[arp242]

> I don't remember the exact number of CPU cores amounted to a single SWE but IIRC it was in the thousands.

I think this probably holds true for outfits like Google because 1) on their scale "a core" is much cheaper than average, and 2) their salaries are much higher than average. But for your average business, even large businesses? A lot less so.

I think this is a classic "Facebook/Google/Netflix/etc. are in a class of their own and almost none of their practices will work for you"-type thing.

[morepork]

Maybe not to the same extent, but an AWS EC2 m5.large VM with 2 cores and 8 GB RAM costs ~$500/year (1 year reserved). Even if your engineers are being paid $50k/year, that's the same as 100 VMs or 200 cores + 800 GB RAM.