Spending a day with unicorns at AWS GameDay
In October 2022, 50 of us attended the Amazon Web Services (AWS) GameDay. Whether you’ve never heard of it or you want to participate, I hope this gives you a flavour of what to expect if you attend one in the future.
And if you are attending one soon, scroll down to the end of our post for our takeaways — they may help you!
What is AWS GameDay?
GameDay is a collaborative learning exercise that tests skills in implementing AWS solutions to solve real-world problems in a gamified, risk-free environment. This is a hands-on opportunity for technical professionals like us at cinch to explore AWS services, architecture patterns, best practices, and group cooperation.
Every GameDay is set out in the same way. Participants are new hires on their first day at Unicorn Rentals — the world's largest provider of mythical creatures. Unicorn Rentals is a fictitious new start-up starting to branch into Infinidash, using Unicorns as a taxi service.
So, what did our day entail?
Our challenge was managing Unicorn Rentals API (Application Programming Interface) requests and ensuring this new service ran smoothly. The engineers working on this before had left this project half-completed, so we were up against the clock to complete the work and earn as much money as possible.
We were divided into teams, and each given a dashboard each that tracked outstanding tasks to complete and monitor:
- the number of unicorn taxis we had available
- how busy the taxis were
- the money we have made for the company
Pizzas getting cold
The day was broken up by an engineer’s three favourite words: ‘Pizza is here!’ Even that couldn’t pull us entirely away from the game. Things were starting to get exciting, and people were starting to get competitive.
Time for good, collaborative decisions
Most of the tasks were completed by lunch, so we enjoyed AWS's incredible spread of pizzas on offer. Once tasks were completed — as you might do with your business — the challenge morphed into how good you were at trading and making wise purchasing decisions.
So, who won?
The day went by as quickly as it took to get a Unicorn to someone’s birthday party — very fast — and it came time to see who’d got the best results. There were three clear winners!
- Team Slow, Late and Expensive stole the thunder — and they got first dibs on some incredible prizes.
- Team Rainbow Riders came second despite their efforts to deploy more efficient Cloud Resources.
- Team Rylan’s Rainbows clinched the third spot comfortably, and enjoyed some fantastic prizes too.
Game Days are fun
All the teams enjoyed the day — but it wasn’t about winning but it was about learning and having fun (yes, my team came last).
As this was our first in-person Game Day, this one was ace — days like this reinforce why you got into tech in the first place.
We got to know each other better, and it gave us a chance to sink our teeth into some real tech challenges and learn so much about the field we work in.
Main takeaways
We learned some interesting things during this game that can be used both for the GameDay and day-to-day work!
- Don’t mess with DNS — both your APIs can be down, and you will not be making money!
- Health Check APIs are there for a reason — you can check if your change is working before you change it in production.
- Teams want code freezes if they are earning money — roll back rather than roll forward.
- Take turns looking at the dashboard to spot things regularly — you may not be making money for various reasons at any point in time.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate!
- You can go into debt (negative money), but that’s a good thing!
We love learning
cinch’s engineering community is a vital cog in the machine. We love learning, challenging ourselves, and working in a culture that celebrates inclusivity and collaboration. If you want to find out more about engineering opportunities at cinch, head to our careers site.
