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As the saying goes, when you owe the bank $100 you've got a problem, when you owe the bank $100k the bank has a problem... On serverless, I can enter numbers i

As the saying goes, when you owe the bank $100 you've got a problem, when you owe the bank $100k the bank has a problem... On serverless, I can enter numbers in a calculator and guess that running my little toy demo app on AWS will cost between $1 and $100. Getting hit with a huge $1000 bill and a refusal to refund the charges (and revocation of my Prime account and a lifetime ban from AWS and cancellation of any other services I might otherwise run there) would be totally possible, but I have zero control over that. Expecting to go on social media begging for a refund is not a plan, it's evidence of a broken system - kinda like those "heartwarming" posts about poor people starting a GoFundMe so their child can afford cancer treatment. No, that's awful, can we just be sensible instead? If a server would have cost me $20 at a VPS provider to keep a machine online 24/7 that was at 1% utilization most of the time and was terribly laggy or crashed when it went viral, that's what $20 buys you. But, you say, analysis of acttual traffic says that serverless would only cost me $10 including scaling for the spike, in which case that's a fantastic deal. Half price! Or maybe it would be $100, 5x the price. I have no way of knowing in advance. It's just not worth the risk.

scarface_74 1y ago
You haven’t been able to use your Amazon retail account to open an AWS account for years. You don’t “beg”. You just send them an email and they say “yes”.
- pclmulqdq 1y ago
  They are economic realists about this. They say "yes" if they can't realistically get $100k from you for your error.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    I have never in 9 years working with AWS - four at product companies as the architect, 3.5 at AWS itself working in the Professional Services department and the last two working at 3rd party companies - ever heard or read about anyone either on a personal project or a large organization not be able to get a refund or in the case of a large org, sometimes a credit from AWS when they made a mistake that was costly to them. I haven’t even seen reports on subreddits
    - aarmot 1y ago
      From your bragging one could tell that you have seen _a lot_ of charging mistakes and "happy" refund stories from AWS. It's scary that a single human can do extensive statistics on personal experience about these monetary horror stories, don't you think?
      - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
        So can you find any anecdotes even on Reddit where a student or hobbyist asked for a refund and was refused?
    - pclmulqdq 1y ago
      I assume you have seen many casual instances of cost overrun in that time. I'm sure you've also seen instances where an extra $10k flies out the door to AWS and people think "no big deal, that one was on us." This world doesn't have to exist. Even if AWS has a policy of always refunding people for a big oopsie, the fact that you have seen so many big ones suggests that you have also seen a lot of little ones. By the way, there is nothing stopping AWS from reversing their trend of issuing refunds for big mistakes. "It hasn't happened in the past" isn't a great way to argue "it won't happen in the future."
      - scarface_74 1y ago
        Yes and I’ve also seen bad on prem build outs, bad hires, bad initiatives, proof of concepts that didn’t go anywhere, etc
        pclmulqdq 1y ago
        Sure. The issues with AWS could all be solved with decent billing software, though. 15 years in there isn't a good excuse for this state of the world except that it's profitable.
        scarface_74 1y ago
- notrealyme123 1y ago
  Must be really nice people there which don't want any money. Really warms my heart. ofc. When things go viral they say "yes". But i would really love to get some number how many students and hobbiests got a 1k-2k bill and just paid it for the problem to go away. Amazon is a publicly traded company. If they wave fees every time something goes wrong, investors would tell them something.
  - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
    AWS and all of the other cloud providers gives millions in credits each year for migrations and professional services for both their inside professional services department and third party vendors. The reputational risk for them to go after some poor student isn’t worth it to them. The same is true for Azure and GCP. Have you read one even anecdotal case where AWS didn’t immediately give a refund to a student who made a mistake just by them asking?
mcv 1y ago
> (and revocation of my Prime account and a lifetime ban from AWS and cancellation of any other services I might otherwise run there) Also a vital lesson from the big tech companies that sell a wide variety of services: don't get your cloud hosting from a company that you also use other services from. I had to disable photo syncing because Google photos eats up my Gmail space. Having Amazon's cloud billing fuckup threaten your TV access is another level. We clearly need to keep the option open to burn those bridges. In any case, if I ever host anything, I'm going to host it from my home.

scarface_74 1y ago

You haven’t been able to use your Amazon retail account to open an AWS account for years. You don’t “beg”. You just send them an email and they say “yes”.

pclmulqdq 1y ago
They are economic realists about this. They say "yes" if they can't realistically get $100k from you for your error.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  I have never in 9 years working with AWS - four at product companies as the architect, 3.5 at AWS itself working in the Professional Services department and the last two working at 3rd party companies - ever heard or read about anyone either on a personal project or a large organization not be able to get a refund or in the case of a large org, sometimes a credit from AWS when they made a mistake that was costly to them. I haven’t even seen reports on subreddits
  - aarmot 1y ago
    From your bragging one could tell that you have seen _a lot_ of charging mistakes and "happy" refund stories from AWS. It's scary that a single human can do extensive statistics on personal experience about these monetary horror stories, don't you think?
    - raw_anon_1111 1y ago
      So can you find any anecdotes even on Reddit where a student or hobbyist asked for a refund and was refused?
  - pclmulqdq 1y ago
    I assume you have seen many casual instances of cost overrun in that time. I'm sure you've also seen instances where an extra $10k flies out the door to AWS and people think "no big deal, that one was on us." This world doesn't have to exist. Even if AWS has a policy of always refunding people for a big oopsie, the fact that you have seen so many big ones suggests that you have also seen a lot of little ones. By the way, there is nothing stopping AWS from reversing their trend of issuing refunds for big mistakes. "It hasn't happened in the past" isn't a great way to argue "it won't happen in the future."
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      Yes and I’ve also seen bad on prem build outs, bad hires, bad initiatives, proof of concepts that didn’t go anywhere, etc
      - pclmulqdq 1y ago
        Sure. The issues with AWS could all be solved with decent billing software, though. 15 years in there isn't a good excuse for this state of the world except that it's profitable.
        scarface_74 1y ago
notrealyme123 1y ago
Must be really nice people there which don't want any money. Really warms my heart. ofc. When things go viral they say "yes". But i would really love to get some number how many students and hobbiests got a 1k-2k bill and just paid it for the problem to go away. Amazon is a publicly traded company. If they wave fees every time something goes wrong, investors would tell them something.
- raw_anon_1111 1y ago
  AWS and all of the other cloud providers gives millions in credits each year for migrations and professional services for both their inside professional services department and third party vendors. The reputational risk for them to go after some poor student isn’t worth it to them. The same is true for Azure and GCP. Have you read one even anecdotal case where AWS didn’t immediately give a refund to a student who made a mistake just by them asking?

mcv 1y ago

> (and revocation of my Prime account and a lifetime ban from AWS and cancellation of any other services I might otherwise run there) Also a vital lesson from the big tech companies that sell a wide variety of services: don't get your cloud hosting from a company that you also use other services from. I had to disable photo syncing because Google photos eats up my Gmail space. Having Amazon's cloud billing fuckup threaten your TV access is another level. We clearly need to keep the option open to burn those bridges. In any case, if I ever host anything, I'm going to host it from my home.