[khamidou]

I mean, it's not like you can get away with running with zero SREs if you're running in the cloud. The personnel costs for on-prem hosting are vastly exaggerated, especially if you contract out the actual annoying work to a colo.

[ryan_lane]

Smart hands is more expensive than having dedicated datacenter staff, and the dedicated staff do a considerably better job. It's worth noting that WMF runs _very_ lean in terms of its datacenter staff.

You're also ignoring the need for infrastructure/network engineers, software engineers, fundraising engineers, product managers, community managers, managers, HR, legal, finance/accounting, fundraisers, etc.