Ben Johnson, who built the Vector observability tool, argues the industry has lost its way. He spent a decade in logging and saw teams crushed by ballooning costs. Johnson claims vendors refuse to help clients cut waste, instead pushing renewals and upsells. He believes vendors play a 'quarterly earnings game' rather than solving the core problem.

The central issue is a single question: 'How much of my observability data is waste?' Johnson asserts vendors dodge this by saying it's the customer's data. He found the answer is never zero. Industry veterans know cost is the biggest pain point, dwarfing all other technical challenges. This question cuts to the heart of the pricing model.

After leaving Vector, Johnson built a system to analyze a user's data and answer the question. His tool compressed billions of logs into semantic events, revealing massive waste. The results showed an average of 40% waste. By exposing this, teams could clean up pipelines and stop the financial bleeding. The fix wasn't reckless data dropping, but informed engineering.