You're not cloud native, you're cloud trapped

The cloud was supposed to simplify everything. No more hardware to manage. No more capacity planning. Just deploy and scale

Instead we got 200+ AWS services, bills that require a PhD to understand, and a new job title called “FinOps Engineer” whose entire purpose is to figure out why you’re paying $50k/month

The cloud saved us from managing servers. Then it created an entire industry of consultants to manage the cloud

The promise vs reality

The promise: Focus on your code, not infrastructure. Pay only for what you use. Scale infinitely

The reality: You need AWS consultants to architect your system. You need FinOps engineers to understand your bill. You need DevOps engineers who specialize in CloudFormation. You need security engineers who know IAM policies

The cloud didn’t eliminate ops. It just made ops require vendor-specific certifications

A VM needs someone who knows Linux. AWS needs someone who knows Linux AND 47 proprietary services AND how they interact AND their pricing models AND their gotchas

We traded one type of complexity for another. Except now you can’t Google the answers because every setup is a unique snowflake of managed services

The human cost nobody talks about

“But managed services save engineering time”

Do they? Let’s count the people you now need:

• A solutions architect to design the system
• A DevOps engineer to implement it
• A FinOps analyst to watch the bill
• A security specialist for IAM and compliance
• A consultant when something breaks in a way nobody understands
• A vendor rep to explain why your reserved instances don’t cover what you thought

Compare this to a VM:

• Someone who knows Linux

The cloud didn’t reduce headcount. It specialized it. And specialized people cost more

The knowledge tax

Your junior dev can SSH into a VM and figure things out. They can read logs, check processes, understand what’s happening

Your junior dev cannot debug why Lambda cold starts are killing your p99 latency without a week of reading AWS documentation. They cannot understand why their DynamoDB queries cost $500/month without learning about RCUs, WCUs, and scan vs query. They cannot figure out why their VPC setup doesn’t work without understanding NAT gateways, route tables, and security groups

The cloud has a knowledge tax. Every proprietary service is a new thing to learn. A new set of gotchas. A new pricing model to understand

And that knowledge expires. AWS deprecates services. Changes pricing. Updates behavior. Your hard-won expertise has a shelf life

PostgreSQL knowledge lasts a career. DynamoDB knowledge lasts until Amazon decides to push something new

The credits trap

Here’s how it works:

1. AWS/GCP/Azure gives your startup $100k in credits
2. You build everything on their proprietary services
3. Credits run out after 2 years
4. Your bill is now $8k/month
5. Migration would cost 6 months of engineering time
6. You’re trapped. Forever

This isn’t a bug. It’s the business model

And who benefits? The cloud vendors. The consultants. The conference speakers. The certification programs. Everyone except the company paying the bill

The FinOps absurdity

We invented an entire discipline to understand cloud bills

Think about that. The pricing is so complex, so opaque, so full of gotchas that companies hire full-time employees just to figure out what they’re paying for

NAT Gateway data processing fees. Cross-AZ transfer costs. CloudWatch log ingestion charges. S3 request pricing. Lambda duration billing in 1ms increments. Reserved instance utilization tracking

A VM costs $15/month. That’s the bill. That’s it. No surprises. No hidden fees. No dedicated analyst required

The real trade-offs

The cloud has real benefits:

• No hardware to manage
• Global infrastructure available instantly
• Genuine elasticity for unpredictable workloads
• Managed databases that handle backups and failover

But be honest about the costs:

• Vendor lock-in that compounds over time
• Pricing complexity that requires dedicated staff
• Knowledge silos around proprietary services
• Exit costs that grow with every service you adopt

The question isn’t “cloud vs no cloud”. It’s “are the trade-offs worth it for YOUR situation”

For a startup with $100k in credits and no ops experience? Maybe

For a company paying market rate with predictable workloads? Do the math

The flexibility mindset

I use AWS when it makes sense. I use Lambda when it’s the right tool. The cloud isn’t evil

But I also run workloads on simple VMs. Because sometimes a $15 VPS does the same job as $300 in managed services

The goal is flexibility:

• Use open standards when possible
• Avoid proprietary services when alternatives exist
• Calculate exit costs before adopting new services
• Question whether complexity is necessary

Cloud native should mean “runs anywhere”. Not “runs only on AWS”

The bottom line

The cloud was supposed to save us from infrastructure complexity. Instead it created a new kind of complexity that requires consultants, certifications, and dedicated cost analysts

That’s not progress. That’s a different kind of lock-in

Before you go all-in on managed services, ask yourself: am I saving engineering time, or just trading one set of problems for another? And who’s really benefiting from that trade?

The cloud is a tool. Use it wisely. Don’t let it use you