Never mind that $100k is probably reasonably close to what you'll be paying your IT guy in the Bay Area anyway, and the Amazon service is 24/7, probably better

Never mind that $100k is probably reasonably close to what you'll be paying your IT guy in the Bay Area anyway, and the Amazon service is 24/7, probably better than even the best person you could hire, and never even reads the Google recruiter emails. And that's just pure cost. If you're in the Bay Area bubble, you probably have much more valuable things for your systems guys to work on. Point being, even for a Bay Area company, even at twice the pure cost of personnel, this looks like a pretty good deal.