> and deploying mostly meant getting my jar file or whatever running on some ec2 instance And then you: - deploy the wrong jar - someone else overwrites your

> and deploying mostly meant getting my jar file or whatever running on some ec2 instance And then you: - deploy the wrong jar - someone else overwrites your jar - the jar and its libraries has a vulnerability (e.g. log4j) - the jar doesn't support the Java version installed on the EC2 instance - the EC2 instance isn't patched and gets hacked - the EC2 instance generates lots of logs, fills up the disk and crashes ... and many more There are reasons some things are put in place. It's not just a sunk cost. Is insurance just a sunk cost? There's always a risk factor to it. Platform doesn't need to be a huge team or lots of complexity. Lots of things can be automated but you still need to cater for important essentials.