The Scoop #16: Why doesn’t AWS add spending limits?

Also: similarities between the market crashes of 2022 and 2001, and worrying layoff trends.

The Scoop is a bonus series, covering patterns and trends I observe and hear about within Big Tech and at high-growth startups. Have a scoop to share? Send me a message!

In today’s issue we cover:

• Why AWS does not – and will not – add hard spending limits. Another week, another startup hit by a massive AWS bill they did not anticipate. Why doesn’t AWS add spending limits to avoid these situations?

• Cloudflare brought down a good part of the internet for an hour. What happened, and how did Cloudflare respond? Spoiler: they handled it much better than Atlassian in April.

• Similarities between this year’s crash and the 2001 dotcom crash. Although the 2022 market crash does not seem as dramatic as the 2001 Dotcom Bust, overlaps are emerging.

• Layoffs continuing and hitting tech employees. A short summary and analysis of layoffs at Stream (exclusive details), Netflix, Substack, MasterClass, Bitpanda, Unity and others.

• A new and slightly worrying trend with layoffs. Every company is extending their runway - even those that have plenty.

• Apple to slow down hiring from this Fall. This will affect a few organizations, starting in the next financial year.