Sometimes it just feels good wearing a fig leaf around my groin, weilding a mid sized log as a crude club, & running through the jungle.
You might not need it is the kernel of doubt that can undermine any reasonable option. And it suggests nothing. Sure, you can go write your own kernel! You can make your own database! You might not need to use good well known proven technology that people understand and can learn about online! You can do it yourself! Or cobble together some alternate lesser special stack that just you have distilled out.
We don't need civilization. We can go it alone & do our own thing, leave behind shared frames of references. But damn, it just seems so absurdly inadvisable, and it feels so overblown the fear uncertainty & doubt telling us Kubernetes is hard and bad and too much. This article does certainly lend credence to the idea that Kubernetes is complex, but there's so many simpler starting places that will take many teams very far.