←back to thread

461 points thunderbong | 9 comments | | HN request time: 1.61s | source | bottom
Show context
modernerd ◴[] No.42134059[source]
"Billing alerts" are a joke, give us hard spend limits. Then offer a way to set those limits during onboarding.

Building a business on blank cheques and accidental spends is shady. It's also a large barrier to adoption. The more times devs see reports like, "I tried [random 20-minute tutorial] and woke up to a bill for my life's savings and luckily support waived the fee this one time but next time they're coming for my house", the less they'll want to explore your offerings.

replies(20): >>42134131 #>>42134150 #>>42134268 #>>42134271 #>>42134282 #>>42134287 #>>42134291 #>>42134375 #>>42134462 #>>42134469 #>>42134517 #>>42134613 #>>42134695 #>>42134828 #>>42135170 #>>42135288 #>>42135373 #>>42135557 #>>42135706 #>>42136718 #
1. exhilaration ◴[] No.42135373[source]
It's been mentioned several time in HN comments that the AWS billing code is a giant pile of spaghetti and there is generally a lot of fear around making big changes to it.

That's been one of the more interesting inside baseball facts I've learned here.

replies(4): >>42135536 #>>42135631 #>>42136220 #>>42136557 #
2. bryancoxwell ◴[] No.42135536[source]
Well done AWS for finding a way to make your technical debt cost other people money.
replies(1): >>42135556 #
3. vitiral ◴[] No.42135607{3}[source]
... only governments, yet this is Amazon
replies(1): >>42135731 #
4. rolandog ◴[] No.42135631[source]
Completely agree. Having worked previously for ... (humans?) ... I can authoritatively theorize it would be fixed in a jiffy if it weren't making them bucketloads of money.

To make my case: just ponder the opposite: "What would an honest version of AWS do?". They would address the concerns publicly, document their progress towards fixing the issue, and even try to determine who was overcharged due to their faulty code, and offer them some compensation.

"We're too big to fix our own code" is, sadly, taken from the MS playbook (IIRC, something like that was made public after the breach of MS manager mailboxes after the whole Azure breach fiasco that was discovered by, IIRC, the DOJ that paid to have access to logs).

5. rmbyrro ◴[] No.42135731{4}[source]
If it wasn't clear, my point is: Amazon is so big and dominant at this point that it's got government-like powers.
replies(1): >>42143321 #
6. fallingsquirrel ◴[] No.42136220[source]
And yet somehow every time they launch a new product they have no problem adding it to their billing code.
replies(1): >>42138292 #
7. pvillano ◴[] No.42136557[source]
If there was a lawsuit, change in regulation, request from an enterprise customer, or doing so MADE THEM MORE MONEY it would be fixed in a week.
8. jkman ◴[] No.42138292[source]
I mean, adding some shotgun changes to a messy codebase is always significantly easier than refactoring the whole.
9. vitiral ◴[] No.42143321{5}[source]
It wasn't clear, thanks