2) Why would you want to do that? You'd use bitmap index because it's quite compact and you can process the data at the speed of memory bandwidth, using ascii defeats that, no?
3) Not really. I just can't imagine costs of running any large website or app with serverless.
4) I think it's the same in the US - everyone competes for the same talent with FAANG (MAANG?). The salary gap between big companies and startups is even lower in Russia. Also, we humans want to do meaningful things, some of us struggle to find meaning in being another bigco employee.
5) Py