Kubernetes is the de facto standard for container in the orchestration industry. It's scalable, resilient, and packed with fantastic features and a massive ecosystem.
But what if your workload is a single microservice ? A hobby project? Or a team of three people ?
In this talk, we’ll explore the hidden costs of Kubernetes : operational complexity (especially on-prem), steep learning curves, and the "just use K8s" cargo cult.
We will demonstrate with real world use case how Kubernetes can be sometimes a little bit too much for the use case.
Here's are the topics that we'll will dive in :
- Use case breakdowns: From small-scale apps and edge computing to prototyping, where lighter alternatives like Nomad, ECS, or even bare-metal solutions deliver better results.
- The Kubernetes overhead : Maintenance overhead, data persistency, security overhead.
- How to push back when stakeholders demand K8s for the wrong reasons, propose a decision "framework".
- The alternatives we have (e.g., Fly.io, Railway, CapRover, or even no orchestration at all).

Attendees will leave with actionable strategies to "right-size" their tooling, avoiding the "Kubernetes everything" trap. Whether you're a dev, ops engineer, or architect, this talk promotes smarter, more efficient cloud-native practices—because sometimes, less is more.