Good point - and in the case of managers there's also the "nobody got fired for buying IBM" effect: outcome A) huge microservices/cloud spend goes wrong, well

Good point - and in the case of managers there's also the "nobody got fired for buying IBM" effect: outcome A) huge microservices/cloud spend goes wrong, well at least you were following best practices, these things happen, what can you do. outcome B) you went with a Hetzner server and something went wrong, well you are a fool and should have gone with microservices, enjoy looking for a new job. Thus encouraging managers to choose microservices/cloud. It might not be the right decision for the company, but it's the right decision for the manager, and it's the manager making the decision.