Largely the point I'm trying to put here
> Their first month’s bill was $50,000. And it only went up from there.
Well, I've read it's not uncommon to have salaries of 200-500k USD/year per programmer, on that scale may be it doesn't matter is it 50k spending on infra or 100k . For others such extra spending is _something_ though.
Individual contributors see these numbers and act like it's some huge amount of money but in the grander scheme of things when you're approving budgets for multiple teams of senior SWEs and other roles, it doesn't even register.
So, ICs who sweat that kind of waste are right to do so. If management sees that someone thinks 50k/mo is no big deal to squander, bet your ass there’s a good chance they’ll take at least a month’s worth out of that person’s annual bonus since that kind of money matters so little to them.