And to build a ride sharing company. First Lyft should have built an expertise in infrastructure? Should they also learn how to build cars to because it might save them money in the long run?
But, uh, wasn't this about their current expenses? Or their expenses at some point after their AWS bill got bigger than 1-2 employees?
And even with current expenses, building out a core competency in infrastructure that has nothing to do with your domain of expertise can be a distraction.
If you can't find anyone to even handle the hiring, let me stay far away from this company that teeters the verge of collapse when someone gets sick.
In fact, I was offered a job as a “digital transformation consultant”/“enterprise architect” to be the face of a company that did just that - take over a complete project for funded startups or other companies who had an idea but no in house expertise. Of course I would be the face of the company where most of the work would be “rural sourced” and outsourced.
The alternative being that they should have build an expertise in using AWS instead?
I'm not particularly trying to argue either way; I'm just saying that claiming that using AWS doesn't need expertise is a false premise. AWS isn't special here, either.
If instead you use some sort of abstraction and/or tooling, now you need expertise in that tooling.
Uber's doing that and they're a comparable company.