Forget docker for a second.

Suddenly you're in a team with 2-3 people and one of them likes to git push broken code and walk-off.

Okay, lets make this less about working with a jack-ass, same setup, but each 5 minutes of downtime cost you millions of dollars. One of your pushes work locally but don't work on the server.

The point of a more structed / complex CI/CD process is to eliminate failures. As the stakes become higher, and the stack becomes more complex, the need for the automation grows.

Docker is just a single part of that automation that makes other things / possible / lowers specific class of failures.

Sure, but a lot of this isn't super hard.

I worked on FlexiScale, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexiScale. The Architecture of IaaS provider doesn't need to look massively different from k8s.

- Node Agent that either listens or connects back to an API for instructions. - An API to request your workload. - Various decision daemons. IPAM, Block Storage, Etc.

What's missing in Europe is a Culture of Tech Leadership and Investment.

Case in point, I wrote or rewrote borderline 100% of an early European Cloud Provider, and I've never heard of nor been approached to work for another project like this. Even if one existed, they likely wouldn't come anywhere near offering a salary I'd be interested in, and leadership would almost certainly be full of people who haven't built a Cloud Provider before.

( This isn't so say I'm the most credible candidate in the market, but I have had salaried offers for IC in Meta and HFT in London. I'd have loved to build another cloud provider ( with more than a team of 3-5 ) but I've spent most of my career as a contractor interfacing with "cloud" teams offering things like vsphere, wondering where it all goes wrong. )

PMs that can hire/fire are pretty common, but again how do they know who?

Aye, It's a bit like saying you can't sell your code, because you wrote it in someone elses software.

Writing a decent Dockerfile isn't hard, and keeping it maintained and working with new versions is still work and it's past the wheelhouse of very many people. It's entirely reasonable to want paid for that effort.

That said, it's not work I personally value enough to put my hand in my pocket, and that's a fair take too.

it does work, yes