The sheer volume of subscription services I've signed up for as the CTO for a startup is mind-boggling. $8 here, $19 there, $49 for something important, $99 for something essential.

Some tools are easily worth it, especially when you see what is charged for other (less valuable) tools.

Gitlab, Confluence, Jira, Asana, 1Password, co-pilot, codepen, sentry, jetbrains, gitlab plugins for jetbrains, Visual Studio, Docker Desktop, Perforce, Slack, etc;etc;etc;etc

Then there's things like Spacelift ($250!)!

The most frustrating thing is that:

1) I need to justify these expenses each for what value they bring, some things are nice to have but bring so little value on paper.

2) You can't just enable tools for some people, there's huge overlap and that overlap gets greater

I get that people need to be paid, but these things very quickly add up. I'm paying about 7-13% of peoples salaries already in these subscriptions, and I feel like a total dick for saying no to people or trying to consolidate these.