[daxfohl]

I agree with this for the most part, but wanted to point out that docker's first big success was as a dev tool. Solving the "it works on my machine" problem, or the "oh you forgot to install v13.1.2 of X and then uninstall it and then install v12.4 because that's the only way it works for some reason" problem. So, avoiding k8s in order to avoid docker seems odd.

That said, a good number of projects don't require anything special about the environment other than a runtime for the app's language, where the remaining dependencies can be explicitly included in the build. For those, I agree, jumping on docker/k8s right away is overkill.

An additional benefit of working with something like Heroku initially, is that it will help guide your devs to sticking with more tried and trusted stacks rather than everyone pulling in their own pet project into the business's critical path.