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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

I've pre-ordered something shiny Who knows what it is? - wrong answers only #BuyYourselfSomethingPretty

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

What else should you do to become a solution architect? #aws #serverless #solutionarchitect

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

If you really want to get a solution architect job: - Read solution architecture blogs - more exposure to patterns is good. - Ask why the seniors in your team make the decisions they do. - Design solutions for existing apps, then discuss it with others (feedback is vital)

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

But this is easy to spot in an interview: - ask something not covered by the certs that you would know if you used services - get them to explain why (certs train you to pick from options, not explain why) - just let them talk about architecture and they'll say things that just don't make sense

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

AWS Solution Architect Pro means 💩 You need the skills to back it up. AWS often sells the dream of "get certified and you'll be ready to be a solution architect" People then rote learn the answers and slap it on their CV. But this fails at interview 👇 🧵

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Plus, you can now use the most performant code. - most people who read the code just need to know that you are calculating the equipment maintenance schedule - if they need to update that specific code, they have the time to understand a reduce function, or other performance optimised code.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

- database queries with all of their error handling becomes: "getOrdersForCustomer({ customerId, dateRange })" - complex business logic becomes: "calculateEquipmentMaintenanceSchedule({ equipmentId, maintenanceHistory, testResults })" That truly makes your code more readable.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

In this exact example, this is overkill. Your engineers should know how a reduce function works. But when you have 100 lines of code, can you group 30 of them and put them in a named function?

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Great code is both easy to understand and performant I saw a post suggesting you should never use a reduce function - it's too complicated to understand - if your engineers can't understand a reduce function, why did you hire them? - if you want to make your code more readable, use name functions.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

They spend 2 days optimising the code and reduce the cost 50% ( P.S. 50% optimisation is pretty impressive ) It cost you $800 to save $50/month That means it takes over a year to make a saving If your Lambda costs less than $100/month - don't even consider optimising it. #aws #serverless

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Yesterday I told you how to avoid Serverless costs But there is one thing that most people forget Developers are EXPENSIVE $$$ Lets say you pay a developer $50/hr You have a single Lambda that costs $100/month

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

5. The Recursive Cost Bomb One function spawning endless others? That's how a $10 bill becomes $10,000 Implement: - Circuit breakers - Concurrency limits - Clear exit conditions Found this useful? Follow for more cloud cost optimization tips that actually work 👇 #aws #serverless #costs

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

4. Flying Blind Without Monitoring No monitoring = No optimization Track: - Cost per Lambda - Execution patterns - Resource usage Remember: Now you know which Lambdas are worth optimising

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

3. Slow Dependencies Are Silent Killers Your Lambda is like a taxi meter - it keeps running while waiting - High RAM = High cost per second - Long waits = Multiplied costs Fixes: - Optimize those downstream calls first - Use less RAM for Lambdas that spend most of their time waiting

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

2. Real-Time vs Batch Processing Fun fact: Not everything needs real-time processing - Real-time = $$$ - Batch = $ Fix: Does processing this record 30s later matter? If not - batch process these records.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Serverless can cause your AWS costs to explode 5 top causes and how to fix them 1. Memory Mismatches = Money Down the Drain - Over-provisioning RAM? You're burning cash - Under-provisioning? Less CPU power = slow execution = higher costs - Fix: Monitor + right-size your Lambdas

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

I've been quiet on here for the last month. The new job has been intense. What I'm going to be talking about over the next few months: - Amazon Connect - Bedrock / Amazon Q - startup culture, how we're building our team, the wins and losses. And of course how Serverless fits into all of this!

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

I don't know if I could ever go back from a split keyboard.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

2025 is going to be very different to how I'd expected it to but I think that it will be an awesome year. #aws #2024review

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

- 4 new yt videos and 2 live streams - 154k total views on my videos. Most from videos over 2 years old. - lost my other client in Nov, posted about it and had loads of new opportunities. - took a job at a startup that is going to change the customer service industry.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

- fired my biggest client at the start of the year as they were trying to screw me over. - spent 6 weeks working from the van in Italy. - talked at 4 conferences ( community day Istanbul, community day NL, Reinvent BIS, serverless days Rome)

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

My 2024 review. Lot of ups and downs but here's the key things.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Maybe next year I'll think ahead and sign up with a different email address

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Had an awesome day at the ServerlessDays Rome. Great talks, interesting discussions and some new friends made #serverless #serverlessdays #rome

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

I think AWS could get more value for money by investing in video content. We'll see if they invest and promote content in 2025 #aws #content #code

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

AWS is sometimes behind the times. Content is one of those areas. My YouTube channel has had over 4000 unique users watch a video in the last 28 days. Yet AWS prefer to pump money into meetups and user groups. Those things are great and super valuable, but they get 30-50 people max per month.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

I'm starting to plan my 2025, are there any conferences in Europe that you're looking forward to? I'm looking for suggestions for conferences to apply to and talk about AWS and serverless. Let me know which conferences you are going to in 2025 #aws #serverless

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Super excited for this again this year. Last year was so good 🔥

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

It was great meeting up with Brian and chatting about what he's up to

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Awesome when the OG legend of serverless books a meeting with you. Looking forward to catching up Yan Cui If you're at #reinvent24 and want to catch up, book a chat with me on re:meet #aws #serverless

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

When you spend an hour debugging a JWT decryption - testing different secrets - adding millions of logs Then you realise it decrypted perfectly and my own code errored the line after that #code

media.tenor.com

homer simpson from the simpsons is standing in front of a shelf and making a funny face .

ALT: homer simpson from the simpsons is standing in front of a shelf and making a funny face .

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Yeh maybe I should have made it more than 2 weeks before reinvent 😅

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Make sure to register in the re:meet app if you're going in person as places are limited!

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Some examples: Explain how the state of this button works Tell me how to get a secret from secrets manager Should I use a for loop on this array And he reads the answer carefully. Cursor ai explains what changes it's making but even I usually just click apply/accept

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

One of the product owners I've been working with has started programming again. He does something interesting. He uses cursor ai to explain how the code is working. And uses it to teach him how to do things

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

I think ai code assistants are going to make this even worse. You just ask the ai to build something and if it seems to work you move on. You haven't learnt anything. You haven't improved. Eventually you'll need to do something complex that needs that knowledge and youll be stuck

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Reposted by Sam Williams

Believe in Serverless @believeinsls.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Great news! We have 10 community members delivering sessions at Buddy V's restaurant at re:Invent next week 🔥 You can check out the full listing and register to attend on our site - believeinserverless.com/reinvent

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

I'm going to be speaking at re:Invent Believe in Serverless has community talks with some amazing speakers. Tycko Franklin, @readysetcloud.io, Dave Hall, @focusotter.bsky.social , Khawaja Shams, Greg Olmstead, @ryancormack.bsky.social , @brianleroux.bsky.social and @andmoredev.bsky.social

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Why does the reinvent planner not have away to export thing to Google calendar? It's not that hard but would be so much better

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

2) Events There are some events (Believe in Serverless) that aren't official AWS events. So I've added them to the dashboard. They're still hidden for now but will go live once the venue is confirmed

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

1) Share Profile by social One click and you've got a post ready to share. Works for BlueSky, LinkedIn and Twitter

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

2 more updates to re:Meet today 1) Share Profile by social 2) Events #aws #reinvent #remeet

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

$4500/m Mortgage =~ $900K house Given the overspending on cars, you probably got a bigger/ fancier house than you can afford too. Sell and then buy/rent a more reasonable-sized house.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Student loans - You might not have got a $350K job without it. $170k Car loans - WHY??? You can get a new 'luxury' BMW, Audi or Merc for under $50k Or be smarter and get a 3 year old one for a fraction of that. Plus car loans are usually high interest - save up and buy in cash.

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Sam Williams @serverlesssam.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Financial literacy is awful in so many people Even the ones you think are smart. This is what I would tell them:

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