Only if you actually has a system complex enough to require it. A lot of systems that use kubernetes are not complex enough to require it, but use it anyway. In that case kubernetes does indeed add unnecessary complexity.

Except that k8s doesn't solve the problem of generalized distributed computing at all. (For that you need distributed fault-tolerant state handling which k8s doesn't do.)

K8s solves only one problem - the problem of organizational structure scaling. For example, when your Ops team and your Dev team have different product deadlines and different budgets. At this point you will need the insanity of k8s.

Do you work on k8s professionally outside of the project you’re talking about?

5 mins seems unrealistic unless you’re spending time somewhere else to keep up to speed with version releases, upgrades, etc.

You've spent less than 8 hours total on kubernetes?

What are the alternatives?

Yeah scalability is great! Let’s burn through thousands of dollars an hour and give all our money to Amazon/Google/Microsoft

When those pink slips come in, we’ll just go somewhere else and do the same thing!

You know that “scale” existed long before K8s - or even Borg - was a thing, right? I mean, how do you think Google ran before creating them?