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Cloud costs are in a bubble

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Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#31

Post by tomgs »

adoxyz wrote: post #24
tomgs wrote: post #17

I find it interesting that there are two MongoDb Directors of Developer Relations in this thread - one former, one current - either attempting to replicate the suggested costs to see if the author's faking it, or outright blaming him he is. Dude's got a screenshot. I doubt he faked it for the attention - he probably actually got that bill. He feels it's expensive and he should pay less for the value he's getting cons…

Editing a screenshot to push a narrative is pretty easy. I'm no longer with MongoDB, although still a big fan of the product, but I'm more curious as to how you could rack up a $2,500 bill just trying the product out, especially the serverless offering, coupled that with the guy being a "twitter investor", so that kicked off my BS detector. MongoDB Atlas runs on the big 3 clouds, and of course you're going to pay mor…

So I read your second sentence first for some reason, which seemed plausible and I wanted to respond nicely.

And then I read your first sentence - why is it always the assumption that people are going the hyperbole route? This is a well-upvoted link, with enough comments to merit a good discussion, and what appears to be a nicely-thought out post after the link.

Also, I've been following Snir for quite a while - dude wrote a massive Data Engineering roadmap which is heavily used by people learning how to ETL and has a very interesting investing blog. He's an engineer turned investor, and looks at the market from this perspective.

The derogatory quotes are unnecessary.

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#32

Post by tomgs »

jd_mongodb wrote: post #22
tomgs wrote: post #17

I find it interesting that there are two MongoDb Directors of Developer Relations in this thread - one former, one current - either attempting to replicate the suggested costs to see if the author's faking it, or outright blaming him he is. Dude's got a screenshot. I doubt he faked it for the attention - he probably actually got that bill. He feels it's expensive and he should pay less for the value he's getting cons…

I am not disputing the bill, just curious how he got there. He doesn't say in his post.

You're the mild one:)

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#33

Post by randomdata »

biohax2015 wrote: post #20
crmd wrote: post #5

The most valuable information for the average HN reader, especially younger colleagues who have only been in the workforce for the last decade, is that the ~70% gross margins of the hyperscalers, and by extension the $300k+ salaries for early career software developers, has been fueled by a temporary era of low central bank interest rates and an excess of VC capital. This era is almost certainly coming to a close. We…

This is just incredibly frustrating and disheartening to read. How is one supposed to plan for a future in this career when your lifestyle can just disappear overnight?

One plans by charging a high rate during the good times, to cushion their lifestyle during the bad times. That is why we see those $300k salaries. Given the risk, nobody wants to do the job for less.

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#34

Post by ianbutler »

pbowyer wrote: post #23
biohax2015 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just incredibly frustrating and disheartening to read. How is one supposed to plan for a future in this career when your lifestyle can just disappear overnight?

> This is just incredibly frustrating and disheartening to read. How is one supposed to plan for a future in this career when your lifestyle can just disappear overnight? Plan like everyone else in your country who has to deal with this uncertainty on significantly lower salaries. Budget. Save. Trim expenditure. And enjoy your career because you chose it as a career, not because it allowed you a lifestyle.

I mean, I love software development, spend a lot of my own time on it outside of work. In fact I've been writing code since I was 11 or 12, close to 20 years now, professionally for 8 years, but I'm also very intelligent and like my lifestyle, so if that evaporated the chance that I'd continue to do professional software development, especially since many of the things we deal with day to day for pay are arguably the worst parts of software development, would be very low.

This whole "its your calling" thing is how the abuse and low pay in adjacent industries, like game development, are maintained, and frankly it's BS.

I'd go back to school and into something that will maintain my lifestyle.

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#35

Post by r0m4n0 »

jimhi wrote: post #19
crmd wrote: post #5

The most valuable information for the average HN reader, especially younger colleagues who have only been in the workforce for the last decade, is that the ~70% gross margins of the hyperscalers, and by extension the $300k+ salaries for early career software developers, has been fueled by a temporary era of low central bank interest rates and an excess of VC capital. This era is almost certainly coming to a close. We…

Always good advice to budget and prepare for the worst, but wow this is a big stretch from the article. Of the large salary companies - Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are in the cloud space. Google doesn't make most of its profits from cloud. Netflix and Facebook don't sell these services at all. Dropbox and Digital Ocean (and sort of Cloudflare) are also in the cloud space and aren't known for such salaries. It's pos…

What makes you think adtech is in a bubble?

I only ask because it is has been around for a few decades now, has steadily been on an incline while old advertising methods has slowly been on a decline. Those trends are more likely here to stay…

The pandemic fueled weird economics everywhere but I don’t think we will see falls below pre-COVID

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#36

Post by jerf »

brundolf wrote: post #28
pbowyer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just incredibly frustrating and disheartening to read. How is one supposed to plan for a future in this career when your lifestyle can just disappear overnight? Plan like everyone else in your country who has to deal with this uncertainty on significantly lower salaries. Budget. Save. Trim expenditure. And enjoy your career because you chose it as a career, not because it allowed you a lifestyle.

And also don't panic, because nobody knows the future (especially in tech), despite the OP's confidence. Nobody knows the future in either direction.

I want to highlight this. I do probably a lot more "prep" than the average HNer is, but it's not out of panic. It's just a cold engineering assessment of costs & benefits. A lot of prep is just moving forward purchases and storing easily stored things, so the real cost is minimal if you have the space anyhow. And not spending all your money is a good plan anyhow; it has been for a long time and will continue to be. Even if you knew 100% the economy is fine and will be fine for the rest of your life, there's still good reason to prepare because you may have problems, health problems, natural disasters, maybe just the desire to take three months off work to prevent burnout, any number of reasons you should try very hard not to live paycheck to paycheck no matter how little you make.

And then, when you are prepared, you can be more calm about a lot more things. Yes, it's possible for the Zombie Apocalypse to hit and make a mockery of all my prep... but because I'm more-or-less ready for more realistic scenarios, I'm also more chill about the possibility of them happening.

And they may not, in which case frankly I won't have wasted many resources anyhow, any more than it's a waste to buy an insurance policy that you never get to collect on.

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#37

Post by randomdata »

brundolf wrote: post #28
pbowyer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just incredibly frustrating and disheartening to read. How is one supposed to plan for a future in this career when your lifestyle can just disappear overnight? Plan like everyone else in your country who has to deal with this uncertainty on significantly lower salaries. Budget. Save. Trim expenditure. And enjoy your career because you chose it as a career, not because it allowed you a lifestyle.

And also don't panic, because nobody knows the future (especially in tech), despite the OP's confidence. Nobody knows the future in either direction.

What we do know is that the market thinks the career is risky, charging a substantial risk premium. The market isn't infallible, but tends to be right more often than not.

But that also means that you need not be too alarmed. Even just one year of making the aforementioned $300,000 allows you several years of not working at all before you are making less, on average, than a typical low risk job. As you've already priced in the risk, you'll be fine.

And if the market is wrong then you've gained a nice reward.

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#38

Post by xadhominemx »

crmd wrote: post #5

The most valuable information for the average HN reader, especially younger colleagues who have only been in the workforce for the last decade, is that the ~70% gross margins of the hyperscalers, and by extension the $300k+ salaries for early career software developers, has been fueled by a temporary era of low central bank interest rates and an excess of VC capital. This era is almost certainly coming to a close. We…

Another unhinged HN comment ripped straight from ZeroHedge. Loss making venture funded startups are a small part of cloud revenues. The overwhelming majority of cloud revenue and gross profit comes from stable and profitable enterprise customers who have a 15 year plan to exit the majority of their on prem footprint, and interest rates have little bearing on these plans.

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#39

Post by Retric »

crmd wrote: post #5

The most valuable information for the average HN reader, especially younger colleagues who have only been in the workforce for the last decade, is that the ~70% gross margins of the hyperscalers, and by extension the $300k+ salaries for early career software developers, has been fueled by a temporary era of low central bank interest rates and an excess of VC capital. This era is almost certainly coming to a close. We…

Buying excessive housing is a huge waste, but locking in a mortgage can be a major win. Moderate inflation quickly makes high mortgage payments irrelevant, 6% inflation is a 44% discount over a decade. On top of this if you lock in a fixed mortgage today your rates can only drop after refinancing.

In the end major financial decisions have many tradeoffs, but the micro optimizations are less important than having a high savings rate. If you make 150+k and make reasonable choices more money hits serious diminishing returns.

Re: Cloud costs are in a bubble

#40

Post by jimhi »

r0m4n0 wrote: post #35
jimhi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always good advice to budget and prepare for the worst, but wow this is a big stretch from the article. Of the large salary companies - Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are in the cloud space. Google doesn't make most of its profits from cloud. Netflix and Facebook don't sell these services at all. Dropbox and Digital Ocean (and sort of Cloudflare) are also in the cloud space and aren't known for such salaries. It's pos…

What makes you think adtech is in a bubble? I only ask because it is has been around for a few decades now, has steadily been on an incline while old advertising methods has slowly been on a decline. Those trends are more likely here to stay… The pandemic fueled weird economics everywhere but I don’t think we will see falls below pre-COVID

Startups have to show growth and/or revenue. They dump most of their funding into advertising. Many are spending more than the lifetime value of their customers (if that can even be calculated at their stage at all).

Interest rates go up -> VC Money goes down -> Advertising budgets go down

Online advertising is "theoretically" better than other advertising. You can track exactly how it converts to sales or not. It is still the best way to advertise in my opinion so will beat out any other method for sure.

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