It's also geeks and engineers using these models and being the most vocal. We always think we're special and need the extra horsepower. Ever been on one of those home lab subreddits ? Same story.
I think you're doing it wrong. Use the frontier moddels for the research, planning etc and once you have a plan give it to a local model for implementation.
I don't think it's even a broad strategy from PM or higher ups. I actually think it's engineers inside the company who want to play with the coolest hardware and the build features for the newest stuff. Features can be made to work with older hardware but that requires more time and optimization which they never get, so someone takes a call that x and y features only work on newer gen hardware.
Even as a techie, I prefer and use iCloud for exactly this reason, especially for stuff I share with family. I don't want me to be the bottleneck for what is considered basic functionality these days.
I actually I'd be even willing to downgrade my car one level if I'm not driving and just sitting in the back seat. Will likely be cheaper for me to own even with the increased subscription.
I've been meaning to get more components for a diy NAS since atleast the last year and just been pushing it lazily. I'm literally kicking myself now when I actually started looking up deals for this black friday.
GraphQL sure, but I'm not sure I'd put kafka in the same bucket. It is a nice technology that has it's use in some cases, where postgresql would not work. It is also something a small team should not start with. Start with postgres and then move on to something else when the need arises.
One of our final projects during university was to design and program a basic database in C. Even after 20 years I think that was one of the most one I've had in a project.
I get the sentiment behind your comment but I have a few lawyers in the family and they work round the clock. They might be in meetings or pouring over documents all day that might not look like work to the average software engineer but trust me, they do work hard. And it's true for everyone - from junior interns to senior partners.