People always say this as an argument against bare metal servers, but aren't you still have that staffing cost even if you're using a cloud provider? Cloud servers are more reliable than bare metals, but certainly not 100% sla yet. Shit happen regardless of using cloud or bare metal and we'll have to prepare for it regardless whatever type of servers we used.

Most issues I had with both cloud and bare metal servers are usually connectivity issues, which addressed by the vendors or data center operators with me doing nothing but refreshing status page rigorously. I never have hardware issues but it's probably because I always retire old servers after 4 years of operation.

I think their point is that it may not be cheaper if you account for staffing cost. Also, especially as a lone developer or a small team, it may be worth it to pay for someone else to manage the metal instead of doing it yourself.