February 19, 2026
Cloud fights, hot bytes
Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years
AWS love, Datadog drama: 4 years of startup infra confessions — and the comments go wild
TLDR: A startup engineer backs Amazon’s cloud and managed tools while flagging regrets around certain add‑ons and pricey vendors. Commenters cheer the clear wins, pounce on a support‑policy contradiction, and bond over the Datadog “can’t quit you” dilemma—because cloud choices hit your uptime and your budget.
A startup engineer just dropped a four‑year tell‑all on their tech stack, backing Amazon’s cloud and managed tools like EKS (Amazon’s hosted Kubernetes), RDS (a managed database), and Redis, while regretting some “managed add‑ons” and pricey extras. But the real action is in the comments, where readers turned this post into a group therapy session for cloud choices.
One camp cheers the author’s “AWS all the way” stance, with one fan calling Google’s support “non‑existent.” Another side calls out a spicy contradiction: praising AWS hand‑holding while regretting premium support. Cue jokes about account managers as therapists and Google support as a chatbot with amnesia.
Then comes the wallet pain: Datadog—the flashy monitoring tool—gets roasted. One commenter summed up the vibe: “they suck but not enough to leave,” sparking memes about “golden handcuffs” and gym memberships you never cancel. Tool nerds showed up too: Renovate vs Dependabot (bots that auto‑update your code) got name‑checked, with a commenter building a tool to explain breaking changes like a plane’s black box. And yes, there’s a side quest on ditching Jira and whether one big database is a cozy kitchen or a single‑point‑of‑failure time bomb.
The final mood? Equal parts applause—“best post in a while”—and side‑eye. Drama served, lessons learned, wallets wept.
Key Points
- •The author endorses AWS over Google Cloud due to stronger account support, service stability, and mature Kubernetes integrations.
- •EKS is preferred over self-managed Kubernetes control planes; ECS is noted but Kubernetes integrations have reduced its advantage.
- •EKS managed add-ons are regretted because customization needs were frequent; Helm charts were adopted to fit GitOps workflows.
- •RDS is endorsed as a managed database, emphasizing the criticality of data and the value of managed services.
- •Redis ElastiCache and ECR are endorsed for reliability, features, and integration; quay.io was replaced due to stability issues, and AWS VPN is endorsed.