OAKLAND, Calif. – When Jeff Barr, a prominent executive at Amazon’s cloud computing division and a prodigious corporate blogger, celebrated his 60th birthday last year, Corey Quinn had a surprise for him: a music video that mocked Amazon’s business.
“Jeff, can you write me a blog post for launch,” sang an Amazon cartoon manager to Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”. “What we build is a mystery to me. But it is vast and personalized and your console is a joke. But if it is released, I can be a VP ”
After the video was released, Quinn, who advises Amazon customers to help them reduce their cloud computing accounts, delighted in adjusting the technology giant.
“The best days start with me knowing that my planned stunts will result in at least eight internal @awscloud meetings and a crisis response plan,” He wrote on twitter. “Today is such a day.”
The world of cloud computing is not known for humor or unusual personalities. Quinn, 38, is an exception: a passionate and outspoken person who is part of a technology analyst, part of the internet troll and part of a watchdog. With an irreverent style that mixes technical acumen and sharp wit, he publishes a weekly newsletter with 21,000 subscribers, records four podcasts a week, and makes YouTube videos full of geek jokes for cloud computing geeks. It also maintains an extremely active Twitter feed.
Officially, Quinn calls himself a cloud economist, a name he invented when he started consulting in 2016. He thought it was less depressing than the cloud accountant.
He rarely passes the opportunity to examine, analyze, explain, scoff and defend Amazon’s cloud unit – sometimes all at once. He works with major Amazon customers like The Washington Post, Ticketmaster and Epic Games, who seek his advice on contract negotiations or the best ways to reduce cloud computing costs.
Based in San Francisco, its consulting firm, Duckbill Group, employs 11 people and works only with Amazon Web Services customers – making your comments even more important on Amazon. This also gives you more leeway to be the head of the company’s pests.
“It is an enemy relationship. When he speaks, people listen, ”said Ana Visneski, a former Amazon employee who used to deal with Quinn when she managed the process of launching new products. “Although some people don’t like sarcasm.”
Amazon Web Services, better known as AWS, is Amazon’s most profitable business, but it doesn’t generate the same attention as the company’s retail business, although its impact may be greater. Computers in Amazon’s data centers supply large areas of the Internet, including Netflix and Disney +, while businesses large and small rely on AWS infrastructure to stay digitally connected.
“Everyone wants to talk about the other aspects of the business that are easier to understand,” said Quinn, “but if we look at Amazon’s next 10 years, it’s pretty clear that AWS is going to be the defining part of that narrative. “
The growth of Amazon’s cloud business has created opportunities for Mr. Quinn to gain dedicated followers. At the 2019 AWS conference in Las Vegas, a few dozen participants approached him for selfies.
Amazon declined to comment for this article and did not make Mr. Barr available for comment. In response to a description of Quinn as a funny person in an industry devoid of humor, an Amazon spokesman responded with a link to a cheerful video for the launch of an AWS product and a smiling emoji.
Mr. Quinn took an indirect route to become an influencer of cloud computing. In 2003, he left the University of Maine, where he studied computer science. He jumped from a job with no future to another before working at technology consulting companies and start-ups. In 2015, he was working at a financial technology start-up when investment firm BlackRock acquired it. He left his job a year later to start his own consulting firm.
“I am absolutely terrible as an employee,” he said. “I have sharp elbows. I get bored easily and get on other people’s routes.
After years of trying to understand his company’s AWS bill, a confusing mix of service charges and data storage and transfer that can span over 100 pages for heavy users, he decided that other companies could use his experience .
“I can describe what I do in six words: I fix the awful AWS bill,” he said.
He was also betting that more companies would start using AWS more often. Was he right. Today, the cloud computing account is the third largest expense for many Internet software companies, behind only payroll and office space.
To promote his consulting firm, later renamed Duckbill Group, with a furious platypus as a mascot, Mr. Quinn started his newsletter, “Last Week at AWS”, in 2017.
In 2018, he almost took a job on the AWS billing team, but the company demanded that he sign a broad non-competition clause that prevented him from working for any Amazon competitor. In a blog post accompanied by a photo of a man with two middle fingers outstretched, Quinn called these clauses “unfair” and said the guarantees that the company would not apply them were often false.
The question arose again last year, when Amazon sued Brian Hall, a former vice president of marketing for AWS, claiming that he violated the non-compete clause when he joined Google in a similar role.
“What is the secret sauce that he will take with him? Launch a lot of things with terrible names and then market them incredibly badly to infrastructure engineers? ”Mr. Quinn wrote at the time. Amazon agreed to close the lawsuit a month later.
Hall said Quinn was a “very helpful advocate”, whose opinion was important to Amazon.
“Someone like Corey helped introduce AWS to customers, sometimes in ways the company liked and sometimes in ways the company didn’t. That made him someone who needed to be heard, ”said Hall.
Like many industry analysts, Quinn is also paid by companies he criticizes. AWS sponsored his newsletter and paid for advice, but Mr. Quinn said that Amazon never tried to contain what he said. Google said it also paid for insights.
A frequent target of Mr. Quinn’s jabs are uninspired AWS product names. After Amazon launched a flurry of new services during a meticulously planned presentation at a developer conference in December, Quinn offered his unfiltered version.
“Look at those horrible service names. Look at your horror, ”he said. He showed a slide with the worst offenders: Equipment Surveillance; Trainium; Elastic views with glue; SageMaker Data Wrangler; and Amazon Outposts, the smallest.
Mr. Quinn recently released another AWS parody music video. Instead of a birthday message to an executive, he explored the seemingly endless launch of more computing power from Amazon.
“Don’t stop releasing”, a platypus with sunglasses sings to the sound of “Don’t Stop Believin ‘by Journey”. “Data centers are growing, hidden somewhere in your city. Don’t stop releasing. “
Quinn said companies with trillion-dollar market ratings are a fair target for his prick, but that he avoids jokes at the expense of individual employees or executives. When he did Barr’s parody video, he checked with someone close to the Amazon executive to make sure he didn’t cross the line.
Quinn said he made an exception for Larry Ellison, an Oracle co-founder, because “nobody likes him”.
An Oracle spokeswoman did not respond to an email seeking comment on Ellison’s popularity.