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Comment by BadBadJellyBean | Hacker News Reader

I prefer not using managed services but I kind of understand the appeal. Instead of paying several engineers, that you have to vet first, to configure and maintain the services adjacent to your product you can just pay AWS or Azure or someone else to maintain the service. Then you can concentrate your whole manpower on your product. In case the service goes down you can blame someone else and maybe even recover some money. On the other hand it of course makes you dependent on the provider.

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Yep, been in a job like this. Use AWS because the team is three people and they don't want to waste time on patching, database administration, networking etc. I agree you pay more but in that team we were just able to get on with building the products.

What you’re describing is outsourcing. It’s still possible with on-prem or cloud VMs. You just hire a contractor provide those services.

You are correct but I don't know about the cost structure. Also you have to somehow verify that they do a good job. You sometimes only see bad work when something goes wrong. Also you have to first find a company that provides the service.

The cloud makes it simple. They offer you managed service X. They hire experts for service x and you pay a part of the cost on top of your infra cost. No searching. No vetting. You just use the service.

I see the why this might be attractive. It isn't to me. But the pencil pushers like it.

> Instead of paying several engineers, that you have to vet first, to configure and maintain the services adjacent to your product you can just pay AWS or Azure or someone else to maintain the service.

Your engineers who all have to possess AWS or similar certs before you hire them, work for free?

A move off VPS to managed services doesn't reduce your headcount or labour costs.

You are correct. Someone has to manage and plan the infra. But that is the same for on prem or other non cloud. What you don't necessary need is several database admins, several network admins, several kubernetes admins, etc. I don't necessarily agree, but that is the calculation. Azure hires the 24/7 admins for the service and you pay a bit more to get a share of them. I have heard this argument in person.

I think there is a very narrow space where you need the resources that this provides and it's not yet more cost effective to have your own team of admins. At a certain headcount a the number admins don't matter that much anymore.

> Your engineers who all have to possess AWS or similar certs

If you're using managed services that are so complex you need certified people then you're doing it wrong

In my experience it doesn’t take long until you use such complex offerings from the cloud vendors, you need those ops engineers anyways. Just with slightly different skillsets.

I'd say you need people with certain skill sets anyways but at a certain scale you have to get specialized people for some service. Database admins, kubernetes admins, network admins. At a small scale that can be one or two people. But if you want 24/7 with a bigger scale you need multiple people for each role. You have to find them, pay them, schedule their absences.

To some management types it looks like a good deal to not deal with that and just let Amazon/Microsoft/Google/etc. deal with finding people to support the service and just pay a bit extra to the infra cost. Then you can only hire cloud infra admins. I don't think it works that way but that is what I have observed.

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