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They've gone the route of multiple AWS accounts in my company to avoid the issue they introduced with horrible planning. First they wanted us out of on-premise

They've gone the route of multiple AWS accounts in my company to avoid the issue they introduced with horrible planning. First they wanted us out of on-premise, and told us costs wouldn't matter. Then they wanted us to be 'cloud agnostic', but when given deadlines changed to 'get it working in AWS ASAP, doesn't matter the tech debt' Now they're freaking out about AWS costs, and we're back to juggling 'cloud agnostic' and 'reduce cost to serve in all clouds' priorities on top of features and maintenance, both of which are 10x slower due to tech debt and the plethora of bugs. I really need to find a new job soon. Its insane how badly the execs and upper management are running this company. Every day is a knee jerk reaction from someone so detached from the reality of things or with so little understanding how it works, they do nothing but add process problems that barely address the issues they think they're solving.

sevensor 2y ago
I’d ask, “have we worked together?” since this is a spot on description of my former employer, except it’s probably a spot on description of thousands of mid sized companies.
- unethical_ban 2y ago
  Same! Some execs get excited about reducing capital expenses for a data center and the teams that manage it. Some CTO gets excited about the flexibility and some legitimate benefits of cloud. But it ends up costing a shitton of money to switch paradigms completely, and they don't switch paradigms completely for a number of years: If you're just migrating servers to ec2/vpc, you're doing cloud wrong. Of course, there is the idea of cloud agnostic, or even multi region, which seems a challenge for most places. At least with terraform, it is theoretically easier to swing configurations over to a different host.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    At many places I've worked, there are essentially zero checks-and-balances between "Exec gets randomly excited about X" and "X becomes a mandate, with staffing, budget, and deadline." No technical vetting, feedback loop, sometimes no apparent coordination with other execs (and their random ideas). It's just: "Mike is excited about Cloud. -> We are now doing Cloud." Later, Mike gets excited about something else, and the entire team moves over to something else. "Mike is excited about AI. -> We are now doing AI."
    - GianFabien 2y ago
      ...but the salesperson promised it would be easy, fast and low-cost! </sarcasm>
thephyber 2y ago
I would wager it’s not uncommon. But also, the execs are the ones making the business risk decisions. Just make sure they have the correct info to make those decisions, the. Your responsibility is done.
- conductr 2y ago
  I doubt responsibility is a concern, GP just doesn’t enjoy being a part of the shit show
  - thephyber 2y ago
    And my core point is that most companies are shit shows. Employees know what bullet points they should have to minimize downside risk, but struggle with how to get those done while also minimizing upside risk. In a world of scarcity, just keep communicating the tech debt. Maybe occasionally propose a project to address it.
    - soulofmischief 2y ago
      Some people actually want to spend their time contributing to something meaningful. It also sounds like OP is worried executive incompetence might affect his job security.
      - thephyber 2y ago
        Yeah, I inferred that from their post. My point is that even “something meaningful” comes with tech debt. It’s like that at my current place. Too many people get “grass is greener” syndrome and think that there is some magical company somewhere which gives everyone plenty of time to refactor everything and fix all of the tech debt and execs make fantastic business risk decisions which always benefit the employee. In a world of scarcity, that practically never happens. Just weigh your options in the market. If it’s worth staying where you are, just realize that the employee is not responsible for making business risk decisions, only responsible for sufficiently informing those who do of the facts.
movedx 2y ago
The biggest issue I see here is the misguided assumption that Cloud is just automatically and unilaterally better than on-premise or professionally managed, hosted hardware. This isn't true in most cases. There are so many providers, and therefore examples, of physical tin being accessible in under a minute with cost:hardware ratios that blow Cloud out if the sky (pun! ha!) OVH have a server for USD $95/month (with no commitments) that can be brought up and made available 120 _seconds_ that has six 3.8GHz cores, 32GB of RAM, 2x960GB NVMe SSDs, and 1Gbit/s of UNMETERED, guaranteed bandwidth... that's absolutely insane, and that's fully managed from the hardware down, so arguments like, "bUT yoU haVe to MAintAin hardWARE!" are just not true _at all_.
- fireant 2y ago
  People on HN refuse to see this being an option in these discussions. Is either "cloud" or "build and manage your own physical rack inside a colo housing"
  - movedx 2y ago
    It's wild to me how hardcoded some of these people are. I think a lot of the younger generation on here might not have experienced the "bare metal days", so they don't know how far you can push the hardware and how much you can squeeze out of it.
    - Gud 2y ago
      And frankly, how easy it is.
      - movedx 2y ago
        Precisely. Operating systems aren’t hard. They’re so easy and well established it’s crazy not to use them directly, and even though I’m not the world’s biggest Docker fan, Compose is kind of awesome to be honest. Deploying software and maintaining and OS is simple in this day and age.

sevensor 2y ago

I’d ask, “have we worked together?” since this is a spot on description of my former employer, except it’s probably a spot on description of thousands of mid sized companies.

unethical_ban 2y ago
Same! Some execs get excited about reducing capital expenses for a data center and the teams that manage it. Some CTO gets excited about the flexibility and some legitimate benefits of cloud. But it ends up costing a shitton of money to switch paradigms completely, and they don't switch paradigms completely for a number of years: If you're just migrating servers to ec2/vpc, you're doing cloud wrong. Of course, there is the idea of cloud agnostic, or even multi region, which seems a challenge for most places. At least with terraform, it is theoretically easier to swing configurations over to a different host.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  At many places I've worked, there are essentially zero checks-and-balances between "Exec gets randomly excited about X" and "X becomes a mandate, with staffing, budget, and deadline." No technical vetting, feedback loop, sometimes no apparent coordination with other execs (and their random ideas). It's just: "Mike is excited about Cloud. -> We are now doing Cloud." Later, Mike gets excited about something else, and the entire team moves over to something else. "Mike is excited about AI. -> We are now doing AI."
  - GianFabien 2y ago
    ...but the salesperson promised it would be easy, fast and low-cost! </sarcasm>

thephyber 2y ago

I would wager it’s not uncommon. But also, the execs are the ones making the business risk decisions. Just make sure they have the correct info to make those decisions, the. Your responsibility is done.

conductr 2y ago
I doubt responsibility is a concern, GP just doesn’t enjoy being a part of the shit show
- thephyber 2y ago
  And my core point is that most companies are shit shows. Employees know what bullet points they should have to minimize downside risk, but struggle with how to get those done while also minimizing upside risk. In a world of scarcity, just keep communicating the tech debt. Maybe occasionally propose a project to address it.
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    Some people actually want to spend their time contributing to something meaningful. It also sounds like OP is worried executive incompetence might affect his job security.
    - thephyber 2y ago
      Yeah, I inferred that from their post. My point is that even “something meaningful” comes with tech debt. It’s like that at my current place. Too many people get “grass is greener” syndrome and think that there is some magical company somewhere which gives everyone plenty of time to refactor everything and fix all of the tech debt and execs make fantastic business risk decisions which always benefit the employee. In a world of scarcity, that practically never happens. Just weigh your options in the market. If it’s worth staying where you are, just realize that the employee is not responsible for making business risk decisions, only responsible for sufficiently informing those who do of the facts.

movedx 2y ago

The biggest issue I see here is the misguided assumption that Cloud is just automatically and unilaterally better than on-premise or professionally managed, hosted hardware. This isn't true in most cases. There are so many providers, and therefore examples, of physical tin being accessible in under a minute with cost:hardware ratios that blow Cloud out if the sky (pun! ha!) OVH have a server for USD $95/month (with no commitments) that can be brought up and made available 120 _seconds_ that has six 3.8GHz cores, 32GB of RAM, 2x960GB NVMe SSDs, and 1Gbit/s of UNMETERED, guaranteed bandwidth... that's absolutely insane, and that's fully managed from the hardware down, so arguments like, "bUT yoU haVe to MAintAin hardWARE!" are just not true _at all_.

fireant 2y ago
People on HN refuse to see this being an option in these discussions. Is either "cloud" or "build and manage your own physical rack inside a colo housing"
- movedx 2y ago
  It's wild to me how hardcoded some of these people are. I think a lot of the younger generation on here might not have experienced the "bare metal days", so they don't know how far you can push the hardware and how much you can squeeze out of it.
  - Gud 2y ago
    And frankly, how easy it is.
    - movedx 2y ago
      Precisely. Operating systems aren’t hard. They’re so easy and well established it’s crazy not to use them directly, and even though I’m not the world’s biggest Docker fan, Compose is kind of awesome to be honest. Deploying software and maintaining and OS is simple in this day and age.