> I also find it really sad that a lot of the small teams who are on the road to success get distracted by applying "best practices" that were built for big teams (e.g. Google uses kubernetes, we should too).

Principal-agent problem, i.e. conflicting goals. Sometimes it's the team vs. company, sometimes it's the team or a person against themselves. There are choices that are most beneficial for the current project, and there are choices that are most beneficial for one's career after the current project, and/or choices that are most interesting to the person.

So e.g. Kubernetes may be a total overkill for most things anyone does, but if I get around to doing some side project where Kubernetes would be a fit, even if rather poor, you can bet I'll at least try to use it, because it's highly likely I'll encounter it later at my current or future job. Now, this is just my side project, but then, many (most?) widely-used FLOSS software started as someone's side project.

And the same reasoning happens in companies big and small, as failing to keep your skills fresh is a recipe for trouble sooner or later, and the industry-standard approach to software developers' growth is "figure it out on your own, we're paying you for labor, not for your professional growth".