On: Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers?

[tomc1985]

There's a finance angle behind cloud stuff too that's irrestible for the bean counters: cloud stuff is operations expense, on-prem is a capital expense. Unfortunately these folks are heavily incentivized to favor OpEx

I'm not a bean counter, all I know is those guys at my last job would rattle off about it like zombies. IIRC its a tax thing

[jscheel → tomc1985]

Opex is fully deductible each year the expense occurs, wheras capex requires amortized depreciation over the life of the purchased item. Makes it harder to calculate taxes.

[jannes → jscheel]

Should we call it Amortisation as a Service (AaaS) then?

Is that really the only benefit?

[jscheel → jannes]

I mean, I'm not a bean counter. I'm just guessing that's why they like it.

[morelisp → tomc1985]

It's not a tax thing, long-term leases or colocation is a liability for acquisitions. (You could also build a revenue-positive company, but that's the loser way out, apparently.)

[goodpoint → tomc1985]

Wrong. People has been leasing on-prem hardware for decades before the cloud existed.

Depending on taxation rules you might want to buy or lease.

[tomc1985 → goodpoint]

At this employer it seems most of the stuff in their datacenter was purchased.