What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes

CTOs are adopting Kubernetes primarily for organizational benefits—uniformity, hireable knowledge, auditability—not because their technical problems require it. Most companies should start without it.

good pushback on k8s cargo-culting. the author’s observation that managed k8s maturity + talent pool flip caused adoption, not technical necessity, rings true. the tradeoff analysis is honest: yes, you get gitops and compliance for free, but you’re paying complexity tax on debugging and operational overhead. the threshold—“when the CTO isn’t the only engineer anymore”—is pragmatic. systemd-on-vps scales further than most startups admit before hitting real coordination problems. worth reading if you’re making infrastructure choices and tired of defaulting to k8s because it’s what everyone hires for.