[pcthrowaway]

Oh you're right, the salary the employee would be getting in this hypothetical would be less than the fully loaded cost.

So the person claiming you can get 2 "great" devs with 10 YoE for 90K/yr is effectively saying there are 2 "great" devs with 10 YoE somewhere in the world who are willing to work for like $35K/yr (or something in that realm less than 45K/yr).

I don't think the market has gotten that bad, but again, I'm not really paying attention to the job market right now.

[tptacek]

Right, I would just bring this back to, the fact that we're even entertaining this discussion illustrates how these hosting costs have basically nothing to do with this person's economic problem. With 2MM active users, if $90k/yr is breaking the bank, you haven't figured it out yet.

That's not to say it can't be figured out! But people telling them that they should reduce hosting costs are doing a disservice.