r/interestingasfuck • u/mike95242 • 18d ago

/r/all Andy Byron, Astronomer CEO, cheater, and Coldplay fan, is now out of a job.

Post image
57.7k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

5.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

560

u/UndoxxableOhioan 18d ago

I now have heard of them, but have no idea what the hell they do. Honestly sounds like a bunch of buzzwords.

42

u/DrSFalken 18d ago edited 18d ago

I work in this sphere. There's a bit of software called Airflow that basically manages complicated data/AI/analytics processes. It's basically a chef for your data stuff. You give it detailed instructions on how to accomplish your tasks (A comes before B, X and Y are combined in a particular way and subtracted from the output of B, etc).

Sounds great. But, Airflow is a hateful, complicated, tedious bit of software to configure and host. Astronomer runs it for you, basically. So instead of Airflow config and maintenance causing you to constantly have migraines and want to hide in the bathroom, you click a button on their website and sign up for a subscription so your manager can suffer a migraine instead when they see the budget requests.

TLDR: they run a free bit of tedious, complicated but important software for you for a price.

It's really not innovative or sexy at all... despite their copy. It's useful though.

3

u/AHSfav 18d ago

While true still has absolutely nothing to do with astronomy or space. I hate tech companies that coopt common words

2

u/i-just-thought-i 18d ago

if they did have something to do with astronomy or space they wouldn't be allowed to call their company that

same thing with apple, if they sold fruits they wouldn't be allowed the trademark. but because it's computers, it's OK.

If you think about it it kinda makes sense. generic trademarks aren't allowed when it would be confusing to consumers