Ops is hard as heck especially if you have any sort of odd networking requirements. I know dozens of devs that don’t know one thing about networking and would struggle in that field.

The author is correct of course, which is why the big techs have built a way of turning junior devs into productivity.

The cost of those platforms (the borgs, the chubbys, the map reduces) is stratospheric compared to what a startup should be focusing on.

If you want to go somewhere new (as most startups do) you're not going to find a paved road to bring you there.

You can ignore architecture but it won't ignore you.