This is pretty typical when a product is still climbing the adoption curve. I've helped small companies set up (managed) k8s clusters and migrate their apps to them, and when you know what you're doing, it's a super smooth experience that's basically all upside.

But, if you're approaching it for the first time with no assistance, there are lots of things that can trip you up, and lots to learn. That's not a reflection on k8s, it's just the nature of the large set of problems it's solving.

K8s is succeeding because it's very well designed, has a large and diverse ecosystem, and solves set of important problems that very few other tools even try to tackle. Apache Mesos perhaps comes closest, but it's not quite as pragmatic, and its adoption level reflects that.

Also, because of k8s' scope, many people may not fully appreciate the range of problems it's solving, seeing it through the lens of their own background and focus.