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AWS is so far behind on GenAI they’re just flailing at this point. Their infrastructure is a commodity at best and their networking performance woes continue.

by JCM9 1y ago

AWS is so far behind on GenAI they’re just flailing at this point. Their infrastructure is a commodity at best and their networking performance woes continue. Bedrock was a great idea poorly executed. Performance there is also a big problem. They have the Anthropic models which are good, but in our experience one is better off just using Anthropic directly. On the managed services front there’s no direction or clear plan. They seem to have just slapped “Q” on a bunch of random stuff as part of some disjointed panicked plan to have GenAI products. Each “Q” product is woefully behind other offerings in the market. Custom ML chips were agin a good idea poorly executed, failing to fully recognize that chips without an ecosystem (CUDA) does not make a successful go to market strategy. I remain a general fan of AWS for basic infrastructure, but they’re so far behind on this GenAI stuff that one has to scratch your head at how they messed this up so badly. They also don’t have solid recognized leaders or talent in the space and it shows. AWS still generally doing well but recent financial results have shown chinks in the armor. Without a rapid turnaround it’s unlikely they’ll be the number one cloud provider for much longer.

leptons 1y ago
I'm fine if AWS doesn't pursue AI that much, they should focus on infrastructure. It's a solid business as-is. AWS doesn't need "GenAI" to continue to do what they've been doing for a long time. Not doing "GenAI" the absolute best does not mean they won't be "number one cloud provider for much longer". Nobody is moving off AWS just because they don't have the worlds best "GenAI", which are honestly all pretty mediocre.
- JCM9 1y ago
  I agree. Although based on the last earnings call where folks were poking at why they’re behind it seems a sensitive spot for AWS leadership. They’re not used to lagging in a hot space, which seems to be driving the panicked disjointed strategy at the moment. I too would like to see them just admit they’re behind, state it’s not a priority, and focus on what they do well which is the boring (but super important) basic infrastructure stuff.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    I wonder how much of that is missing Bezos as an arbiter / dictator. I'm pressed to come up with a scenario where AWS leads cloud AI without something like the infamous "no non-API internal calls" memo/mandate. And Amazon at this point seems to lack a centralized enough leader who can dictate in that way (and have her or his orders followed).
    - coredog64 1y ago
      It's less about Bezos and more about the principal/agent problem. There are entire groups within Amazon that exist to justify promotion scope for the manager. Then there are entire groups that are supporting revenue-generating operations but have been reduced to KTLO because there's not scope for promotion. Promotion-driven development is an issue across MAGMA, but IMO Amazon has it the worst because of the twin drivers of extreme stack-ranking and the focus on equity appreciation in compensation. Being behind on AI has resulted in a field day for empire builders. Amazon needs to get their overall house in order first before trying to be a leader in AI.
  - leptons 1y ago
    They don't even have to say they are "behind". I'd like to see them admit that it isn't their focus or why AWS exists, and to leave "GenAI" up to companies that want to pour billions of investor money down the drain as a loss-leader to try to crush the competition. Nobody in "GenAI" is actually making a profit due to the costs of running it. OpenAI is losing billions of dollars, not even they can see a path to profitability any time soon. AWS would be wise to steer clear of all of it, for now, as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather they don't raise prices on everything else to try to pay for a GenAI offering that's marginally better or worse than everyone else doing it.
    - JCM9 1y ago
      You can almost see the business school case study developing. “Rather than focusing on core competencies leadership panicked and rushed a poorly guided focus on GenAI without the right leadership and technical talent. Shifting resources towards this price competitive space eroded margins, and took focus away from core areas where AWS was a technical leader. Several years of misguided strategy, poor leadership, and intense fiefdom building during the chaos spelled the beginning of the end of AWS’s once dominant position in cloud. While still a respectful business, AWS is now a low margin commodity player that’s struggling to innovate and is the number 3 cloud provider by revenue.”
belter 1y ago
> They also don’t have solid recognized leaders or talent in the space and it shows. AWS was built by exceptional technical leaders like James Hamilton, Werner Vogels, and Tim Bray and I would include Bezos also, who people seem to forget has a Computer Science degree. But the company has consistently underpaid developers, while relying heavily on H-1B workers, and treating technical talent as poorly as Amazon treats delivery drivers. When skilled engineers can get better opportunities elsewhere, they leave. AWS below market compensation, has driven away the technical expertise needed for innovation. AWS has shifted from technical leadership to MBA driven management, and lately aggressively hiring senior middle management from Oracle. The combination of technical talent exodus, cultural deterioration and MBA style management made AWS poorly positioned for the AI era, where technical excellence and innovation speed are everything. During major technological shifts like AI, you need a engineering first culture and inhouse technical skills. AWS has neither.
- belter 1y ago
  Some down votes on this one, maybe from the Amazon crew, that it's a fact that by far they have the best Cloud and also: - Amazon is consistently the top user of the H-1B visa program: "Which companies secured the most H-1B visas in 2024?" - https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/which-companies-secured-the-most-h-1b-visas-in-2024-heres-a-list-101743134698060.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/which-comp... - They pay below market rate so they can't have the same hiring power: "AWS Compensation Explained" - https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-compensation-explained/ https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-compensation-explaine... "The AWS goal is to pay you roughly 50% to 65% of what “the market” will pay you, based upon a variety of sources plus some work with Excel." - And everybody has seen their disaster execution on AI for the last four years. "Amazon CEO Andy Jassy unleashed a meticulous 8-minute defense of AWS’ standing in the AI arms race amid investor stock freakout" - https://fortune.com/2025/07/31/amazon-aws-ai-andy-jassy-earnings-defense/ https://fortune.com/2025/07/31/amazon-aws-ai-andy-jassy-earn...
slowdog 1y ago
It’s less that they’re flailing and more that it’s become some sort of lord of the flies culture with senior leaders directly competing with each other to try to take their bite of the pie. The way AWS is structured with strongly owned independent businesses just doesn’t work, as GenAI needs a cohesive strategy which needs 1. An overall strategy 2. A culture that fosters collaboration not competition Or at least an org charts to make them not compete with each other. (Example: Q developer vs Kiro) I bet if you looked at the org charts you would see these teams don’t connect as they should.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  > some sort of lord of the flies culture with senior leaders directly competing with each other to try to take their bite of the pie Microsoft, Google: Welcome to our management death cult!
jdsully 1y ago
The worst thing is they deny access to Bedrock by default. I had to wait two weeks to get access because there support took multiple days to respond. More than enough time for me to port my entire app to GCP out of frustration. GCP has sensible default quotas so you can at least try it without a two week wait. Plus access to Gemini.

by JCM9 1y ago

leptons 1y ago

I'm fine if AWS doesn't pursue AI that much, they should focus on infrastructure. It's a solid business as-is. AWS doesn't need "GenAI" to continue to do what they've been doing for a long time. Not doing "GenAI" the absolute best does not mean they won't be "number one cloud provider for much longer". Nobody is moving off AWS just because they don't have the worlds best "GenAI", which are honestly all pretty mediocre.

JCM9 1y ago
I agree. Although based on the last earnings call where folks were poking at why they’re behind it seems a sensitive spot for AWS leadership. They’re not used to lagging in a hot space, which seems to be driving the panicked disjointed strategy at the moment. I too would like to see them just admit they’re behind, state it’s not a priority, and focus on what they do well which is the boring (but super important) basic infrastructure stuff.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  I wonder how much of that is missing Bezos as an arbiter / dictator. I'm pressed to come up with a scenario where AWS leads cloud AI without something like the infamous "no non-API internal calls" memo/mandate. And Amazon at this point seems to lack a centralized enough leader who can dictate in that way (and have her or his orders followed).
  - coredog64 1y ago
    It's less about Bezos and more about the principal/agent problem. There are entire groups within Amazon that exist to justify promotion scope for the manager. Then there are entire groups that are supporting revenue-generating operations but have been reduced to KTLO because there's not scope for promotion. Promotion-driven development is an issue across MAGMA, but IMO Amazon has it the worst because of the twin drivers of extreme stack-ranking and the focus on equity appreciation in compensation. Being behind on AI has resulted in a field day for empire builders. Amazon needs to get their overall house in order first before trying to be a leader in AI.
- leptons 1y ago
  They don't even have to say they are "behind". I'd like to see them admit that it isn't their focus or why AWS exists, and to leave "GenAI" up to companies that want to pour billions of investor money down the drain as a loss-leader to try to crush the competition. Nobody in "GenAI" is actually making a profit due to the costs of running it. OpenAI is losing billions of dollars, not even they can see a path to profitability any time soon. AWS would be wise to steer clear of all of it, for now, as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather they don't raise prices on everything else to try to pay for a GenAI offering that's marginally better or worse than everyone else doing it.
  - JCM9 1y ago
    You can almost see the business school case study developing. “Rather than focusing on core competencies leadership panicked and rushed a poorly guided focus on GenAI without the right leadership and technical talent. Shifting resources towards this price competitive space eroded margins, and took focus away from core areas where AWS was a technical leader. Several years of misguided strategy, poor leadership, and intense fiefdom building during the chaos spelled the beginning of the end of AWS’s once dominant position in cloud. While still a respectful business, AWS is now a low margin commodity player that’s struggling to innovate and is the number 3 cloud provider by revenue.”

belter 1y ago

> They also don’t have solid recognized leaders or talent in the space and it shows. AWS was built by exceptional technical leaders like James Hamilton, Werner Vogels, and Tim Bray and I would include Bezos also, who people seem to forget has a Computer Science degree. But the company has consistently underpaid developers, while relying heavily on H-1B workers, and treating technical talent as poorly as Amazon treats delivery drivers. When skilled engineers can get better opportunities elsewhere, they leave. AWS below market compensation, has driven away the technical expertise needed for innovation. AWS has shifted from technical leadership to MBA driven management, and lately aggressively hiring senior middle management from Oracle. The combination of technical talent exodus, cultural deterioration and MBA style management made AWS poorly positioned for the AI era, where technical excellence and innovation speed are everything. During major technological shifts like AI, you need a engineering first culture and inhouse technical skills. AWS has neither.

belter 1y ago
Some down votes on this one, maybe from the Amazon crew, that it's a fact that by far they have the best Cloud and also: - Amazon is consistently the top user of the H-1B visa program: "Which companies secured the most H-1B visas in 2024?" - https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/which-companies-secured-the-most-h-1b-visas-in-2024-heres-a-list-101743134698060.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/which-comp... - They pay below market rate so they can't have the same hiring power: "AWS Compensation Explained" - https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-compensation-explained/ https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-compensation-explaine... "The AWS goal is to pay you roughly 50% to 65% of what “the market” will pay you, based upon a variety of sources plus some work with Excel." - And everybody has seen their disaster execution on AI for the last four years. "Amazon CEO Andy Jassy unleashed a meticulous 8-minute defense of AWS’ standing in the AI arms race amid investor stock freakout" - https://fortune.com/2025/07/31/amazon-aws-ai-andy-jassy-earnings-defense/ https://fortune.com/2025/07/31/amazon-aws-ai-andy-jassy-earn...

slowdog 1y ago

It’s less that they’re flailing and more that it’s become some sort of lord of the flies culture with senior leaders directly competing with each other to try to take their bite of the pie. The way AWS is structured with strongly owned independent businesses just doesn’t work, as GenAI needs a cohesive strategy which needs 1. An overall strategy 2. A culture that fosters collaboration not competition Or at least an org charts to make them not compete with each other. (Example: Q developer vs Kiro) I bet if you looked at the org charts you would see these teams don’t connect as they should.

ethbr1 1y ago
> some sort of lord of the flies culture with senior leaders directly competing with each other to try to take their bite of the pie Microsoft, Google: Welcome to our management death cult!

jdsully 1y ago

The worst thing is they deny access to Bedrock by default. I had to wait two weeks to get access because there support took multiple days to respond. More than enough time for me to port my entire app to GCP out of frustration. GCP has sensible default quotas so you can at least try it without a two week wait. Plus access to Gemini.