I've done dev-ops in the ads industry before, it's really not that hard if you're a competent programmer. You just have to take a more studious approach than most non-dev-ops programmers and read up on things before deploying them.

But if you want to let the various PAAS providers put the fear into you, that's your cowardice.

Let the others learn as they may.

Edit:

To clarify, Heroku is making the problem harder on themselves than it would be for an individual to serve their own needs because of the complexity managing so many customers and apps.

You don't have to be Heroku to do for yourself what they offer.