Thread by @QuinnyPig

Oh yes. This is indeed time for a tweet thread:

https://twitter.com/awscloud/status/1121131318761410560

First, welcome to the world AWS Cost Management Blog. Don't feel bad; I've been blogging about @awscloud since 2017 and they still haven't included lastweekinaws.com in the official list of blogs either.

"On the AWS Insights team, we are passionate about building cost management products that help you access, organize, understand, control, and optimize your costs and usage in the cloud."

So... why haven't you?

I was worried when I started my "I fix the horrifying AWS bill" consultancy that you'd improve Cost Explorer and put me out of business within six months.

Now I'm scared you never will. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life!

You know what I see?

Giant enterprises employing entire teams to make sense of their AWS bill.

Students freaking out about a $150 bill on the "free tier."

And an entire universe in between.

What unifies them? Their fear / distaste for the @awscloud bill.

I do cloud standup comedy in Seattle periodically. When I start floundering, all I have to say is "The AWS bill." Instant laughs.

When I did #awsdrinks, the bill was the single unifying theme. It's not just me; I'm just the loud obnoxious voice.

I understand that the billing system is complex. I get that these problems are hard.

Solving hard problems is what people pay you oceans of money to do. And you don't. And they pay me puddles of money to help make the pain stop.

Who's served well by this? I'd argue nobody.

When a company who provides visibility into the AWS bill gets acquired for a reported $500 million, you have failed your customers.

When there's an entire cottage industry that charges a percentage of what customers pay you because it's the only billing model that makes sense for them, you have failed your customers.

When someone sarcastic and loud (me) sees $1 billion of your customers' annual AWS spend instead of being laughed out of the room immediately , you have failed your customers *and* implicitly given my ridiculous nonsense validity!

You can put some of this on your customers. I know that if I don't turn off the faucet my water bill will be monstrous.

To be a responsible customer, I can turn off the water; I shouldn't have to complete a plumbing apprenticeship.

A few years back there was an AWS blog post about how to shove the bill into Redshift and query it with SQL.

The post itself was great, but you get that Finance doesn't generally employ data scientists, right?

The blog itself is a good step, albeit years too late. Yet another AWS blog crowds the already noisy space; I hope it becomes a low-volume, thoughtful series of posts rather than enthusiastic daily shitposting about new instance families. That is, after all, my job.

I also want to be explicitly clear here that this is a systemic problem. Erin Carlson (the author of the single post that's up so far) is competent and clear-headed.

There's no one person to blame for the state we're in; it's a collective failure.

These are hard problems with which to wrestle--but you've had thirteen years. I give new services a pass that the bill no longer gets.

(The bill is, incidentally, not an optional service.)

I'm sympathetic for you, but I share pain with your customers.

I look forward to seeing this blog's future posts.