Comment by JohnBooty

I agree with you:

    but I can get set up with redis, SQS, any of the 
    'scalable' solutions within a few hours of copy-pasting 
    commands and code and configuration from a reputable 
    source

    [...] and that makes the engineer's choice to follow faang 
    look a lot more reasonable. 

I also agree with the linked article's overall point, but I think the specific "job queue" example from the article is actually a bad example because:

- "rolling your own" job queue is not rocket science but is nontrivial and easy to get wrong w.r.t. locking etc.

- the argument against taking additional dependencies is that now you have one more tool to master, understand, and manage. but my experience is that job queues like Sidekiq are not a significant overhead in terms of developer burden.