i know what you mean, but i am doing this for more than 20 years now. From bare-metal over openstack to serverless, i have pretty much provisioned all of them.
Kubernetes is more like a way of doing things than a technology. Basically APIs all the way down. and thus the operators and controllers do deserve love.
Im not saying that you need an operator to change the dipers of a baby, but as far as a stack goes, k8s is the best i have ever worked with.
