> performance regressions, heat maps, kernel issues etc.

> AWS takes that away and makes you focus on the product.

ha ha ha no. Have been dealing with kernel issues on my AWS machines for a long time. They lock up under certain kinds of high load. AWS support is useless. Experimenting with kernel version leads to performance regressions.

AWS is great if your IT/purchasing department is inefficient. Getting a new AWS machine is instant, compared to getting purchasing to approve new machine and IT allocating it to you. But all the low-level stuff is still there.