I think one of the underlying assumptions that this article missed about the original is that building a side project often isn't about what the end result will be. It's about the skills you pick up along the way.

If you have a killer product idea and you need to get it to market as quickly as possible then by all means, take the fastest route. But maybe you're working on something that's just a copy of an existing app so you can get the flavor of a new language or framework.

If that's the kind of project that someone's working on then whether or not k8 is applicable to the scale of the finished product is irrelevant. What matters is 1) do they see a benefit in increasing their knowledge of k8, and 2) can they do so without significantly ramping up the cost of the project.

The original article answers question 2, and provides a few arguments as to why the answer to 1 might be yes in the current job market.