[mynegation]

Many good responses here about why you actually need those CI/CD tools. From my experience I would summarize it as “standardized, repeatable, automated processes at scale”.

I am surprised though that you are getting those questions about XYZs and how would you use them where XYZ are supposedly CI/CD tools. I personally do not understand the hate standardized LeetCode, system design, and STAR interviews get. It is something well-known that you can prepare for, and ace those interviews even if you never had to (or never will) solve a contest-style problem or design a distributed system. These interviews test your general intelligence, memory, tenacity, ability to learn, and communicate. Who cares if I never used ArgoCD and only used Jenkins or rsync or whatever.

I admit sometimes companies need someone with a specialized knowledge to hit the ground running, but these situations are rare. So if your interview consists mostly of questions like “have you used XYZ” and “how would you use XYZ to do ABC” - those are lazy questions, and an imperfect proxy to measure your professional ability. Usually you don’t want to work for companies that ask those, anyway. Anyone smart and with attitude of getting things done can figure those XYZs if and when needed.