Unfortunately no it's not a joke. It's really fine for big infrastructure companies, think Google etc. But a lot of people will design complicated shit due to architectural ignorance or to make their resume look good and this will result in Kubernetes looking like a good idea to run the resulting large amounts of complicated shit. Then you realise it's complicated and lots of people need to look after it which escalates the problem.

After a few years you work out that holy shit we now have 15 people looking after everything instead of the previous 4 people and pods are getting a few hits an hour. Every HTTP request ends up costing $100 and then you wonder why the fuck your company is totally screwed financially.

But all the people who designed it have left for consultancy jobs with Kubernetes on their resume and now you've got an army of people left to juggle the YAML while the CEO hammers his fist on the table saying CUT COSTS. Well you hired those feckin plums!

etc etc.

Lots of them are on here. People have no idea how to solve problems any more, just create new ones out of the old ones.