The hidden cost of platform engineering isn't building your stack — it's keeping it alive. Giant Swarm surveyed 143 platform teams to find out.

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A survey of 143 platform and infrastructure professionals at KubeCon EU reveals the hidden ongoing cost of maintaining production platforms — dubbed the 'platform assembly tax.' Key findings: 69% of teams plan to rely solely on internal staff to manage compounding multi-cloud, security, and reliability challenges. Senior engineers increasingly spend time on maintenance rather than innovation. The post argues that open source is not free to operate, that compliance requirements (NIS2, EU AI Act, CRA) are expanding the maintenance surface, and that the most effective platform teams are deliberate about what they choose to own versus outsource.

The platform assembly tax: what platform teams keep telling us