My experience has been that the majority of startups don't hire a sysadmin at all, and instead rely on their developers to handle everything. Especially at the

My experience has been that the majority of startups don't hire a sysadmin at all, and instead rely on their developers to handle everything. Especially at the early stages when they're not rolling in magic VC cash, it's hard to justify an extra salary for someone who isn't primarily creating features/adding obvious visible-to-end-users value. My main point is that it's possible to get a specialist for less than a Valley-focussed startup might realise, not that you should just hire 'some guy' who is detached from your team. If your remote workers aren't integrated into your business then you're doing it wrong (and don't think that you absolutely need everyone in the same room: look at GitHub, who do superb work with a distributed team).