Automation (5)

A before/after comparison showing a manual process failing visibly versus a silent automation failure that nobody notices until a customer is affected.
Aaron West

The Error Notification Is the Workflow

In December 2025, one of Amazon's own internal AI tools failed and quietly took down a system for thirteen hours before anyone noticed. Thirteen hours. At Amazon. With Amazon's engineering resources and monitoring budget behind it. I open with that because it settles an argument…

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An iceberg diagram showing budgeted costs above the waterline and the larger hidden costs of manual operations below: labour, errors, decision delay, and opportunity cost.
Aaron West

The Hidden Cost of Manual Operations

Ask most e-commerce teams what their operations cost, and they will point you to the obvious line items. Software subscriptions. Fulfilment fees. Headcount. What almost nobody can tell you is the cost of the work itself, the hours that disappear every week into copying data…

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Diagram classifying a team's working time into judgment, system-mediated, and transfer tasks, with transfer tasks marked as the first to automate.
Aaron West

How I Think About Automation in E-Commerce

The most expensive automation mistake I see isn't a broken workflow. It's a flawless workflow automating a task that should never have existed in the first place. I've watched smart people spend a weekend building something genuinely impressive. A form that triggers an email, creates…

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