a few linux boxes is great when you're a solo dev looking to save money and manage things yourself, but it's a poor place to start scaling up from. not just technologically, but from an HR perspective.

Kubernetes is something you can hire for. A couple of linux boxes running all your server code in the most efficient way possible might save you operational costs, but it resigns you to being the one who has to maintain it. I've learned this the hard way - moving things to ECS as we scale up has allowed me give away responsibility for things. I understand that it's more complex, but i don't have to teach people now.