What’s wrong with cloud industry?

Microsoft Kumam
Jan 22 50 Comments

There is not doubt that cloud is next moonshot. But leaders in cloud: AWS, Azure are not really tier 1 company. Google cloud may be the best to work for then? We all know the crazy pay of OCI, but I don’t see people speak high of anything of them else. So cloud is a very promising industry while with limited good employers?

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  • Facebook YSwg68
    This post gave me cancer
    Jan 22 10
    • Microsoft Kumam
      OP
      Good point!
      Jan 22
    • Oracle / Product ohseeeye
      Amazon didn’t have excess capacity, they just built it. FB could have done this by building a bunch of data centers and it probably would have been great quality...but not worth the hassle.
      Jan 22
    • Facebook / Eng gJJA84
      Yeah ohseeeye but Amazon basically invented the business and were first to market. FB would have had to invest a crap ton of capex for a business that by that point was becoming commodified. FB's operating margins are an order of magnitude better than Amazon's. And there was no complimentary business to leverage.
      Jan 22
    • Oracle / R&D lHEA77
      From what I understand, FB is actually quite innovative in things like datacenter ops, server buildout, etc. We just don't hear about it much outside of FB since it's all internal focused.
      Jan 23
    • Oracle / Product ohseeeye
      That’s been my understanding as well. And then software like Scuba on top of it all. Impressive work. But understand why it’s all internal, too.
      Jan 23
  • Amazon gnVV23
    Foundational cloud services (storage, database, compute) are deep tech and all cloud companies have good teams for that

    Rest is re packaged software with managed control plane and outsourcing of ops load to another company basically. Clearly that is not top tech. But mostly this boring stuff is what makes most money ....

    Basically customers pay these cloud companies to offload operational burden
    Jan 22 0
  • Google Zedongke
    There certainly is doubt that cloud is the next “moonshot”. Everyone assumes there’s a huge untapped market of inefficient enterprises who would save a ton of money by outsourcing their IT to a faceless, increasingly untrustworthy, 3rd party company like google or amazon. Many have specific needs that don’t fit well into the services big tech provide. Or they are large enough they do things in-house. Or they have security/privacy concerns.

    Plus the type of profit model they’re attempting to achieve with this enterprise-first cloud stuff seems like small cookies compared to selling ads and leveraging user data, ie Google’s traditional profit sources.

    There was a similar lack of doubt about wearables, VR, driverless cars, mobile first, social, fiber, and the future of liberal democracies. Now nobody cares.
    Jan 22 9
    • Microsoft gfba68
      it's not at all speculative. it can be predicted to a fairly high degree of accuracy. I'd conservatively put the probability at over 90%
      Jan 22
    • New fzlpop
      While the TAM may be huge, the profitability isn’t high. You get to spend a shit load of money to make a little of it. Also with intense competition between cloud providers, the prices are coming down at a fast rate (read less profitability for cloud providers).
      Jan 23
    • Google Zedongke
      Lol well you must know more than everyone else oh holy oracle of the untapped cloud computing-for enterprise market. You must have the best answer to OP’s question that anyone can give so no point in discussing anything.
      Jan 23
    • Microsoft gfba68
      I don't know more than everyone else. Everyone else knows the same thing I do. You are using the word "speculative" incorrectly.
      Jan 23
    • Google Zedongke
      That’s a speculative speculation
      Jan 23
  • Anybody here who is a medical doctor (fuck off PhDs) and can save me from this cancer that I got from this post?
    Jan 22 2
    • New / Eng
      Badcoder

      New Eng

      PRE
      AngelList, Salesforce
       Badcodermore
      bezos can save you
      Jan 22
    • I thought Bezos is the divorce attorney guy
      Jan 22
  • Microsoft gfba68
    LOL this is why we don't let engineers make business decisions
    Jan 22 3
    • Microsoft Kumam
      OP
      Why?
      Jan 22
    • Two Sigma / Eng shadowburn
      Because what’s the coolest tech-wise is not always what customers want the most
      Jan 22
    • Morgan Stanley martha01
      @shadowburn. You, I like you
      Jan 22
  • So OCI pays well ? How well ? Comparable to tier 0/1 companies ?
    Jan 22 3
    • Microsoft Kumam
      OP
      Even better in number than F and G.
      Jan 22
    • What about oci layoffs though that I am reading about now
      Jan 23
    • Microsoft Kumam
      OP
      You know the previous VP of OCI now is the VP of Google cloud. So there are many changes.
      Jan 23
  • Capital One Tea Role
    I love how this post acts like cloud is some mystery and not already immensely successful. This isn’t cryptocurrency or some speculative tech lmao.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-of-amazons-2017-operating-income-comes-from-aws/
    Jan 22 1
    • Microsoft Kumam
      OP
      I am not intending to do that. I think cloud is already big industry while still growing fast.
      Jan 22
  • Microsoft wannabePM
    OP, are you really at Microsoft?
    Jan 22 1
    • Microsoft Kumam
      OP
      Yes. Why do you ask that?
      Jan 22
  • OpenTable Meliodas
    Companies are looking to outsource a commodity (computing) when it makes fiscal sense to do so. That doesn’t leave much room for providers to engage in speculation and high comp/perks.

    We are actively bringing computing resources in-house, because at a certain scale, we can serve our own base load cheaper than using a cloud provider.

    Cloud isn’t anything new, we call it time sharing on mainframes.
    Jan 22 0
  • Bank of America / Other tSWv17
    I thought 'cloud' org in any of the stated companies is Tier 1 cuz of quality of work and the TC that show up time to time here on Blind..I personally know a few people working in Amazon AWS & Microsoft Azure; seems like quality work and they are happy with their TC.
    (Also, the potential to interchangeably jump to: GCP<->OCI<->AWS<->Azure seems pretty sweet)
    Jan 22 0
  • AQR DVGQ05
    🤨
    Jan 22 2
    • Microsoft Kumam
      OP
      You are hedge fund right?
      Jan 22
    • AQR DVGQ05
      Yes
      Jan 22
  • Motorola / Eng RQKb80
    I looked at the AWS dashboard once trying to help another team but it gave me cancer. Useful technology to be sure but clueless business people are overhyping it as the solution to everything and trying to cash in on service contracts/opex. I think there's going to be a point where results don't meet expectations and people realize that injecting yet another middleman into your product isn't always the way to go
    Jan 22 1
    • Oracle / Product ohseeeye
      What did you find problematic about the AWS dashboard?
      Jan 22
  • New / Eng
    Badcoder

    New Eng

    PRE
    AngelList, Salesforce
     Badcodermore
    Any engineers who are willing to share tips on how to get in this space, specially at large orgs like Amazon, Google? Ive been self studying distributed systems but the industry is guarded against experience (rightfully so). So barrier to entry seems high.
    Jan 22 1
    • Microsoft Dhhss
      mark
      Jan 22
  • Amazon jtGV66
    Moonshot? Really? Do you have any idea how ignorant it is to compare cloud to the apollo program?
    Jan 22 1
    • Microsoft Kumam
      OP
      Just mean big industry. No intention to compare.
      Jan 22
  • It's pretty cloudy
    Jan 23 0
  • Cloud is mostly B2B.... your customers are educated excutives with eye on ROI.....so they spend less. And the market is segmented with siloed niche players....business relationships matter more(sales) so than engineering feats

    F and G are B2C companies giving free stuff to all of the morons in the universe....thats alot of scalability...also winner takes all market affords higher margin for the winner so they can spend more on engineers.
    Jan 22 0