[irq11]

”So instead of talking with customers and growing your business you are busy wasting your time installing a web server, database server, configuring build tools, etc.”

Oh come on. It takes maybe an afternoon of work to do everything you’ve described.

Let’s say you’re utterly clueless about all aspects of sysadmin, and you need to learn how to do it from scratch: 2-3 days, tops.

No matter how much you pad the schedule, it’s far worse to have to learn 5-10 “managed solutions” to do what you can do on a single VPS with an Ubuntu install.

Can you do it all with something like heroku? Sure, but you’ll probably spend at least an afternoon learning heroku (speaking as someone who has extensively used heroku, it’s not a panacea.)

If I heard this objection in the real world, from a dev who worked for me, I’d be seriously reconsidering my hiring decision. You’re either irrationally afraid of basic syadmin, or you lack fundamental knowledge.

[spookthesunset]

> or you’re just being lazy

LOL. Good developers are the most lazy people on the planet. Laziness is a virtue, not a sin!

If my developer told me our company could outsource all our sysadmin tasks to some third party I'd be a fool to not listen. If I was a developer and my boss called me lazy for trying to help the company move faster (which is far more important for a startup than saving a few bucks) because boss-person is a penny pincher, I'd reconsider my choice of employer.

A startup focused on pinching pennies is doomed from the start.

[madamelic]

Lazy when it counts.

This mantra that good engineers are universally lazy is absurd. I absolutely will find the easiest way to solve a problem... as long as that problem can tolerate that solution.

IaaS is a minefield and plainly saying IaaS >> barebones is absurd.

Engineering 'magic' is great until you realize you need something slightly different but you are locked into their framework, system, whatever. You then have to spend a bunch to engineer yourself out and end up with an inferior solution when you could've just done it 'simple' the first time.

An early engineer should have zero trouble pulling up an Ubuntu box, installing Nginx and Supervisor and pulling some default configs from StackOverflow. I have been re-using the same config for both for years now.

[wolco]

Great developers are not lazy. They close brackets and leave no debt. They are lazy in the sense that they implement the least features required because they know the pitfalls of over developing. They are lazy because they leave at 5 but only after finishing their work.

A great developer doesn't ask his boss to hire a third party to manage the server. They ask the boss to hire someone in house because getting anything non-basic done over trouble tickets is a non-starter. A great developer can handle pinching pennies because they use open source at home.

[barrkel]

The reason startups die is that they run out of money. Ramen profitable is a thing, and ramen costs less than the kind of outlays you're describing.

If you've hit a seam such that each feature you develop nets you more revenue, you'd be a complete idiot to optimize for costs. But a company in search of a business model hasn't gotten that far yet.