Your cloud bill is too high. Where does the money go, and how do you bring it down without degrading the service?
Answer
Short answer
Attribute the bill before touching it, then work in order: fix the architectural decisions that generate spend, right-size against measured demand, and only commit to discounts once the shape is stable.
Treat this as a cloud cost and FinOps diagnosis, not a hunt for one oversized resource. Cloud cost usually spreads across compute shape, storage retention, managed-service defaults, network egress, idle environments, and missing ownership. Good FinOps work makes cloud cost visible by team, feature, and customer segment, then uses that visibility to choose whether to rightsize, delete, redesign, reserve, or accept the spend. Weak FinOps work cuts cloud cost once and lets the same incentives recreate it.
The practical test is whether cloud cost can be traced to a decision someone can change.
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Likely follow-ups
- Two thirds of the bill lands in an untagged shared account. How do you get to attribution?
- How do you cut telemetry cost without losing the ability to debug the next incident?
- A team proposes dropping to a single availability zone to halve data transfer. What is your answer?
- How would you make cost a standing input to design reviews without turning it into a veto?
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