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I ignored the frustrated glances from the two Amazon reps and said, “We absolutely need dynamic scaling.”
Owen gestured. “There you have it. I trust my member of the team on this. Include dynamic scaling in the deal, or we’re sticking with Microsoft for our hosting.”
Their pleasant expressions faltered now. “Owen, let’s discuss this a bit more. I’m sure if we dig into your business’s key performance indicators you’ll see that this plan is much cheaper—”
“Cost won’t matter if you up-charge us during the busy times,” he replied.
“Or if the entire exchange goes down while you’re moving around the on-demand servers,” I muttered.
The male Amazon rep excused himself to use the restroom. His partner tried smiling and chatting us up about the crazy bay area weather, and if either of us were unhappy with the Raiders moving to Las Vegas. When her partner returned, his cell phone was in his hand and he had a tight expression on his face.
“We can offer dynamic scaling with this plan,” he said, as if it had been his idea all along.
Owen glanced sideways at me, and I grinned for the rest of the lunch.
31
Amber
Afterward, when the Amazon reps had left, Owen led me over to the bar for celebratory drinks. Two glasses of a whiskey I hadn’t heard of, but must have been expensive based on the bartender’s surprised blink.
While he fixed our drinks, I did some math on the back of a napkin. “See this surge pricing?” I said, pointing at the Amazon Web Services binder. “If the price of Bitcoin swings and we get a spike in traffic, we would end up paying this rateper minute.”
“Holy shit,” Owen said.
“Spikes usually last four or five hours, so at this rate, with the estimated amount of traffic we will have by this time next year…” I wrote the answer down and gave a start. “Their plan would have cost us an extra fifty grand!”
“Fifty grandper traffic spike,” Owen pointed out. “You know how crypto is. We could get ten big price movements in a single week.”
The bartender handed us two tumblers of dark brown liquid. Owen raised his glass and said, “Glad I brought you along.”
“I’m glad you did too. If you signed a three-year contract with their other plan, I would have called you an idiot.”
“I’m smart enough to know when to defer to someone else’s wisdom.”
I sipped the whiskey. It was peaty and left a smoky taste in my mouth, but it burned smoothly down my throat.
“Since I just saved the company fifty grand per spike,” I said, “how about I get some of that savings as a bonus on my next paycheck?”
Owen narrowed his green eyes at me from above his tumbler. “An indirect bonus, sure. Those savings will be reflected in the company stock price, which will make your stock options worth more.”
I sighed dramatically. “Fine.”
“All jokes aside,” he said, more seriously this time, “you crushed that meeting. You deserve a pat on the back.”
We finished our drinks and ordered two more while recounting all the little parts of the meeting that had gone well. Making fun of the two Amazon reps for trying to pull one over on us, and how we had stood our ground. Owen described it to the bartender like I was a brave knight slaying a dragon, his voice full of praise.
It was with this giddy celebration that we eventually paid the tab and called for an Uber. On the way out, however, Owen suddenly grabbed my arm and yanked me down a random hallway.
“Where does this lead?” I asked, confused.
“No idea,” he replied without slowing. “Let’s find out.”
The restaurant was much larger than it appeared from the street, taking up an entire converted warehouse. There were dozens of private rooms with neatly-arranged tables, all of them ready for the evening crowd, and all of them with gorgeous views of the bay and Alcatraz Island.
It was into one of these rooms that Owen took me. It looked like any of the others, but Owen acted like it was the one he wanted. He closed the door and turned the lock, then pressed his ear to the wood to listen.
“What are we doing in here?” I asked.
