I can understand why you'd say that, but I don't think the world's that black and white.
Many people would say a detached, Typescript frontend is less simple than SSR. At this point in my career writing a bunch of ad-hoc, per-page Javascript would be more toilsome than writing components. Thus, the prevailing idea of "simple" would be less simple for me.
In that same way, if you've spent a large chunk of your career in Kubernetes then managed Kubernetes is probably a lot more simple than maintaining an image production pipeline and a disjointed Terraform deploy. You'd have to make a choice between immutability and non-immutability with VMs as well, and design lifecycles for them if you choose immutability. That choice is made for you with Kubernetes and has well-established patterns.
That's to say, simple is highly subjective. Like another comment said, simple is the technology you know best today (and that you can easily hire for).
> You'd have to make a choice between immutability and non-immutability with VMs as well
I'd like to emphasize the yolo from the GP. I does really not imply image maintenance and immutability. (By the way, "non-immutability" is called "mutability".)
And no, if you know kubernetes to your heart, it's still very often easier to start the grug way and build OPS up only after you have something to run on it. (But, of course, there are exceptions. There are always exceptions.)
Many people would say a detached, Typescript frontend is less simple than SSR. At this point in my career writing a bunch of ad-hoc, per-page Javascript would be more toilsome than writing components. Thus, the prevailing idea of "simple" would be less simple for me.
In that same way, if you've spent a large chunk of your career in Kubernetes then managed Kubernetes is probably a lot more simple than maintaining an image production pipeline and a disjointed Terraform deploy. You'd have to make a choice between immutability and non-immutability with VMs as well, and design lifecycles for them if you choose immutability. That choice is made for you with Kubernetes and has well-established patterns.
That's to say, simple is highly subjective. Like another comment said, simple is the technology you know best today (and that you can easily hire for).