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> Infra teams need to prove their worth or get out of the way This is an incredibly demeaning comment. Assuming your colleagues have inherent worth and that th

> Infra teams need to prove their worth or get out of the way This is an incredibly demeaning comment. Assuming your colleagues have inherent worth and that they're doing their jobs reasonably given the constraints and demands placed upon them is a far more humane way to go about work. > The business cares about time to market, not the perfect little homegrown PaaS the infra team built. Those "perfect little homegrown PaaS" solutions get built for a reason - because of what happens after you get to market: the business starts to care a whole lot about how much it costs to run the thing you just shipped. One of the main reasons a "perfect little homegrown PaaS" gets built is because it's typically a lot cheaper to run in-house. Lots of downsides to it, for sure, but you can't neglect the immense cost of a PaaS when you're running a business.

bheadmaster 3y ago
> Assuming your colleagues have inherent worth That sounds cute, but humans don't have inherent worth in a business. If you don't contribute to success (and aren't good enough at deceiving people that you are), you're going to get laid off. I think that's what the parent comment is saying - infra is competing with potentially cheaper and more flexible solutions. Even if they do their jobs the best they can, put 100% effort in, yada yada yada - if there's a more efficient solution, infra as a whole will be left behind.
- mighmi 3y ago
  > infra is competing with potentially cheaper For example? The managed or cloud or... solutions are normally magnitudes more expensive than in house. PaaS are the closest in cost, due to the admin savings etc. but even there, we know current prices are investor funded to gain share. At the far end, compare what you can get for $150/month at Hetzner vs. AWS. At real scale, paying for an infra team to run it will save a lot of money (and I've yet to see a fully managed solution which doesn't have a team of YAMLers anyway.)
  - 0xEFF 3y ago
    There are loads of startups offering platforms as a service for about half the cost per year of one devops engineer.
    - dmvdoug 3y ago
      I think you overlooked (or perhaps just ignored) their point about that: > even there, we know current prices are investor funded to gain share
- boondoggle16 3y ago
  Artisan t-shirt makers have inherent worth too... doesn't mean we employ an artisan t-shirt maker for every 4 employees.
- drewbug01 3y ago
  > That sounds cute, but humans don't have inherent worth in a business. If you don't contribute to success (and aren't good enough at deceiving people that you are), you're going to get laid off. Of course humans have inherent worth in a business - humans are the business. I refuse to emulate the hyper-capitalist mindset of "some people are worthless." I'm not sure if you're saying that this is a value you hold, but it is certainly a value I do not share. There's a lot of room to talk about what "value" is in a business (including how some "value" is more readily quantified than others, and how we tend to mistake that for the only "value" that exists). But we have to stop conflating that with the worth of the humans in the business - that's not a humane way to view your fellow man. > infra is competing with potentially cheaper and more flexible solutions [citation needed] I've been in the field for awhile now, and I can't say I've ever seen a PaaS turn out to be more flexible or cheaper in the long run. Even my beloved Heroku, to whom I compare all present and past PaaS offerings on the market! There are some limited exceptions I recognize for things like internal applications, or niche applications that do not have a broad user base (and never will), but I don't think those exceptions are enough to support the statement. Our industry chases fads in a circle. This isn't the first time we've all decried "infra is bad, long live hosted services!" - Heroku's heydey wasn't that long ago, and I fondly recall App Engine being a big deal. Then the bill comes due and people migrate. Hell, you could even consider mainframes a part of the cycle, if you squint at it.
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    > Of course humans have inherent worth in a business - humans are the business OK, can you please send me paychecks for doing nothing in your company? I have inherent value in your business, afterall. Thanks.
    - seadan83 3y ago
      I used to badmouth the MBAs at tech companies to no end, that they don't get it, just do management planning porn, aren't around for the consequences, favor sounding good over being substantive, and generally could all be fired. I then realized later that leadership and getting a large group of humans to work on a common goal is very difficult. The idea the other group is doing nothing is usually a perception (or a lack of perspective, lack of empathy, and maybe arrogance), usually.

bheadmaster 3y ago

> Assuming your colleagues have inherent worth That sounds cute, but humans don't have inherent worth in a business. If you don't contribute to success (and aren't good enough at deceiving people that you are), you're going to get laid off. I think that's what the parent comment is saying - infra is competing with potentially cheaper and more flexible solutions. Even if they do their jobs the best they can, put 100% effort in, yada yada yada - if there's a more efficient solution, infra as a whole will be left behind.

mighmi 3y ago
> infra is competing with potentially cheaper For example? The managed or cloud or... solutions are normally magnitudes more expensive than in house. PaaS are the closest in cost, due to the admin savings etc. but even there, we know current prices are investor funded to gain share. At the far end, compare what you can get for $150/month at Hetzner vs. AWS. At real scale, paying for an infra team to run it will save a lot of money (and I've yet to see a fully managed solution which doesn't have a team of YAMLers anyway.)
- 0xEFF 3y ago
  There are loads of startups offering platforms as a service for about half the cost per year of one devops engineer.
  - dmvdoug 3y ago
    I think you overlooked (or perhaps just ignored) their point about that: > even there, we know current prices are investor funded to gain share
boondoggle16 3y ago
Artisan t-shirt makers have inherent worth too... doesn't mean we employ an artisan t-shirt maker for every 4 employees.
drewbug01 3y ago
> That sounds cute, but humans don't have inherent worth in a business. If you don't contribute to success (and aren't good enough at deceiving people that you are), you're going to get laid off. Of course humans have inherent worth in a business - humans are the business. I refuse to emulate the hyper-capitalist mindset of "some people are worthless." I'm not sure if you're saying that this is a value you hold, but it is certainly a value I do not share. There's a lot of room to talk about what "value" is in a business (including how some "value" is more readily quantified than others, and how we tend to mistake that for the only "value" that exists). But we have to stop conflating that with the worth of the humans in the business - that's not a humane way to view your fellow man. > infra is competing with potentially cheaper and more flexible solutions [citation needed] I've been in the field for awhile now, and I can't say I've ever seen a PaaS turn out to be more flexible or cheaper in the long run. Even my beloved Heroku, to whom I compare all present and past PaaS offerings on the market! There are some limited exceptions I recognize for things like internal applications, or niche applications that do not have a broad user base (and never will), but I don't think those exceptions are enough to support the statement. Our industry chases fads in a circle. This isn't the first time we've all decried "infra is bad, long live hosted services!" - Heroku's heydey wasn't that long ago, and I fondly recall App Engine being a big deal. Then the bill comes due and people migrate. Hell, you could even consider mainframes a part of the cycle, if you squint at it.
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  > Of course humans have inherent worth in a business - humans are the business OK, can you please send me paychecks for doing nothing in your company? I have inherent value in your business, afterall. Thanks.
  - seadan83 3y ago
    I used to badmouth the MBAs at tech companies to no end, that they don't get it, just do management planning porn, aren't around for the consequences, favor sounding good over being substantive, and generally could all be fired. I then realized later that leadership and getting a large group of humans to work on a common goal is very difficult. The idea the other group is doing nothing is usually a perception (or a lack of perspective, lack of empathy, and maybe arrogance), usually.