alt Hacker NewsCompanies buy cloud services because they want to reduce in-house server management and operations, for them it's a trade-off with hiring the right people. But you are right, when you can find the right people doing it yourself can be a lot cheaper.
Replies
fnoef • today at 6:16 AM
Right... That's why the hire "AWS Certified specialist ninja"
Tepix • today at 6:14 AM
I get the feeling that with LLMs in the mix, in-house server management can do a lot more than it used to.
➕ show 2 replies
In some sense I'm starting to think it has more to do with accounting. Hardware, datacenters and software licenses (unless it's a subscription, which is probably is these days) are capital expenses, cloud is an operation expense. Management in a lot of companies hates capital expenditures, presumable because it forces long term thinking, i.e. three to five years for server hardware. Better to go the cloud route and have "room for manoeuvrability". I worked for a company that would hire consultants, because "you can fire those at two weeks notice, with no severance". Sure, but they've been here for five years now, at twice the cost of actual staff. Companies like that also loves the cloud.
Whether or not cloud is viable for a company is very individual. It's very hard to pin point a size or a use case that will always make cloud the "correct" choice.