---
title: "Episode 36: I’m Not Here to Correct Your English, Just Cloud Bills"
id: "9805"
type: "podcast"
slug: "episode-36-i-m-not-here-to-correct-your-english-just-cloud-bills"
published_at: "2018-11-14T13:14:00+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-08-20T05:34:05+00:00"
url: "https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/episode-36-i-m-not-here-to-correct-your-english-just-cloud-bills/"
markdown_url: "https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/episode-36-i-m-not-here-to-correct-your-english-just-cloud-bills.md"
taxonomy_shows:
  - "Screaming in the Cloud"
---

About the Author Corey is the Chief Cloud Economist at Duckbill, where he specializes in helping companies improve their AWS bills by making them smaller and less horrifying. He also hosts the "Screaming in the Cloud" and "AWS Morning Brief" podcasts; and curates "Last Week in AWS," a weekly newsletter summarizing the latest in AWS news, blogs, and tools, sprinkled with snark and thoughtful analysis in roughly equal measure.

[https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/id1361244178](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/id1361244178)

[https://overcast.fm/itunes1361244178/screaming-in-the-cloud](https://overcast.fm/itunes1361244178/screaming-in-the-cloud)

[https://pca.st/7l2e](https://pca.st/7l2e)

[https://open.spotify.com/show/3fBA9eNkGliCzp3Xuy1GVd](https://open.spotify.com/show/3fBA9eNkGliCzp3Xuy1GVd)

[https://feeds.transistor.fm/screaming-in-the-cloud](https://feeds.transistor.fm/screaming-in-the-cloud)

## Episode Summary

Do you enjoy watching sports? Wear your favorite team or player’s jersey? Are you a fan who has shopped at Fanatics on the Cloud?   
 Today, we’re talking to Johnny Sheeley, director of Cloud engineering at Fanatics, which is a sports eCommerce business that manufactures and sells sports apparel. Fanatics runs Cloud engineering to provide a robust and reliable set of services by building and deploying applications on top of the Azure Data Lake Store (ADLS) platform.  
 Some of the highlights of the show include:  
  
 If you compete with Amazon, be ready for it to come after you; some companies avoid its Cloud perspective or go multi-Cloud (paranoia-based movement)  
 Focus on your ability to make your business function smoothly  
 Transition, migration, and abstraction may be painful, but should not stop work; paying for Cloud-agnostic technology may not be worth it  
 Challenges of governing use of Cloud resources to prevent mistakes/problems related to Fanatics’ security and budget  
 Data collected focuses on what’s trending up or down to select an instance type that calculates costs; remain flexible and be aware of what you pay  
 Natural instinct is to blame people; mistakes are made, especially when a human factor is introduced to an automated system  
 Creating a mindset that focuses on feature and detail-oriented is challenging  
 Cottage industry of code bases running in Big Data and other expensive realms  
 As a product continues to evolve and grow, governance comes along for the ride and AWS bills are streamlined  
 Will serverless, Lambda, and RDS change how Amazon charges in the future?  
 State of scale of AWS and developing a more palatable method for releases because people can’t keep up with them and stop paying attention  
 Two-Pizza Team: Amazon’s management philosophy that any team that works on a service should be able to be fed with two pizzas   
 Such small teams work quickly and have the freedom to fail, but Amazon has a reliability for the longevity of its different services  
  
 Links:  
  
 Johnny Sheeley's Email  
 Johnny Sheeley on Twitter  
 Rands Leadership Slack  
 Hangops.slack.com  
 Fanatics  
 Kubernetes  
 Azure  
 Lambda  
 RDS  
 Getafix: How Facebook Tools Learn to Fix Bugs Automatically  
 Accidentally Quadratic Blog  
 re:Invent  
 Jeff Barr’s AWS News Blog  
 Amazon SimpleDB  
 Lots of Amazon's projects have failed...and that's ok, says Amazon's Andy Jassy  
 Digital Ocean

## Episode Show Notes & Transcript

Do you enjoy watching sports? Wear your favorite team or player’s jersey? Are you a fan who has shopped at Fanatics on the Cloud?

Today, we’re talking to Johnny Sheeley, director of Cloud engineering at Fanatics, which is a sports eCommerce business that manufactures and sells sports apparel. Fanatics runs Cloud engineering to provide a robust and reliable set of services by building and deploying applications on top of the Azure Data Lake Store (ADLS) platform.

**Some of the highlights of the show include:**

- If you compete with Amazon, be ready for it to come after you; some companies avoid its Cloud perspective or go multi-Cloud (paranoia-based movement)
- Focus on your ability to make your business function smoothly
- Transition, migration, and abstraction may be painful, but should not stop work; paying for Cloud-agnostic technology may not be worth it
- Challenges of governing use of Cloud resources to prevent mistakes/problems related to Fanatics’ security and budget
- Data collected focuses on what’s trending up or down to select an instance type that calculates costs; remain flexible and be aware of what you pay
- Natural instinct is to blame people; mistakes are made, especially when a human factor is introduced to an automated system
- Creating a mindset that focuses on feature and detail-oriented is challenging
- Cottage industry of code bases running in Big Data and other expensive realms
- As a product continues to evolve and grow, governance comes along for the ride and AWS bills are streamlined
- Will serverless, Lambda, and RDS change how Amazon charges in the future?
- State of scale of AWS and developing a more palatable method for releases because people can’t keep up with them and stop paying attention
- Two-Pizza Team: Amazon’s management philosophy that any team that works on a service should be able to be fed with two pizzas
- Such small teams work quickly and have the freedom to fail, but Amazon has a reliability for the longevity of its different services

**Links:**

- [Johnny Sheeley's Email](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#76051e13131a130f36171158190411)
- [Johnny Sheeley on Twitter](https://twitter.com/johnny_sheeley)
- [Rands Leadership Slack](http://randsinrepose.com/welcome-to-rands-leadership-slack/)
- [Hangops.slack.com](https://signup.hangops.com/)
- [Fanatics](https://www.fanatics.com/)
- [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/)
- [Azure](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/)
- [Lambda](https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/)
- [RDS](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/)
- [Getafix: How Facebook Tools Learn to Fix Bugs Automatically](https://code.fb.com/developer-tools/getafix-how-facebook-tools-learn-to-fix-bugs-automatically/)
- [Accidentally Quadratic Blog](https://accidentallyquadratic.tumblr.com/)
- [re:Invent](https://reinvent.awsevents.com/)
- [Jeff Barr’s AWS News Blog](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/author/jbarr/)
- [Amazon SimpleDB](https://aws.amazon.com/simpledb/)
- [Lots of Amazon's projects have failed...and that's ok, says Amazon's Andy Jassy](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-andy-jassy-learning-from-failed-amazons-projects-2016-10)
- [Digital Ocean](http://do.co/screaming)

.

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