None of this is difficult to do or automate, and we've done it for years. Kubernetes simply makes it more complex by adding additional abstractions in the pursuit of pretending hardware doesn't exist.

There are, maybe, a dozen companies in the world with a large enough physical footprint where Kubernetes might make sense. Everyone else is either engaged in resume-driven development, or has gone down some profoundly wrong path with their application architecture to where it is somehow the lesser evil.

I used to feel the same way, but have come around. I think it's great for small companies for a few reasons. I can spin up effectively identical dev/ci/stg/prod clusters for a new project in an hour for a medium sized project, with CD in addition to everything GP mentioned.

I basically don't have to think about ops anymore until something exotic comes up, it's nice. I agree that it feels clunky, and it was annoying to learn, but once you have something working it's a huge time saver. The ability to scale without drastically changing the system is a bonus.