> when the shit hits the fan and you have customers you need to know what you're doing. [...] don't take on customers.

I think you overestimate the level of DBA skills smaller startups have in house.

If you have found a way for a company to hold off on taking on customers until they can afford a proper DBA, I'd love to hear more about it. But it sounds backwards to me. In my experience, it typically goes the other way around: only after taking on enough customers to be decently profitable can a company afford a real DBA.

Until then, the choice used to be between managed database services or striking luck with a developer that had some database interest. These days, it's between managed database services, striking luck, or giving the developers access to an LLM. The LLM doesn't replace DBA skills that used to be there. There weren't any DBA skills there to begin with.