1) "homegrown systems are expensive to engineer, but cheap to run" misses the most important part - how much does it cost to maintain, and how much of a RISK is it?
Homegrown probably means you're depending on tribal knowledge from a few core people who if they leave you're hosed. That's a risk. You also have to train EVERYONE you hire to learn the homegrown systems, instead of hiring people with externally transferrable skills that can come in and hit the ground running.
2) all of the on-prem folks had to additionally take on that responsibility
Most transitions/migrations always end up with a period where you have both systems running. It's not surprising that at first everyone has additional responsibilities. It sounds like the "on-prem folks" either didn't have the skills to work in the cloud or refused to learn, and needed external hires. Well, that's one way to put themselves out of a job, and that would be the next step once the homegrown system is deprecated.
Obviously there's a reason why "not invented here" syndrome exists. There's a reason "build vs buy" is a complex discussion because of more than just buy costs. People always prefer the home-grown thing, DIY. Engineers especially. On this site, particularly. And, also, plenty of successful businesses exist by cutting out layers and going on a shallower stack ("your margin is my opportunity").
But at the end of the day, for the vast majority of businesses, companies, and software shops, managing their own in-house infrastructure is a worse decision than paying a cloud vendor.
> Homegrown probably means you're depending on tribal knowledge from a few core people who if they leave you're hosed.
there's so much complexity and tribal knowledge with cloud deployments that if tomorrow our cloud experts leave we're also very definitely hosed too, despite everything being documented thoroughly. I'm involved in a product that leverages a cloud-based metaverse system (Mozilla Hubs) that recently had organisational changes requiring us to change our hosting approach, and it's taking the better part of a year of work to understand its logic, for something that would have been a non-issue if homegrown & self-hosted.
I see both points but I have to agree with this one, especially if we’re talking small companies. A startup should outsource everything that is outside their core product (but not more than that), so they can focus on making their product top class.
1) "homegrown systems are expensive to engineer, but cheap to run" misses the most important part - how much does it cost to maintain, and how much of a RISK is it?
Homegrown probably means you're depending on tribal knowledge from a few core people who if they leave you're hosed. That's a risk. You also have to train EVERYONE you hire to learn the homegrown systems, instead of hiring people with externally transferrable skills that can come in and hit the ground running.
2) all of the on-prem folks had to additionally take on that responsibility
Most transitions/migrations always end up with a period where you have both systems running. It's not surprising that at first everyone has additional responsibilities. It sounds like the "on-prem folks" either didn't have the skills to work in the cloud or refused to learn, and needed external hires. Well, that's one way to put themselves out of a job, and that would be the next step once the homegrown system is deprecated.
Obviously there's a reason why "not invented here" syndrome exists. There's a reason "build vs buy" is a complex discussion because of more than just buy costs. People always prefer the home-grown thing, DIY. Engineers especially. On this site, particularly. And, also, plenty of successful businesses exist by cutting out layers and going on a shallower stack ("your margin is my opportunity").
But at the end of the day, for the vast majority of businesses, companies, and software shops, managing their own in-house infrastructure is a worse decision than paying a cloud vendor.