Agree that the k8s tax, as described, is a huge issue. But I think the biggest issue is immaturity of the ecosystem, with complexity coming in second. You can at least throw an expensive developer at the complexity issue.

But when it comes to reliable installations (even helm charts for major software is a coin flip in terms of whether they’ll work), fast moving versioning that reminds me of the JavaScript Wild West (the recent RBAC on by default implementation comes to mind, even if its a good thing), and unresolved problems around provider-agnostic volumes and load balancing... those are headaches that persist long after you’ve learned the difference between a replicaSet and a deployment.