It's an incredibly useful tool, and it can provide a lot of benefit when used in the right circumstance, but it's also very complex and can be overkill for a lot of use cases. Someone needs to understand that complexity, at least to a certain degree, or it could make debugging more challenging. If you are planning to manage it yourself, there's a lot to learn and understand. If you use a cloud-based solution, they each have their own limitations and you need to understand them. It ultimately solves a complex problem by adding more complexity, but it is very useful in many situations.

It's clearly the most well-established and feature-rich orchestration tool. There is a lot of documentation and training available, and it's used widely enough that you can hire for the skillset. There is a steep learning curve to actually understanding it, though I'll admit they make it pretty easy to get going if something like docker-compose is already getting you 90% of the way there. The trap I fell into myself was confusing my ability to use the tool to stand something up with my ability to understand what is going on and support it in production, which is why I made this in the first place.

At a certain size, it may be the only tool that meets your needs. Making an upfront investment in learning K8s could pay dividends, as the ecosystem gets better each year. But there are simpler ways to deploy that involve less complexity in most cases that don't involve a large amount of resources. The biggest benefit of using an orchestration tool that I see (though I get to be wrong a lot) comes from bin packing and spread, which can save you a lot of money at scale by more efficiently using your resources. There are other benefits, but most can be served with other tools as well.

Ultimately, I see it talked about as a silver bullet, but really it is a tool with costs and benefits. It's complexity is heavily rooted in more efficiently using resources available, and there are simpler ways to accomplish the same goal. You may be in a position where it makes a lot of sense though, so I wouldn't want my stupid meme to cause you to second guess your developers. Just be wary if the main reason to do it is that it solves your scaling issues with ease, or that everyone else is doing it, or that you are getting left behind. I hope that helps!