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0 pointsapi5mo ago0 comments

How do you deprogram your devs and ops people from the learned helplessness of cloud native ideology?

I've found that it's almost impossible to even hire people who aren't terrified of the idea of self-hosting. This is deeply bizarre for someone who installed Linux from floppy disks in 1994, but most modern devs have fully swallowed the idea that cloud handles things for them that mere mortals cannot handle.

This, in turn, is a big reason why companies use cloud in spite of the insane markup: it's hard to staff for anything else. Cloud has utterly dominated the developer and IT mindset.

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CursedSilicon5mo ago

>I've found that it's almost impossible to even hire people who aren't terrified of the idea of self-hosting

Are y'all hiring? [1]

I did 15 months at AWS and consider it the worst career move of my life. I much prefer working with self-hosting where I can actually optimize the entire hardware stack I'm working with. Infrastructure is fun to tinker with. Cloud hosting feels like a miserable black box that you dump your software into and "hope"

[1] https://cursedsilicon.net/resume.pdf

fer5mo ago

>I've found that it's almost impossible to even hire people who aren't terrified of the idea of self-hosting

Funny, I couldn't find a new job for a while because I had no cloud experience, finally and ironically I got hired at AWS. Every now and then these days I get headhunters unsure about my actual AWS experience because of my lack of certifications.

awestroke5mo ago

So you'd rather self host a database as well? How do you prevent data loss? Do you run a whole database cluster in multiple physical locations with automatic failover? Who will spend time monitoring replication lag? Where do you store backups? Who is responsible for tuning performance settings?

theideaofcoffee5mo ago

Hosting a database is no different than self-hosting any other service. This viewpoint hath what cloud wrought, this atrophying of the most basic operational skills, as if running these magic services are only achievable by the hyperscalers who said they are the only ones capable.

The answers to all of your questions are a hard: it depends. What are your engineering objectives? What are your business requirements? Uptime? Performance? Cost constraints and considerations? The cloud doesn't take away the need to answer these questions, it's just that self-hosting actually requires you to know what you are doing versus clicking a button and just hoping for the best.

xmcp1235mo ago

I would argue that correctly tuning a database is significantly more difficult than most services one would self host.

But that said, you can afford a lot more hardware if you’re not using RDS, so the tuning doesn’t need to be perfect.

1 more reply

7bit5mo ago

I really don't understand this comment. The cloud doesn't protect you from data loss or provide any of the things you named.

baby_souffle5mo ago

Yes it does? For a fraction of a dollar per hour, AWS will give me a URI that I can connect to. On the other end is a postgres instance that already has authentication, backups handled for me. It's also backed by a storage layer that is far more robust than anything I can get together in my rented cage with my corporate budget.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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CursedSilicon5mo ago

>I've found that it's almost impossible to even hire people who aren't terrified of the idea of self-hosting

Are y'all hiring? [1]

[1] https://cursedsilicon.net/resume.pdf

fer5mo ago

>I've found that it's almost impossible to even hire people who aren't terrified of the idea of self-hosting

awestroke5mo ago

theideaofcoffee5mo ago

xmcp1235mo ago

I would argue that correctly tuning a database is significantly more difficult than most services one would self host.

But that said, you can afford a lot more hardware if you’re not using RDS, so the tuning doesn’t need to be perfect.

1 more reply

7bit5mo ago

I really don't understand this comment. The cloud doesn't protect you from data loss or provide any of the things you named.

baby_souffle5mo ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse