> This almost is not ever true for software startups, who get more value from speed, flexibility, and not needing to pay a team to manage hardware.
Exactly. I cringe every time I look at the AWS/Azure running total, but at the same time I realize that paying a separate team would be even more ludicrous at our current scale.
Right now, I can single-handedly administer 100% of our IT infrastructure as barely a side-concern because nearly everything is inside the Azure/AWS bubble. Delegating IT management tasks to non-wizards is actually feasible too.
The moment you start racking servers on-prem, you need a very specialized workforce to keep them alive. I suppose you could vendor parts of this out too, but then you are really splitting hairs regarding why you brought crap on-site in the first place.