How is that realistic? If you offer me insane money, I will of course bluster that I can do the impossible. When I inevitably fail, I still have a pocket full of cash.
It's not realistic, money doesn't make hard things easy. Paying someone more doesn't make them more capable, at best it an incentive to work longer/harder. That doesn't make them more capable either, it just makes them work more. If someone asked me to swim the English Channel I'd say no because i can't do it. If someone offered me $2M to do it i would still say no. Let's say i said "yes, i'll figure something out.", well i would still drown or need to be rescued even after being paid $2m.
You are right, that's exactly my point. I was in such situation multiple times. People will say "it's impossible" but they actually mean "it's impossible given my motivation connected to money, time I could be given, freedom to experiment without boss looking at the calendar, and probably a bunch of other things". When the same people are given sudden motivation kick (even as a hypothetical) they start to actually think. Maybe they'll figure out that it's impossible anyway and won't do it for a $100M. Myself, I'd immediately start to think how to do it.
- Is it possible for a 3 person team to manage 1000 distinct Kubernetes clusters?
- No way in hell!
- What if we hypothetically pay you $2M salary each?
- Well, let me think about it, we could figure this out...