Sujith Jay
1/ The longer you work on internal software platforms, the more you hear talk about how your platform should be more like AWS. More agnostic, more generalist abstractions. Here is my take on why AWS is NOT your ideal. Read on ..
Oct 5, 2020 at 10:23amMoa
Show threadSujith JayOct 5, 2020

2/ There are many ways in which your platform differs from AWS.

Firstly, AWS serves the median use-case whereas you are expected to serve the entire spectrum.
Secondly, you cater to captive audiences and you have no notion of revenue or metrics which serve as proxy for revenue.

Show threadSujith JayOct 5, 2020

3/ For captive audiences, solutions can not compete and better solutions cannot win. Like a command economy, platform products are designed rather than evolved. Design takes priority over market economy.

So why is design bad?

Show threadSujith JayOct 5, 2020

4/ For design to work, we need a software specification. Since we do not have metrics to guide our specifications, we rely on user-interviews to fill the gap.

This is an unreliable source since captive users do not know of the ideal state of abstractions that could be available.

Show threadSujith JayOct 5, 2020

5/ The only way to flip this situation is to let go of command-economy-style designed abstractions, and to let your platform self-organise along the principle of markets.

How does that look in practice?

Show threadSujith JayOct 5, 2020
6/ Firstly, partner to prototype with multiple teams facing related problems to develop multiple specific solutions. Once considerable iteration has gone into each solution, assimilate the best solution(s) while migrating the rest to the chosen solution.
Show threadSujith JayOct 5, 2020

7/ Secondly, look for overloaded use-cases are guides to unmet needs of the users.

Lastly, use user-interviews judiciously. They should not be the resort guiding every product decision.

Show threadSujith JayOct 5, 2020
8/ That's it! You have reached the end of this thread 👏🏽👏🏽You can read the extended version in this post:
https://sujithjay.com/not-aws
AWS Is NOT Your Ideal

Let me start with an assertion. Every platform engineering team 1 in every organisation aspires to be like AWS 2. To define a platform for the purposes of this post, I use Camille Fournier’s words: A platform is the software side of infrastructure. ↩ I use AWS throughout this article as a stand-in for a generic cloud provider. ↩