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Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

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Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#131

Post by cthalupa »

lokar wrote: post #111
Silhouette wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI "support" bots that just attempt to read the published documentation for you are possibly the most annoying thing to have come out of the current AI plague. Even Stripe - once legendary for the quality of its support - has apparently given up now. I had to deal with it recently over a case where the merchant was seeing an unexpected change in the way it was collecting payments and the AI bot was worse than useless…

It would be interesting to hear the other side, the people running support. I wonder what fraction of requests are answered by basic knowledge and stuff clearly in the docs. At some very high fraction I could see a lot of pressure/incentive to optimize for these cases.

From talking to people I know on support teams at hyperscalers and other tech companies: A mind-boggling huge portion.

But even as an AI believer and thinking it's great for this sort of thing, I also think if it's good enough for this sort of work, it should be good enough to identify when it's not capable of providing value, too.

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#132

Post by cthalupa »

1123581321 wrote: post #89
SilverElfin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It’s not their race, it’s that they are completely removed from the business context, given simple resolution scripts and little power to escalate out of their call center. When you hear the accent, you know it’s likely the business has done this, unfortunately. Indian tech support works just fine when it’s more integrated with Indian engineering and product ownership, as support in the US would be with an American c…

To the best of my knowledge, the Indian support teams for AWS have all the same access their US/EU/etc. support teams have when it comes to escalation and communication avenues. Obviously real time communication is harder for them than the US counterparts speaking to teams in Seattle, but the same is true for a team in Ireland or Australia.

If you are building a follow-the-sun support organization for a technology company, would you really avoid building a support team in India? Seems like it's the country most likely to have a large enough number of people with the expertise and language skills to staff for the need, even if you were paying them the same as their US counterparts.

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#133

Post by CursedSilicon »

bix6 wrote: post #16

I’ve been hearing Amazon is going to run out of bodies for years now and yet they keep chugging along.

I got thrown overboard by AWS in 2023

Since then I've had no less than thirty five recruiters contact me for a systems engineering role at Kuiper.

Even though I'd "only" be a yellow badge (contractor) every time I've hit the Amazon hiring manager desk I get instantly vetoed.

Amazonians don't know (and I guess we can never know?) how long we're blacklisted for.

Eventually they're going to run out of people

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#134

Post by jreynar »

cebert wrote: post #101

I read every comment on this thread at the time of my posting and believe it’s fair to categorize the general sentiment that Amazon has lost its way and may even be in its “IBM stage.” AWS services still are generally reliable and available. I’d think we’d be seeing cracks here if the organization were in shambles. AWS seems to keep humming along.

I'm sure things could be better and maybe we've gotten lucky or perhaps being part of the AWS startup program bumps you to the front of the queue but we've had two recent issues -- both with cloudfront -- that were dealt with fairly promptly. Not quite as quick as the timeline they suggested but very hard to complain about when we're paying for support and AWS services themselves with credits from their startup program.

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#135

Post by Silhouette »

newaccountman2 wrote: post #129
Silhouette wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI "support" bots that just attempt to read the published documentation for you are possibly the most annoying thing to have come out of the current AI plague. Even Stripe - once legendary for the quality of its support - has apparently given up now. I had to deal with it recently over a case where the merchant was seeing an unexpected change in the way it was collecting payments and the AI bot was worse than useless…

> AI "support" bots that just attempt to read the published documentation for you are possibly the most annoying thing to have come out of the current AI plague. I disagree, personally. The way they were employed in GP's example, yeah, that's annoying and hostile. But almost every time I go to some documentation page for a commercial product now and it doesn't have that, I find it pretty annoying (I don't expect an o…

Your version sounds like it's potentially useful. The thing that winds me up is when the online chat that used to be talking with real support people gets quietly replaced with some LLM-backed noise generator and there's no way to contact real support people any more (possibly because 95% of them were laid off).

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#136

Post by 1123581321 »

cthalupa wrote: post #132
1123581321 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not their race, it’s that they are completely removed from the business context, given simple resolution scripts and little power to escalate out of their call center. When you hear the accent, you know it’s likely the business has done this, unfortunately. Indian tech support works just fine when it’s more integrated with Indian engineering and product ownership, as support in the US would be with an American c…

To the best of my knowledge, the Indian support teams for AWS have all the same access their US/EU/etc. support teams have when it comes to escalation and communication avenues. Obviously real time communication is harder for them than the US counterparts speaking to teams in Seattle, but the same is true for a team in Ireland or Australia. If you are building a follow-the-sun support organization for a technology co…

That’s my personal preference, to hire great remote employees around the world and treat them as first class as headquarters employees regardless of role.

I was just explaining the unfortunate correlation Indian support centers have with the business practice to minimize and alienate support.

I’m glad to hear that Indian AWS support is fully integrated.

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#137

Post by tardedmeme »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #70
bix6 wrote: post #16

I’ve been hearing Amazon is going to run out of bodies for years now and yet they keep chugging along.

I have worked there for 8 years now and we ARE running out of bodies. It has become extremely difficult to hire at any level, we have had an open position on my team for a senior data scientist for a year and a half now, with barely any candidate applying, and none of them being competent. Similarly the average level of new employees has dropped dramatically. The famous "hiring bar" is now below ground.

I applied to work there on some kernel/hypervisor thing - rejected without comment. I've also worked at other companies that desperately needed to hire people but kept rejecting every candidate, even the alright ones. Interest rates are too low.

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#138

Post by mapleleaf1921 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #45
boundless88 wrote: post #23

Our company also requires everyone to use more AI-related tools, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But the quality of work produced using these tools really depends on the individual's ability. Some people don't put in much effort, and the results they produce are really sloppy, which bothers me a lot.

I think there is actually something wrong with that. What should matter is the work produced, not the tools used to produce it. If AI tools really are all they are cracked up to be, then people using them will get ahead, and the company can justifiably point out "your peer gets twice the work done as you" to the other employees. But mandating tool use in and of itself is senseless and counterproductive.

Arguably, what should matters is the impact your work has on your end user.

I agree with you that it's up to the people to adopt new tooling so they don't get left behind.

But from the company perspective, it's beneficial to get people using the new tools as fast as possible so that the overall impact on end user is accelerated.

An example is the adoption of CNC machines in factories. If you're a old timer using mill and lathe, you may argue that the company should not enforce all its workers to learn how to use CNC machines because you can still use the lathe and mill just fine. But from the company perspective, having you learn and run 3 CNC machines at the same time is much better than have you run 1 mill or lathe.

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#139

Post by _DeadFred_ »

OrangeDelonge wrote: post #130
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked in aerospace one of the surprising things to learn was we had an unwritten 'max allowed' percentage of people hired from Boeing overall and applied to each team because we did not want to incorporate Boeing's culture. If I was still in management at a software company I'd probably apply that as a consideration with regards to FAANG. Even for those hired ex-Boeing had a much stricter vetting not on skill…

What is the Boeing culuture like?

I don't know exactly I never worked there and I was IT not design/qa/factory floor. My understanding was slow, non innovative, not efficient, and prone to complain. The ex-Boeing people we had were great though. I think it's probably just normal 150k employee companies end up toxic stuff. Just know we had a quota.

Re: Amazon Web Services – Four Years and Out

#140

Post by jamesfinlayson »

cthalupa wrote: post #131
lokar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to hear the other side, the people running support. I wonder what fraction of requests are answered by basic knowledge and stuff clearly in the docs. At some very high fraction I could see a lot of pressure/incentive to optimize for these cases.

From talking to people I know on support teams at hyperscalers and other tech companies: A mind-boggling huge portion. But even as an AI believer and thinking it's great for this sort of thing, I also think if it's good enough for this sort of work, it should be good enough to identify when it's not capable of providing value, too.

Gosh, that's kind of sad. I hate having to wait 12 to 24 hours for an answer from AWS support - there's no way I'm raising the ticket without exhausting all avenues from my end.
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