Kubernetes for Small Teams: You Probably Don't Need It

The Kubernetes Hype

Every tech conference talks about Kubernetes. Every job posting lists it. But for teams under 20 engineers, it's usually overkill.

When You Don't Need K8s

If your app: - Has fewer than 10 services - Doesn't need auto-scaling beyond basic rules - Has a small ops team (or no dedicated ops team) - Deploys less than 50 times per day

Then you probably don't need Kubernetes.

Better Alternatives

For simple deployments: Railway / Fly.io

# Deploy to Fly.io
fly launch
fly deploy

Zero Kubernetes knowledge needed. Auto-scaling, SSL, and global distribution included.

For multi-service apps: Docker Compose

services:
  web:
    build: ./web
    ports: ["3000:3000"]
  api:
    build: ./api
    ports: ["8080:8080"]
  worker:
    build: ./worker

When You DO Need Kubernetes

• Scale: 50+ services or 100+ deployments/day
• Multi-region: need pods running globally
• Custom scheduling: complex resource allocation
• Compliance: specific infrastructure requirements

The Middle Ground

If you're growing toward Kubernetes, start with managed services: - Google GKE Autopilot - AWS EKS with Fargate - Azure AKS

These remove the cluster management overhead while giving you the Kubernetes API.