusing an existing service for some contractors rather than some new cloud service. Then promptly expensed a big chunk of that for repairs on my office chair :)
- dboreham 3y ago
  Repairs?
zer00eyz 3y ago
If you walk into a job and cut their cost by 25 percent are you a hero or a snitch. Candidly everyone in your leadership between you and the CFO/CEO is going to think you just made them look bad. And you did. It is easier to keep a bad decision hidden than it is to admit you fucked up, or worse that you burned a pile of money.
- datascienced 3y ago
  That is if they let you cut that cost. They may only let a top 5 firm consultant do that after paying their firm a few million.
  - zer00eyz 3y ago
    You don't even have to be a big 5... I have been consulting over a decade now. I used to wonder if I was going to get pushed out based on age... I suspect that I could work in tech till the day I die.
- gamepsys 3y ago
  Yeah, this is why tech debt is a $1.52T problem. A few points. * Reducing the number of pods used by a micro service doesn't reduce cost by 25%. For most micro services data storage, data transfer, and other required dependencies will be a very large chunk of the total bill. * In the organizations I've been in the director is always looking for ways to reduce the cloud bill. This is always a huge line item for them, and the modern microservice architecture is only making the cloud bill higher. * How is this anything but objectively good for the company? * Avoiding stirring the pot won't make you any enemies in the workplace, but it won't make you any friends either. Deliver value where you can and the workplace politics will be what they are. * I've be a part of, and have seen, cloud bills cut by as much as 80%. When things get that bad you won't lose reputation by fixing it because people in many departments are feeling the negative impact of the microservice.
  - zer00eyz 3y ago
    Plan ahea d Planing seems to be a lost art. The word "capacity" is something on one uses in an agile/cloud based workflow.
NewJazz 3y ago
Have you considered whether your optimizations are too specific to the current needs of the org and may end up making the org less flexible in the future? Optimization is great, but it also often has costs of its own, particularly in the area of complexity.

singingfish 3y ago

The other week I saved my company a grand a year by reusing an existing service for some contractors rather than some new cloud service. Then promptly expensed a big chunk of that for repairs on my office chair :)

dboreham 3y ago
Repairs?

zer00eyz 3y ago

If you walk into a job and cut their cost by 25 percent are you a hero or a snitch. Candidly everyone in your leadership between you and the CFO/CEO is going to think you just made them look bad. And you did. It is easier to keep a bad decision hidden than it is to admit you fucked up, or worse that you burned a pile of money.

datascienced 3y ago
That is if they let you cut that cost. They may only let a top 5 firm consultant do that after paying their firm a few million.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  You don't even have to be a big 5... I have been consulting over a decade now. I used to wonder if I was going to get pushed out based on age... I suspect that I could work in tech till the day I die.
gamepsys 3y ago
Yeah, this is why tech debt is a $1.52T problem. A few points. * Reducing the number of pods used by a micro service doesn't reduce cost by 25%. For most micro services data storage, data transfer, and other required dependencies will be a very large chunk of the total bill. * In the organizations I've been in the director is always looking for ways to reduce the cloud bill. This is always a huge line item for them, and the modern microservice architecture is only making the cloud bill higher. * How is this anything but objectively good for the company? * Avoiding stirring the pot won't make you any enemies in the workplace, but it won't make you any friends either. Deliver value where you can and the workplace politics will be what they are. * I've be a part of, and have seen, cloud bills cut by as much as 80%. When things get that bad you won't lose reputation by fixing it because people in many departments are feeling the negative impact of the microservice.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  Plan ahea d Planing seems to be a lost art. The word "capacity" is something on one uses in an agile/cloud based workflow.

NewJazz 3y ago

Have you considered whether your optimizations are too specific to the current needs of the org and may end up making the org less flexible in the future? Optimization is great, but it also often has costs of its own, particularly in the area of complexity.