The Secret Behind Amazon's Domination in Cloud Computing (politico.com) 35
Amazon's massive cloud-computing unit is aggressively recruiting U.S. government officials as it pushes to make itself essential to branches such as the military and the intelligence community, POLITICO reported Friday. From the report: Since 2018, Amazon Web Services has hired at least 66 former government officials with acquisition, procurement or technology adoption experience, most hired directly away from government posts and more than half of them from the Defense Department. That's a small portion of AWS' tens of thousands of employees, but a particularly key group to its federal business. Other AWS hires have come from departments including Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
That's on top of more than 600 hires of government officials across all of Amazon during the same time -- itself a mark of the company's expanding footprint in the D.C. region. Amazon employs more than 1 million people overall, after adding 500,000 new jobs last year alone. The hiring spree highlights how tech companies are becoming more entrenched in the operations of the government itself -- and indispensable to Cabinet agencies and national security operations -- even as politicians shout about the danger of letting them get too powerful.
That's on top of more than 600 hires of government officials across all of Amazon during the same time -- itself a mark of the company's expanding footprint in the D.C. region. Amazon employs more than 1 million people overall, after adding 500,000 new jobs last year alone. The hiring spree highlights how tech companies are becoming more entrenched in the operations of the government itself -- and indispensable to Cabinet agencies and national security operations -- even as politicians shout about the danger of letting them get too powerful.
I'm shocked, shocked! (Score:3, Insightful)
Amazon is a Government Contractor, doing what Government Contractors do to get favorable treatment of Government Contracts.
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What Amazon might be doing wrong is not playing the full game. Corporations can and do, such as Chris Collins, have sitting members of congress on their board. These members know they have well paying jobs waiting
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This is standard operating procedures inside the beltway.
And it's pretty sweet gig for the employee. First they serve in the military long enough to retire with a pension. Then they get hired as a civilian employee at the Pentagon, and stay long enough to retire with another pension. Then they get hired by a contractor. So they're in their mid 50's, drawing two pensions and getting a fat paycheck from the contracting company.
It's only one of many ways these companies game the system (*cough* Clinton Fou
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First they serve in the military long enough to retire with a pension. Then they get hired as a civilian employee at the Pentagon, and stay long enough to retire with another pension. Then they get hired by a contractor. So they're in their mid 50's, drawing two pensions
Let's see. Tthe earliest age someone can join the military is 18, then the earliest they can retire with a pension is twenty years, so they are 38. Average retirement amount is 20k, based on their retirement rank.
Then they get hired as a civil servant. Earliest they can retire without penalty is age 60, with 20 years of work. Average retirement is 25k, based on their top 3 years of pay.
Then they try to find a good contractor job at 60 because of their connections. Not the carrier path for everyone.
So basically: Marketing as normal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like they hire industry veterans to help market to people in the industry, and they spend a bunch of money marketing and building features for potential high-value customers.
Sounds like they are using the most common business marketing practices. Did I miss something?
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, a much better title would be "One secret behind how Amazon plans to maintain its domination in cloud computing."
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Re: Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Abusing? Hiring govt workers in the defense industry has been standard practice for as long as there have been defense contractors.
Why would AWS choose to NOT hire people with intimate knowledge of federal procurement policies snd procedures? MS hires them, Oracle hires them, Lockheed, etc all hire them, why is it wrong for AWS?
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Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The secret is "make a moderately stable product that is better in many ways than the status quo." Better in that you only need a few minutes to spin up a new instance, as opposed to a couple weeks to get a new box in a data center.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Microsoft is arguably ahead.
any surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yup, nothing surprising or "secret" in this article.
The company hires industry veterans to help navigate the industry, and spends a fortune on marketing. This is basically standard procedure for big businesses to enter every industry, not just government contracts. Standard procedure is that you hire veterans from the industry who know what they're doing.
The Secret? (Score:4, Insightful)
What the hell? Domination in all industries worth discussing or just the government? Amazon (no, don't own any shares) got where they are from being pretty damned single-minded in doing what they do well. Interestingly, they started as a book seller, and built up systems that were so amazing that they could take on vastly different business opportunities with the same general gear.
Government is law-bound from doing it themselves. We (all of us) elect people who work to get laws written that force that. Sure, our representatives often work with those entities to craft language for those laws, but the big private industry companies profit from making sure the government isn't allowed to do it themselves and so have to farm it all out. As a taxpayer, I can see there's some value in that, depending on the scale.
So we add Amazon to the huge list of preferred contractors to the government. The military-industrial complex has been around long before Dwight Eisenhower warned us of their power. (Read up on WWII and the effort to build vast quantities of all the things that were needed for that conflict.) Yet, it seems necessary to continue feeding it. What's the alternative? Do we tell our political representatives that we want every department and agency to build out their own vast systems? There's not necessarily a lot of synergy in doing that, but on the other hand, it makes it that much harder for some bad actor to take the system down.
Instead of bitching, propose solutions.
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Free speech when 'company ~ government' (Score:3)
Perhaps it's worth revisiting the conversation on free speech and Amazon's "1st amendment right" to deplatform services and block books from its marketplace.
The statement has been "it's only a violation of free speech if the government does it, private companies must be allowed to do what they want."
Well, is there a degree of interdependence and interconnect between a corporation and the political ruling class in which we will admit that the corporation is acting as a proxy of government?
Or are we completely okay with the free speech implications of
1 ) company is gateway to expression of speech (40%+ of webhosting, 80%+ of book publishing, et al.)
2 ) company acts in collaboration with other companies (-> 90%)
3 ) company has been and continues to be boosted by favorable government subsidy, regulation, and contracts (... -> 100%)
4 ) government officials can look forward to receiving massive compensation at company; supply important personal relationships to those who haven't yet moved over
5 ) company 'happens' to block content these officials have reason not to like or which could be politically threatening to them, happens to remains in high favor with propped up market dominance
IMHO if a corporation deals with or on behalf of the federal government, it should be similarly restrained in the rights it can infringe on as any full government agency would be.
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In my day, if you wanted to promulgate crackpot theories, you simply cranked out a bunch of mimeographed pamphlets. Nothing is stopping you from doing that, with or without Amazon.
Cost vs Value (Score:1)
I was recently investigating setting up a fairly costly cloud deployment for my organization.
I hate Amazon's dominance, and I'd love to do a competitor, but AWS was the obvious choice.
1) Look for a tutorial or a howto on deploying stuff to the cloud, it's probably done on AWS. For complicated scenarios that means less time invested in learning the infrastructure and less risk in deploying.
2) The cloud cost was substantial, but so were various risks for the project. I probably won't touch any of those billio
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From what I understand, some of the other cloud providers give you some AWS-compatible services and APIs. So migrating from AWS isn't completely impossible.
Sales (Score:2)
AWS is the only company that emails me and calls me and tries to demand my time to get me to use their cloud service. AWS really wants to sell me cloud services for some reason. Haven't heard from Microsoft or Google or any number of other providers. Maybe AWS just tries harder?
Best Solution: Ban Gov't Employees from Lobbying (Score:2)
In British Columbia (Score:2)
Like literally every government contractor ever... (Score:2)
So what? (Score:2)
From the report: Since 2018, Amazon Web Services has hired at least 66 former government officials with acquisition, procurement or technology adoption experience, most hired directly away from government posts and more than half of them from the Defense Department. That's a small portion of AWS' tens of thousands of employees, but a particularly key group to its federal business. Other AWS hires have come from departments including Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
So what? If AWS didn't hire them, another defense contractor would have.
Curious to know how many similar people MS hired over the same period.
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Not so secret advantage (Score:2)