“We’re firing Kubernetes.”
The room went silent. This was heresy at a “modern” tech company.
But their CEO had done the math: £500K/year for 15 microservices. 8 developers. 2 million users.
They switched to boring technology. Costs dropped 80%. Velocity doubled.
Here’s why they were right.
THE KUBERNETES INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Let’s talk about the elephant in every platform engineering room:
Most of you don’t need Kubernetes.
There. I said it.
After analysing infrastructure costs across 50+ companies:
- Teams with <50 developers: 90% overpaying
- Running <20 services: 85% over-engineered
- Under 10M requests/day: 95% don’t need it
But we adopt it anyway because:
- “It’s industry standard”
- “We might need to scale”
- “It looks good on our CV/Resume”
- “Everyone else uses it”
The Kubernetes Industrial Complex wins. Your budget loses.
“BUT KUBERNETES IS TOO COMPLEX!” - THE RESPONSE
When someone says Kubernetes is too complex, they’re usually right.
But not for the reason they think.
Kubernetes isn’t complex. What we do to Kubernetes is complex.
The complexity isn't Kubernetes itself.
It's our need to solve every possible problem with it, before it exists!
TUESDAY’S MASTERCLASS: THE DELETION REVOLUTION
Speaking of unnecessary complexity…
WOW. Tuesday’s Platform Deletion Masterclass was incredible.
12 platform leaders. 3 live architecture reviews. 1 mind-blowing revelation:
David volunteered his architecture. Result? 50% of their platform could be deleted without customers noticing. He has the chance of deleting £25K/month worth of un-necessary infrastructure.
Key takeaway: “Complexity is a loan with compound interest. Every component you add today costs 10x in maintenance tomorrow.”
Missed it? I’m running another session in August. Details below.
THE BORING TECHNOLOGY CHECKLIST™
Before adopting ANY technology, score it:
Boring is Beautiful (+1 each)
- Existed for 5+ years
- Abundant Stack Overflow answers
- Your junior dev can debug it
- Runs on a single VM if needed
- One way to do things
Resume-Driven Development (-1 each)
- Released this year
- Conference talks exceed documentation
- Requires certification to understand
- "Infinitely scalable”
- Solves problems you don’t have
Score above +3? Use it. Score below 0? Run away.
In Tuesday’s masterclass, we scored K8s for different scenarios. For teams under 20 developers? It scored -2. Ouch.
THIS WEEK’S PLATFORM PSYCHOLOGY INSIGHT
Your responses this week revealed something painful:
“We know it’s overkill, but what will people think?”
The fear of looking “outdated” drives catastrophic decisions.
True story: A startup with 10 employees implemented K8s because their investors expected “modern infrastructure.”
- Cost: £15K/month
- Actual traffic: 1,000 requests/day
- Could have run on: A £50/month VPS
The investor? Didn’t actually care. They wanted growth, not YAML.
THE DAY WE CHOSE BORING (AND WON)
E-commerce client. £50M revenue. Peak traffic: 100K concurrent users.
Their stack:
- Kubernetes (12 nodes)
- Istio service mesh
- ArgoCD GitOps
- Prometheus + Grafana + Elastic
- 30+ microservices
Monthly cost: £45K
Deploy time: 35 minutes
Oncall incidents: Weekly
We replaced it with:
- 3 beefy VMs
- HAProxy load balancer
- Systemd + Ansible
- Simple health checks
- 5 services
Monthly cost: £8K
Deploy time: 3 minutes
Oncall incidents: Monthly
The CEO’s quote:
“We spent so much time managing Kubernetes, we forgot to manage the business.”
YOUR ESCAPE PLAN: FROM K8S TO BORING
Week 1: Calculate your real K8s costs (include salaries)
Week 2: List what K8s actually does for you
Week 3: Find boring alternatives for each
Week 4: Run a cost/complexity comparison
Week 5: Plan your exit (or stay, but intentionally)
Want help with this analysis? This is exactly what we’ll cover in the August masterclass.
READER STORIES: THE GREAT K8S EXODUS
From your emails this week:
“We moved from EKS to Elastic Beanstalk. I sleep through the night now.” - SaaS Founder
“After your checklist, we canceled our K8s migration. Saved £300K and my sanity.” - CTO
“We still use K8s, but only for the 3 services that need it. Everything else runs on ECS.” - Platform Lead
MASTERCLASS MOMENTUM: WHAT'S NEXT
Tuesday's session was just the beginning. Based on your feedback, August's masterclass will focus on:
"The 30-Day Platform Rescue: From 8% to 80% Adoption"
What we'll cover:
- The "Underground Railroad" case study walkthrough
- Live platform empathy test (prepare to cringe)
- How to audit shadow IT without starting a war
- Your developers already built your v2 - here's how to find it
- The exact timeline that took adoption from 8% to 80%
Date: Tuesday 19th August, 2pm UK / 9am ET
Topic: Turning Platform Rebellion Into Platform Adoption
Save Your Spot for August →
Can't wait until August? Reply with your platform adoption rate. If it's under 50%, I might feature your rescue story in next week's newsletter.
THE QUESTION THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
Before any technology decision, ask:
“Will this help us ship features faster or slower?”
If you hesitate, you have your answer.
One masterclass attendee texted me yesterday: “We asked this question in our architecture review. Killed 3 planned projects. Thank you.”
📢 FROM THE NEWSLETTER TO THE STAGE
I am taking the deletion philosophy on the road!
I'll be at BitSummit Hamburg (Sept 4th) sharing the full story behind our biggest platform transformation - the one that started with pink post-its and ended with GitOps clarity.
"From Console Chaos to GitOps Clarity: A FinTech Transformation Tale"
Newsletter readers get 15% off with code: STEVE_BITSUMMIT
Register: https://bitsummitapp.eventify.io/t2/tickets
See you in Hamburg? Reply and let me know!
📅 August Masterclass
Date: Tuesday 19th August, 2pm UK
Topic: When to Fire K8s (And What to Use Instead)
Save Your Spot →
Based on Tuesday’s success, this will fill up fast.
WHAT’S COMING NEXT WEEK
Issue #006: “The 10X Platform Engineer Myth”
- Why hero culture kills platforms
Building platforms that don’t need heroes
The 2-pizza platform team rule
Plus: I’ll share the full Post-It Audit results from Tuesday’s volunteer architectures.
Choose boring. Ship faster.
—Steve
P.S. Best email this week: “I printed your Boring Technology Checklist and put it on our wall. Already stopped two bad decisions.” This is why I write this newsletter.
P.P.S. That company that fired Kubernetes? They’re now deploying 20x per day instead of 2x. Their engineers build features instead of fighting YAML. In the August masterclass, I’ll show you their complete migration path.