[−]probably_wrong · 2026-11-15 Sun 12:13 UTC ·
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Friends of mine wanted to buy a GPU server last year for their new project. Management told them no, that there was a deal with cloud providers and that investing the budget in cloud compute was better.
The project ran out of budget roughly three months in. From what I heard, status meetings consist of everyone getting together once a month, asking "have we gotten any more budget yet? no?", and then wait until the project runs out.
Cloud providers need to make a profit too, and they've gotten very good at ensuring that their clients forget this point. The whole advantage of cloud compute is that you don't pay for the time you're not using it, but once you reach a certain point you're the one covering the overhead for everybody else.
The project ran out of budget roughly three months in. From what I heard, status meetings consist of everyone getting together once a month, asking "have we gotten any more budget yet? no?", and then wait until the project runs out.
Cloud providers need to make a profit too, and they've gotten very good at ensuring that their clients forget this point. The whole advantage of cloud compute is that you don't pay for the time you're not using it, but once you reach a certain point you're the one covering the overhead for everybody else.