1,000 + AWS hiring, How big is the AWS team? Are you paying for features you don't need?

AWS does a great job of promoting how lean it is and continuously drops the price of AWS.  Yet, there are companies who find it is lower cost to move out of AWS and run their own cloud.  How can that be?

Here is a thought experiment.  There are currently over 1,000 job openings in AWS.  Amazon overall has over 100,000 employees.  Let’s just say that the AWS team is 5,000 employees and they are have 20% job openings.  Do you need 5,000 employees to run the AWS services you are using no.  Many of those people are developing new services and new customers.  So part of your payments are the costs to fund the growth of AWS.

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We're hiring!

Since early 2006, Amazon Web Services has provided companies of all sizes with an infrastructure platform in the cloud. 
We're looking for talented new members of the AWS team in the following locations:

Ashburn:

1. Contracts Administrator
2. Project Engineer
3. Technical Program Manager, Network Engineering
4. Network Technician Manager

When you are small this cost is not significant amount and the value of what you get from not having to have infrastructure people is worth it.  As you grow and start  paying $10k a month, $40K a month, then maybe $75K a month, what % of your payments are now going to fund AWS’s growth?

Take a look again at the 1,000 people AWS is trying to hire. Are those people and features you need?  There are 622 job openings just in Seattle.

I think part of the reason why companies choose to move out is the features they need are clear and they just need a handful to run their services.

Early days of AWS - Fireside chat Andy Jassy

Here is a Youtube video with 

Published on Oct 21, 2013

As a follow up to his presentation, Andy Jassy, senior vice president of Amazon Web Services, sits down with Michael Skok to discuss the evolution of AWS and its road to success.

Here is a blog post for those of you would like to read vs. watch a 45 minute video.

Revealed: The 4 Reasons Amazon Web Services Got Approved

Posted on December 19, 2013by brendansterne

In the summer of 2003 Amazon was a fast-growing online bookstore.  Nine years old, it had pioneered many innovative components of e-commerce that we take for granted today: customer reviews, a personalized shopping experience, relevant product recommendations, and frictionless buying.

Jeff Bezos had founded the company in 1994 and began selling books online.  His advantage, he thought, was that he could sell a bigger selection of books than any traditional book store (or chain).  And right from the start he committed to outstanding customer service. Amazon’s mission is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”

Which is why it wasn’t an easy decision in the summer of 2003 to hire a team of 50 or so engineers, and set them upon the task of build “the operating system of the internet,” as Andy Jassy, Sr Vice President of Amazon Web Services, likes to call it.

…

The Leadership team took an assessment of its assets:

“We were doing an assessment ourselves, as a senior leadership team, about what Amazon was really good at.  And initially you can imagine what we were talking about: we were good at retail, we were good at detail pages on our retail site website – all the things that were the primary business at the time.  But as we dug deeper we realized we were really good at running these infrastructure services deep in the stack, and then we were also good at running these reliable, scalable, cost-effective data-centers.  So the first realization we had was that we had a real core competence running infrastructure.”

Got a new Pizza Peel for my Woodstone Oven

On my way to Vancouver last week for the Wavefront Wireless Conference I was driving by myself and getting close to Bellingham.  Bellingham is where Woodstone Oven’s are made that are the same ovens you see in Whole Food, California Pizza Kitchen, many corporate cafeterias, Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants, and my kitchen.  I go to Serious Pie at least twice a month given a construction project I am working on is right next to it, and was able to have bfast with one of my Apple friends who was in town for vacation.

Below is one of two ovens at Serious Pie.  I usually try to talk to the cook’s to get a few tips on how they use their oven.  I am trying to bump the temperature of my over from 550 to 600 to get a better crust on the pizza.

Woodstone Oven has a training room right next to lobby.  And, I went in to check out the latest gear.  My oven is the same as the one on the left which is a 4’ chuckanut model.

One of the changes Woodstone made is to replace the stainless steel pizza peel (left) with an aluminum one (right).

What’s wrong with the stainless steel one?  Even when you put corn meal or semolina flour down, the pizza tends to stick too much.  And I would swap to a wood peel to make the pizza.  The aluminum one is a rough brushed finish that makes it much easier to slide the pizza.

I’ve only made one pizza with the new peel, and it is so much better than the stainless steel one.  Problem is aluminum will dent and bend much easier than the stainless steel.  

In depth report, Solar Farm goes live in Mohave Desert

GigaOm’s Katie Fehrenbacher reports on the ribbon cutting of the Solar farm in Mohave desert.

The Hoover Dam of solar is now live in the desert of California & why it’s so important

by Katie Fehrenbacher

43 MINS AGO

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SUMMARY:

The revolutionary solar farm in the Mojave desert is finally live. Here’s the story behind the tech, and an inside look at the launch.

Google is one of the backers of the project.

Google even put in $168 million in 2o11. Google says it’s both interested in the financial return that a 25-year power contract can deliver, and also that it’s interested in backing clean power for its data centers both directly and indirectly.

The solar mirrors at Ivanpah spell out the word Google, a backer of the project. A view from the 6th floor of tower Unit 1.

 

Disclusure; i do some work for GigaOm Research and know Katie.

And Utah Follows Maryland's lead to Halt Water to NSA Data Center

I wrote yesterday that Maryland has a proposal to cut off water and electricity to the NSA data center.

And now a Utah Legislator is proposing to cut off water to the NSA data center.

Utah legislator to propose halting water to NSA data center

Legislation » The bill also would prohibit universities from partnering with NSA.

By Nate Carlisle

| The Salt Lake Tribune

 

First Published 5 hours ago • Updated 16 minutes ago

A state representative wants to shut down the National Security Agency’s Utah Data Center by shutting off their water, but has not yet filed a bill that he acknowledges has little chance of passing.

Rep. Marc Roberts, R-Santaquin, has entered what is called a boxcar bill labeled "Prohibition on Electronic Data Collection Assistance." The bill had not been formally filed as of late Wednesday, and no draft had been posted online.

And not only is Utah thinking of cutting off water it is cutting off access to the local university.

The bill would do more than shut off water to the Utah Data Center, which needs the water to cool the massive facility in Bluffdale. Mike Maharrey, the national communications director at the Tenth Amendment Center, said he has seen a draft of the bill and it would also prevent Utah’s public universities from partnering with the NSA and prohibit businesses from receiving state contracts if they also do business with the NSA.

The universities provision would impact the University of Utah, which for years has received NSA grants to conduct mathematics research and recently created, at the NSA’s request, a course teaching data center management.

If the NSA thought a PR problem was bad, running a data center without water is impossible.