Why I Help Teams With Observability

Because I want to help eradicate poverty. Delusional? Possibly.

Working Class Upbringing

When I was a kid, I remember asking my Mum if I could have a Mars Bar.

It cost 25p.

"I'm sorry love" she said kindly, "but we just can't afford that right now".

We never went hungry, we always had warm coats and decent shoes. We were always tidily turned out and clean.

But money was always tight.

My parents were incredibly frugal and made ends meet. They never had any debt apart from a mortgage.

This gave me an early respect for money.

Take From The Rich and Give To The Poor

I was fascinated by the story of Robin Hood.

I was a well behaved child and followed all the rules perfectly. I did what I was told and feared authority.

The idea that someone would steal from the rich and give to the poor seemed wrong.

On the other hand there was a big part of me that loved the idea.

I distinctly remember thinking "if only we could figure out a way of doing that lawfully, without the stealing bit, I think the world would be a better place".

Cost of Living Crisis

Fast forward thirty years.

I don't need to tell you that the income gap is wider than ever.

I could quote studies and statistics to persuade you there's a cost of living crisis.

That's not necessary. We all know that this is real. People the world over are hurting.

The poor have been hurting for... well, decades.

Captialism and Technology

Big Technology companies make a lot of money.

If this is in exchange for valuable services, that's fair.

But year after year, there are companies profiting off ignorance and miseducation.

I remember a PPC friend of mine telling me he audited the Google Ads account for a new client.

"How much are you spending?"

"Oh, about 1.2 million dollars a year."

"So, what's your ROI on that?"

They didn't even undersatnd the question.

"Well... everyone should be doing Google Ads, right? So we do it."

At my friend's suggestion, the ads were switched off.

Sales stayed exactly the same.

$100,000 a month... completely wasted.

Observability

This same thing happens in the observabilibity space.

Companies are profiting off ignorance.

A friend of mine recently created a metric in an observability tool with a mere 3 dimensions.

Within a day his manager messaged him - "Would you mind switching that off please? The costs are ramping up fast."

My friend didn't understand the impact of high cardinality dimensions on metrics.

And one dimension he'd picked? IP address. Whoops.

Now, the software knew that IP address was high cardinality.

It knew that this would blow up the bill.

The software didn't try to stop him.

There was no alert when costs spiked.

The software just went ahead and started billing the company.

Thank goodness his manager was diligent. It could have been a lot worse.

Still, the company had just wasted $800 on instrumentation that had zero value.

Why should the observability tool company care? They just added a bit more to their bottom line.

I've talked to one company who are spending seven figure sums on logging ... every MONTH.

How can any company short of Microsoft possibly justify this kind of outlay?

And yet, again, why should the software vendor care? They made a killing.

This is bad business. And it's wrong.

It would be wrong if there was no cost of living crisis.

It would be wrong if there was no income inequality.

It would be wrong if there was no-one starving because they couldn't afford to eat.

But in the light of the state of our world, it seems worse than wrong - it seems outright insane.

What's the Plan?

First, I don't believe that politics can have an impact.

No amount of legislation will stop this kind of bad practice.

Money underpins most politics and so big businesses will always have their thumb on the scale.

I believe the only answer is to play capitalism at it's own game.

My plan is pretty simple.

1. Educate engineers and companies how to observe their apps cost effectively

2. Charge 10-20% of the money I save over a year

3. Put a percentage of profits aside to fund universal basic income for a small number of families every year

The business makes more money.

Engineering teams can move faster.

Engineers save time and a lot of frustration.

Customers get a more reliable web app.

Families that are struggling for money are pulled out of poverty.

Everyone wins.

Oh, apart from large greedy software companies trying to rip off customers and hoping they don't notice.

They lose. As well they should.