We migrate teams onto Kubernetes and, just as often, off it. The technology is excellent. The decision to adopt it is frequently premature.
What Kubernetes actually buys you
Bin-packing across many machines, declarative rollouts, and a common vocabulary for infrastructure. All three matter enormously at a certain scale, and very little below it.
The hidden operating cost
Someone has to own upgrades, ingress, secrets rotation, and the 3am pager. On a five-engineer team, that person is a quarter of your capacity.
A reasonable ladder
Start on a managed platform. Move to managed containers when deploys get painful. Reach for Kubernetes when you have more than a handful of services and someone whose job is the platform.
