I somewhat disagree here, but also somewhat agree.
In my org, we get a lot of requirements that require very different skillsets. For the first 2-3 years, our task list was mostly CRUD stuff with some domain specific logic, but otherwise a boring web app. In the last 1-2 years, we have:
- ported a Fortran simulation to Python
- embedded a C++ simulation in Python
- created a 3D UX for our previously 2D only app (lots of 3D logic on both FE and BE)
- implemented a machine learning algorithm to train our simulations
If I hired only for the work I’d seen in the past, we’d be completely unfit to handle this workload since we’d mostly have people who are really good at building CRUD apps (so DB optimization and quick UX building).
On the flipside, we cut off huge swaths of work so people don’t need to wear too many hats. We have:
- dedicated devOPs - handles everything from trst pipelines to prod deployments
- dedicated QA - manual and automated app-level testing - devs still do unit testing
- dedicated product teams who handle feature requirements and documentation
- dedicated UX team to produce designs for FE engineers to implement
So our devs only need to worry about development, but they also need a broad skillset in that domain, from everything from local tooling to working in different domains. We hire a diverse set of candidates, some with a heavy math background, some with design experience, and some with low level programming experience, because we never know what projects we’ll get or who will suddenly leave the org.
LiamMayfair@lemmy.sdf.org 5 days ago
This hits the nail right on the head. The point of cloud services is to take away all the overheads of building and delivering software solutions that have nothing to do with the actual business problem I’m trying to solve.
If I want to get a new product to market, I want to spend most of my time making my core product better, more marketable, more efficient. I don’t want to divert time and resources to just keep the lights on, like having to hire a whole bunch of people whose only jobs is to provision and manage servers and IT infrastructure (or nurse a Kubernetes cluster for that matter). Managing Kubernetes or physical tin servers is not what my business is about. All this tech infrastructure is a means to an end, not the end itself.
That’s why cloud services is such a cost efficient proposition for 98% businesses. Hell, if I could run everything using a serverless model (not always possible or cost effective) I’d do it gladly.
loudwhisper@infosec.pub 5 days ago
This is quite a trite argument from my point of view. Also, this is from the perspective of the business, which I don’t particularly care about, and I tend to look from the perspective of the worker.
Additionally, the cloud allows to scale quickly, but the fact that it allows to delegate everything is a myth. It’s so much a myth that you see companies running fully on cloud with an army on people in platform teams and additionally you get finops teams, entire teams whose job is optimizing the spend of cloud. Sure, when you start out it’s 100% reasonable to use cloud services, but in the medium-long term, it’s an incredibly poor investment, because you still need people to administer the cloud plus, you need to pay a huge premium for the services you buy, which your workforce now can’t manage or build anymore. This means you still pay people to do work which is not your core business, but now they babysit cloud services instead of the actual infra, and you are paying twice.
Cloud exploded during the times of easy money at no interest, where startups had to build some stuff, IPO and then explode without ever turning a single dollar of profit. It’s a model that fits perfect in that context.
gray@pawb.social 5 days ago
At least where I work, our cloud team is ~35 people who manage the whole thing.
The datacenter team? In the hundreds.
Cloud is not the answer to every infra problem, but the flexibility, time to market, and lifecycle burden are easily beneficial weighed against finops. I’m an Azure engineer myself, it’s no comparison the benefits to a managed solution vs rolling your own DC for a lot of regular business workloads and solutions. Beyond that personally I’ve been able to skill up in areas I wouldn’t be able to otherwise if I was stuck troubleshooting bad cables, rebuilding a dead RAID array, or planning VMWare scaling nonsense.
loudwhisper@infosec.pub 5 days ago
But those are absolutely not the only 2 levels. Server rental can be managed easily by the same infra team who manages the cloud, for a fraction of cost.
I will say more, the same exact team that spends time managing EKS clusters could manage self-managed clusters and have money to spare for additional hires.
noobface@lemmy.world 5 days ago
The vast majority of on-prem infra is under-utilized, over-provisioned, and slow to adapt to the business. I spent a decade designing DC infra and the number of times I revisited a customer only to see their clusters running at 10% utilization was very, very common. Digging into their capacity planning processes didn’t help. Every team built in safety buffers to a point they could’ve sustained growth well beyond the lifecycle of the hardware. Convincing half a dozen leaders their budget would be better spent elsewhere, even coming from the sales engineer, was like pulling teeth. They were so much more afraid of getting blocked on their next capex request, they pushed for as much as they could get at outrageous growth expectations to prevent the off chance their team capacity constrained revenue growth.
I get you that it’s easy to do the same in the cloud, but you can’t return and on-prem server. A cloud VM, just shut it down and you’re done.
AWS talks about minimizing undifferentiated heavy lifting as a reason to adopted managed services and I find that largely to be true. The majority of companies aren’t differentiating their services via some low-level technology advantage that allows them to cost less. It’s a different purchasing model, a smoother workflow, or a unique insight into data. The value an organization provides to customers should be the primary focus of the business, the rest is a means to sharpen that focus.
loudwhisper@infosec.pub 5 days ago
If this flexibility is needed, and it’s an “if”, a dedicated server does the same. But even a cloudVM is already lower level compared to other services (which are even more abstract) - like EKS, SQS, etc.
In my experience this often translates in values that flows to AWS, while the company giving value to customers is stuck with millions of cloud bills each month, and a large engineering footprint that eventually needs to cut, leaving fewer and fewer people working on the product.
That said, I acknowledge that cloud has business reasons to exist, I wrote an entire other post about my hate for it, but I still acknowledge that. However there are some myths that finally are getting dispelled (outsource infra and focus on your product).