Thanks for the input madao, but I disagree. First of all, I'm not saying sysadmins are going away in any respect, but I do believe that with increased efficiency there will be fewer admins needed for any given business.
I currently support over 150 production systems on Amazon, so your estimation of 10 servers per sysadmin is outdated and inaccurate. Even by Instagram's own admission they manage hundreds of systems with only 5 sysadmins. By your calculation, Instagram would have needed at least double that.
This is a horrible idea. Why would you take the job of computer security, management and purchase away from a centralized source and leave it up to the everyday laymen to handle. You say this would solve issues of privacy, but in fact would be a much less secure form of network and would likely increase the risk of security and potential data theft.
I'm a System Administrator by trade and would not ever recommend a solution like this. Centralized systems are just easier on the user and much more cost effective.
At the startup I work at, I average around 60 hours a week, with many weeks exceeding 70 hours a week. This is also usually done in a 5-6 day work week.
As a few people have mentioned, this number of hours is rather unsustainable, and I wind up burning out every 2 months or so for a week or two, where I put in a usual 40 hour week.
I currently support over 150 production systems on Amazon, so your estimation of 10 servers per sysadmin is outdated and inaccurate. Even by Instagram's own admission they manage hundreds of systems with only 5 sysadmins. By your calculation, Instagram would have needed at least double that.