The problem with doing things the sensible way (eschewing microservices and k8s when you work on projects that aren't hyperscale) is that you end up missing opportunities later on because recruiters will filter you because you can't meaningfully respond to the question about “how experienced you are with micro service architecture”. Granted I may have dodged a bullet by not joining a company with 50 engineers that claim to replicate Google's practices (most of which are here to make sure tens of thousands of engineers can work efficiently together), but still someone gets to pay the bill at the end of the month…