I have used the minimals for years now and they really do give you a pretty decent starter for 10, with a minimum of hassle and a minimum of bloat. Boot the ISO (PXE, obviously) and off you go.
Even doing the install by hand, you get a fully patched basic server up and running within 10-20 minutes - the install is all off the current packages. Add Samba and a few copy n pastes and you have AD joined. A few more copy n pastes from your docs and you have an app server.
I wrote this lot: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Intranet which simply assumes Ubuntu mini at the moment. I do have screenshots and could put together a pretty noddy guide for that bit but I'm not sure its necessary. Actually now I come to think of it, it probably is. Couple that with my Ref. build and you have a domain joined, Kerberized etc app server within about an hour if you do the job by hand and are unfamiliar with the process. I can do it rather quicker.
Yes, the installer is a 30MB image - good. An installer's size is no reflection on the installation size.
EDIT: I am from the sysadmin side of things and not dev ops ...
Twelve years ago, I hired senior sysadmins. About seven years ago, I hired senior devops. Same people, same skill sets, same approach.
It should be as you say but it isn't really. I too hire and fire. To be honest "dev ops" should not really exist but has become a thing. Many who describe themselves as such do not bother with the nuts and bolts. To be fair to them, though, quite a few sysadmins I've known are a bit slack on the networking side, for example. sigh
Take about 4 minutes to build from scratch.
Containers of corse are a different issue, but I'd probably use something like coreos as the host in that case.
base kbd-bkeymaps, xz compressed: 2.8 MB
base kbd-bkeymaps busybox-extras, xz compressed: 2.8 MB
I wouldn't actually want to work in that chroot but for containers it's fine.