"You only need to hire “software” DevOps, rather than people who neatly lay your cables, journey to DC to replace disks, etc, etc, etc."
Lol, what year you think we are? 1998? There are colo facilities around the world, you have 'remote hands' to take care everything related to hardware.
You just need ansible/xyz to deploy you software, thats all it takes
The last time I have seen such an operation was back in 2009.
Also, even today you can buy a barebone place in the rack, with climate control and power supply. I know companies who do their disk replaces, cable management even in 2023.
I am fully aware you can have mostly managed data centre, like for example, Leaseweb, OVH, Servers.com. But if you have specialized hardware requirements, sometimes you have to wait a few days/weeks for installation.
I am old, but I don't think we are back in the 1998.
Lol, what year you think we are? 1998? There are colo facilities around the world, you have 'remote hands' to take care everything related to hardware. You just need ansible/xyz to deploy you software, thats all it takes