Kubernetes (K8s) is a hotspot for technical jargon and marketing buzzwords. Here is a curated “Bullshit Bingo” card covering common hype terms, overused phrases, and complex concepts often used to sound sophisticated in DevOps meetings.
The Kubernetes Bullshit Bingo Card
- “Cloud Native” (Used for applications that just run in Docker)
- “Self-healing” (Usually means crashlooping and waiting for a restart)
- “Multi-dimensional Optimization”
- “Immutable Infrastructure”
- “GitOps” (Pronounced “we just use ArgoCD”)
- “Zero Trust” (Often applied incorrectly to internal cluster network)
- “Service Mesh” (When you only have two microservices)
- “Declarative Configuration”
- “Ephemeral” (We don’t have any backups)
- “Containerized”
- “Scalability”
- “Orchestration”
- “K8s” (Just say Kubernetes)
- “Kubernetes native”
- “Bare Metal” (Because cloud is too easy)
- “Edge Computing”
- “Observability” (It’s just Prometheus/Grafana)
- “Bin Packing” (Actually useful, but used to sound fancy)
- “Auto-scaling” (VPA/HPA)
- “Serverless” (Knative)
- “Distroless”
- “Sidecar” (Overused, often better as a shared service)
- “Replicas” (Many copies of the shit we want to keep running)
- “Cluster Federation”
Common “Bullshit” Situations
- Using K8s for a single container: “Company wanted to use Kubernetes. Turns out it was for a SINGLE… container”
- Over-engineering: “Should we all build spaceships to deliver groceries?”
- Misleading Seniority: “Collecting tech acronyms… to turn you into a fully-fledged architect in 4 weeks”
- The “Complex Thing” Trap: “Once you let in complex generic things, it doesn’t stop there”
Phrases to Watch Out For
- “It’s just a simple K8s cluster.”
- “This will increase our velocity.”
- “It’s production-ready.”
- “We can achieve multi-cloud portability” (but we never will).
- “The DNS issue is an upstream issue in CoreDNS”
- “ContainerCreating” (The state of despair)
- “The YAML is strong with this one.”
External Links
Buzzword or bullshit bingo can also be used by Navision/BC system houses
Bullshit Bingo: Wie man hohle Phrasen in der IT erkennt und vermeidet