5 ms·

$6m in annual cost savings is truly unremarkable, if we are to believe levels.fyi [0] [1] If you're truly paying engineers, project managers, etc $500k a head,

• booi 2y ago
  That’s what I was thinking and fully loaded cost at least 35% more than their salary. Imagine trading 5 headcount full-time to manage the 1T+ fully custom database on an ongoing basis when they could have just used DynamoDB and have been done with it. Or better, having to engineer a new feature that already existed in DynamoDB and just losing money at that point.
• dangus 2y ago
  Of course now we are assuming that the existing solution didn’t also require engineering salaries to maintain.
• leoqa 2y ago
  Bitter story time: I made a config change to our AWS instances and projected approximately $10MM/year in AWS costs savings (pre-savings). My boss asked me "Who told you to do this? We need to focus on $project instead". I found another team and transferred out. 3 months later there was a big fire drill about AWS costs and they took my 1-pager and executed it. Didn't get any credit in the shipped email nor did the manager reach out to apologize.
  • cj 2y ago
    The organization still got the end result, though (to play devil's advocate). That sounds like a win for the company. They got the cost savings, plus they redirected attention back to a project that was higher priority than saving $10m 3 months earlier than they could have.
    • klodolph 2y ago
      It may be a win for the company in some categories, but a loss in others.
  • heavenlyblue 2y ago
    Of course you didn't. You used your time to promote yourself instead of doing what you were asked to do instead. That could have cost a promotion for your manager who could have promoted you.
    • noncoml 2y ago
      I don’t know you are downvoted. Aligning the personal interest vector with the companies interest vector is a huge problem that is usually underrepresented in NH comments. Usually we only complain about the short sighting of the CEOs that prioritize short term stock gains over long term prosperity, but that also is just a specialized case of the success vector misalignment
      • nostrebored 2y ago
        This is a poor way to view salaried work. If OP is meeting deliverables and did this on the side, this is a great example of a story that would make me inclined to hire.
        • ckdarby 2y ago
          The problem is OP didn't meet deliverables and the team was behind schedule. Helpful in the right light, but equally not helpful in another.
          • shermantanktop 2y ago
            “Team behind schedule” usually means that some manager promised an arbitrary date based on an imaginary timeline. Every team needs slack. Bad managers hate slack. Good managers hide slack.
        • noncoml 2y ago
          I think maybe my point was misunderstood. I was trying to say that the employee tried to do what’s good for the company. However that backfired as his personal, and his manager’s, success vector are not aligned with the company’s. Hence although he did something that benefited the company it hurt his and his manager’s performance (exactly because they are not aligned with that of the company’s). Hope it clears things up.
  • RobRivera 2y ago
    Sounds like a fantastic way to maneuver and get credit for someone else's proactive engenuity
• shawabawa3 2y ago
  > we spent $25m of engineering resources to save $6m annually This is a huge ROI. Borrowing $25m costs about $1.25m/yr so you're winning even with no upfront costs
  • valiant55 2y ago
    I mean, ideally you are still employing those people into the future. Plus was there other opportunities to drive value that would've been better spent?
    • vineyardmike 2y ago
      Ideally for the people, but not a requirement. I doubt they won't be conducting more layoffs either.
  • sokoloff 2y ago
    That math assumes the on-going maintenance of LedgerStore is no higher than that of using DynamoDB was. I suspect there's now a team of technologists maintaining, securing, and operating LedgerStore.
    • shawabawa3 2y ago
      I suspect they already had a team maintaining/debugging/operating dynamodb Hosted services doesn't reduce maintenance costs to zero
      • sokoloff 2y ago
        They have teams maintaining/debugging/operating their use/consumption of dynamodb; they don't have teams maintaining/debugging/operating/securing dynamodb itself. With LedgerDB, they now have to do both.
        • shermantanktop 2y ago
          Optimizing to address high percentile issues (latency/error/correctness) on someone else’s code follows a bimodal pattern: it’s easy until it is impossible. Doing it on your own code is progressively more difficult and the complexity may cause you to give up, but you normally don’t hit the same wall.
• choppaface 2y ago
  Yes but since revenue is growing at over 70% due to squeezing out the drivers, there's more money to spend on fighting Amazon over the DynamoDB contract https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2023/01/16/ubers-new-math-increase-prices-and-squeeze-driver-pay/?sh=240a3290c8a2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2023/01/16/ubers-new...
• amanda99 2y ago
  Right, but that's $25m in R&D investment. Much better than $6m in cost of good/services delivered! Former is great innovation and will be ignored by investors because it's just a fixed cost on the way to becoming profitable. The latter is going to appear in the marginal cost of services calculation.
• chii 2y ago
  $25m spend to save $6m annually is a return on investment of 4 (and a bit) years to break even, then it's positive afterwards. So as long as the project runs for more than 4 years, they'd be ahead. The only problem is that the database code might need maintenance, specs change or situations change, and the cost is _not_ 25m, but way more per year than anticipated. So much so that after a few years, a new batch of engineers start eyeing writing a new database system to purportedly save money...