Thread by @QuinnyPig

In this "welcome back to @awscloud" thread, I'll take new AWS CEO @aselipsky through a whirlwind tour of what AWS has been up to during his time away.

I know his first day was Monday, but the CloudFormation thing that was going to tell me when he got to the lobby was wedged in ROLLBACK_FAILED, so hopefully he was able to at least find the bathroom okay...

As I'm sure @aselipsky remembers, @awscloud prides itself on being misunderstood for long periods of time. It'll sometimes be first to market with something they refine, or late to market with something polished. Their Kubernetes option went for novelty: both late and underdone.

It was called "Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS)" at launch, presumably by someone who was paid by the syllable.

Based upon @awscloud pricing structures, I can only imagine the dimensions upon which execs are bonused.

Soon after @aselipsky's departure, AWS got rid of its "boxes" logo and replaced it with the "smile" logo. If he misses the old one, he can still see it on AWS bills, partner websites, and the favicons of various pages in the console itself nearly four years after the change.

Note that @aselipsky left @awscloud to be @tableau's new CEO when AWS was releasing QuickSight. Since then, Tableau quadrupled in size, AWS almost quadrupled in size, and QuickSight tried to get noticed by a second customer with some Machine Learning snake oil. Whoops.

re:Inforce was launched as a security-focused conference. It's like re:Invent in that it's expensive, far away from most @awscloud customers, and named after an email subject line. "Naming is hard" so some people apparently don't even try.

(Note that registration for re:Inforce is now open, and showcases AWS's deep Customer Obsession by urging those customers to visit Houston in late August. "Obsession" is often subordinate to "Frugality.")
reinforce.awsevents.com

To further confuse matters (along with meeting invitees), a building was named "re:Invent" in @aselipsky's absence. Its matching peer building was of course *not* named "Simplify" because at least that would have made sense and been amusing to folks who caught the reference.

AWS launched @awscloud Ground Station, a service that talks to satellites in space. While an impressive technical achievement, it loses some of its shine when contrasted against some service teams' inability to talk to other service teams that are located down the freaking hall.

The Snowball existed before he left, but: they scaled it up into a tractor-trailer sized Snowmobile that they still stubbornly refuse to allow me near enough to beep the horn, as well as down into the Snowcone, which is clearly the worst Amazon Kindle these people have ever made.

Seriously. The battery life lasts tenths-of-a-second, it weighs as much as an average pursedog, and it doesn't even show up inside of a protective cardboard box when UPS hurls it onto my porch from across the street.

It hasn't all been ridiculous. S3 Storage Lens is transformative. Savings Plans are a giant step towards making Finance happy. AWS SSO is a hidden gem. DynamoDB Global Tables are getting polished.

It's clear @aselipsky will no doubt discover other changes as he gets reacquainted with the company and meet a mix of new and familiar faces. Should he have any questions that I can help answer, please feel free to message me on Chime; I’m corey at duckbillgroup dot com.

And of course, a slightly deeper / more nuanced take can be found here:

lastweekinaws.com/blog/new-ceo-o…