AWS Podcast #735: The Frugal Architect w/ Werner Vogels: Zillow's Chief Architect on why cheap ≠ frugal
Sep 1, 2025
Craig Link, Chief Cloud Architect at Zillow, shares his insights on achieving frugality inspired by lessons from his father. He argues that innovation stems from mindful resource management rather than mere cheapness. The conversation dives into the complexities of technology architecture, hidden costs, and essential details in cloud operations. Link emphasizes the necessity of adapting to high-traffic challenges using AWS and illustrates how a frugal mindset can lead to significant cost savings and operational efficiency in tech and beyond.
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Road Trip Lessons Shaped Frugal Thinking
- Craig recalls long family road trips where his father tracked MPG and minimized stops to save time and money.
- Those habits taught him to treat unit metrics and trade-offs as foundational engineering tools.
Dial-Up Matchmaking Forced Byte-Level Optimizations
- At Microsoft Gaming Zone, Craig built a virtual LAN over dial-up and bit-packed packets to save bandwidth.
- He eliminated redundant packets and scheduled probes to avoid saturating slow modems and improve matchmaking latency.
3D-Printing Startup Taught Elasticity Lessons
- Figureprints used AWS elasticity to handle quarterly spikes after being featured on Blizzard's blog.
- Craig learned to over-provision briefly to stabilize service, then right-size afterward.