> but we also needed a full time sysadmin/IT person for a 12 person startup. I'm not sure it worked out cheaper.
That sounds excessive even then. Its probably even more excessive now - some things are probably easier to manage on a small scale ~ there are a lot of tools for deploying and managing stuff.
The guy might have been a bit under loaded, at least after the initial burst, but given that SaaS wasn't available at the time I don't think there was a good alternative. Getting someone in part time would have been a false economy the first time something screwed up and they weren't in.
If it was a pure software startup we could have done without, but it was a semiconductor company.
That sounds excessive even then. Its probably even more excessive now - some things are probably easier to manage on a small scale ~ there are a lot of tools for deploying and managing stuff.