This is a good point, but I'd say that's just the ops version of premature optimization.

No, it's the ops version of premature abstraction - when devs build a whole extensible framework around a simple use case just because "requirements might change later" (which 90% of the time they never do, so on average the work is wasted much more often than not).

I mean yes. . . premature abstraction driven by premature optimization. Or more simply, solving a problem you don't have now, and might not ever have.

Everyone talks FAANG scale on day 1. It's common and absurd.

Usually because most business say they need highly available, scalable infra from day 1.

I typically see it happen in the other direction myself. Business folks describe the problem/product and engineering team says “oh yea we can do that, we’ll need K8s” when they do not, in fact, need K8s