[rogerbinns]

I've seen several commentators blame AWS! Before AWS, startups needed to budget for web servers and similar hardware, and a place to put them. That meant bigger offices with more floor space, plus power and similar services. Once AWS came (2007) startups could be anywhere, with the city tending to be more attractive to younger folk.

[jdsully]

Very few people were putting them directly in their offices, and they certainly weren't buying bigger spaces to fit them. Datacenters are the natural home for this stuff and the price was never exorborant if you're not insisting on a tier 1 facility.

[rogerbinns]

Imagine it is 2003 and you are doing a startup. You aren't deploying anything yet. You need a source code control server, a bug tracker, build servers, testing systems (so many versions of Windows), developer workstations, a file server, and various other bits of infrastructure (plus backups). This easily results in multiple systems per developer. Internet connectivity was slow and expensive which is why this kind of stuff was in the office, not at a colo. So your office needed proportionally more space per person.

[abalone]

Not a good theory. Before AWS startups would colocate. On premise was rare.

[rogerbinns]

You did still want on premise at the beginning, while going through the earlier phases of startup development. For example you need source code control, build servers, bug tracking, test setups, file servers, as well as developer workstations.

[abalone]

Not a significant space issue at the beginning. Still not a good theory.