For the purpose of my joke, it doesn't really matter if it's incompetence or intentional under-engineering.

It was a satirical observation (based on my experience) that "the business" tends to scoff at unsexy foundational rework of existing tech. The trendiness of Kubernetes is used effectively to "trojan horse" that kind of work in.

I am jokingly suggesting that at this stage maybe that's the real value of Kubernetes.