Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground?

Re:Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground? by vidarh on Monday November 02, 2020 @02:09PM (#24971821)

Or, you know, you could have brought in a consultant part time. If you're small enough that you can handle an AWS setup without someone full time, you could run on a managed hosting setup for less including an external consultant charging ridiculous hourly rates.

Clients on AWS were always my best ones, because they were used to paying so much over the odds I could set my rates much higher.

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Re:Is a billion dollars worth of server lying on the ground? by AtlasBarfed on Monday November 02, 2020 @10:49PM (#24976119)

Yeah, I wanted an extra person on our desperately understaffed team, so I proposed I cut about a million bucks of spending year-on-year from AWS.

They didn't want to increase the head count. The AWS spend was a different silo/team/contract.

Corporate accounting is insane.

It almost smelled like "well, we negotiated this great AWS discount, so it doesn't bother us that we are spending an extra million. We're getting it at a DISCOUNT!"

Is there some MBA trend where every headcount is some ticking time bomb of liability that is 10x worse than their yearly salary?

You spend 150k on servers, they don't improve over a year.

You spend 150k on a decent employee, not even rockstar ninja 100xer, and they will deliver useful, although sometimes hidden, productivity and optimization.

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