I've dealt with both. I am continually amazed that people not only pay for AWS, but that it is so complicated, and that they use it in all sorts of absurd ways, not even just hosting 'vms' but using all sorts of amazon tools to do trivial tasks. I am sorry I just dont get it. Is it like learning salesforce and once you're sucked in you're just in? I am so glad I do not work at an AWS shop anymore and am very glad to be in a position where we do not use it.
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You get AWS certifications, use as many AWS services as possible to pad your CV with the service experience and certifications, get your arguments and "well architected" dogma from AWS sales. Then you can get paid more at the next company (or at least high salary offers to extract a raise).
Also building high complexity systems that require a big expensive cloud engineer staff gets you status and visibility. In a tight spot you can still blame AWS for problems.
(Reality is not quite so bleak as people are not completely cynical)
Having worked on some systems where the previous developers drank the AWS kool-aid, this rings true.
I actually do get public cloud as well as running your own racks. There is room for both. Your startup is growing 100% every quarter but you're not sure if you have real PMF yet? Yeah probably stick with cloud. Zombiecorn growing 10-20% yoy or not growing and you're paying the cloud $10M/y for 6yo CPUs? - pretty foolish to continue doing that.