Moving from one cloud to another, even with containers, is never easy at large scale.
(source: I have worked at AWS for 6 years, at VMware for 2, and I've seen hundreds of clients go through this exercise)
If moving operations around is insurmountably difficult, you built operations incorrectly. Put another, even broader, way with a few more implications: if you are totally reliant on one vendor for continuity of any part of your operations, you built operations incorrectly and are introducing unnecessary risk. If us-east-1 goes down and you cease generating revenue as a result, you have built operations incorrectly. That's really all there is to it. And yes, I realize this means 80%, maybe more, of the operations in in the world is built incorrectly. We just learned Snap's is[0]. Maybe even yours! And that's fine as long as you're working on it. Good news: said exercise is a good chance to fix it!
Now that half the crowd is inhaling to bombastically retort that undoubtedly controversial, yet completely true, paragraph, allow me to quickly redirect:
What's "the real world," anyway? Most of HN forgets a Windows/.NET ecosystem exists, not to mention extra-valley gigs in, say, Nebraska. Would you say the lone sysadmin holding together a hospital in Des Moines is gaining "real world" experience and able to meet you in discussion? Seriously, I hate "the real world" and the people who fire it as a volley during an argument. Even your career is not indicative of "the real world." (Nor is mine.)
[0]: Flagrantly so. I've spent the better part of an hour trying to concoct a scenario where that deal is even remotely in the win column for Snap. Still trying. You enshrined a business disincentive (nay, prohibition!) toward optimizing your opex into a five year contract and $400mm a year operating Snap was some kind of win? ... How on Earth? Even with a quarter billion DAUs...
If you're ever in Tampa or Chicago, let's grab a beer or dinner my treat. Would love to share war stories.
An additional point is that even the second tier PaaS/IaaS providers (like GE/Predix, for example) are trying to get out of the DC ownership business. There's no compelling reason for them to keep their own DCs when a) it's expensive to run & keep fresh, b) it's CapEx, and c) it costs them expensive heads to organize and manage everything.
That shows about as much of a lack of real world experience as you are bemoaning. It doesn't work that way in real life.
"Real world" and "real life" dismissals of said ideal are stupid, lame excuses for people who want to make a stupid, lame argument to cover up stupid, lame technical debt in operations by either (a) assailing the credentials of the speaker, as this entire thread has spent much time doing, and/or (b) providing a "well, everybody else isn't investing in this, neither should we" cop-out. And yes, you are doing it wrong. Rather than getting defensive, pulling the knives out, downvoting on sight, and trying to wipe away or justify doing it wrong, why don't you instead realize that it's motivation to do it better? We should all do things better, and every time a single AWS region goes down and takes out half the Internet I sigh because it's this exact, stupid, lame justification fest that results in that situation.
Work toward correct operations. You will never reach it. The cognitive dissonance of these two statements is totally acceptable. If you build a new service today and don't account for DR and security up front it just goes to show me that you haven't learned from the very public failures of those who have come before you, and that to me shows a lack of real world experience.
And yes, I'm aware of several shops that can literally flip a switch, and we're talking cage and ASN, not hobby-scale iOS backends. It's not like finding the holy grail and requires developers who "get" operations. It does exist. And it exists in real life! \u1F632!