In cloud-native engineering, there’s this persistent myth that complexity equals brilliance. Teams pour their energy into creating intricate, highly customized systems, thinking they’re solving problems in ways only they can. Instead of building bridges to innovation, these platforms end up becoming walls; they are hard to scale, expensive to maintain, and frustratingly disconnected from the people who actually use them.
This mindset, often fuelled by what I like to call the “hero complex,” does more harm than good. It’s not about how clever the system looks on paper. It’s about how effective it is in practice. As many organizations are discovering, simplicity combined with a commitment to understanding the end user outshines technical bravado every single time.
I recently heard a story about a platform engineering team that started with all the best intentions but struggled to deliver results. The team was primarily made up of Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). While they built a functional platform, developer adoption was limited. The platform worked, technically speaking, but it didn’t resonate with its users. Developers felt like they were being handed a tool that wasn’t designed with them in mind, and as a result, engagement was lukewarm at best.
The turning point came when the team decided to add developers into the mix. This wasn’t just about broadening the skill set; it was about shortening the feedback loop between platform engineers and developers. Suddenly, the platform wasn’t being built in isolation. Developers became active participants in its evolution. Their needs and ideas started shaping the platform’s direction. Adoption skyrocketed. Additional development teams began clamoring for the same kind of support, and the platform team found itself at the center of the organization’s development efforts.
This shift underscores an important lesson. No matter how technically impressive a platform might be, it’s worthless if it doesn’t meet the needs of its users. By embedding developers into the team and focusing on continuous feedback, this group transformed a struggling project into a runaway success.
Of course, complexity isn’t always about the technical design of the platform. Sometimes, it’s about the decisions we make around how we manage it. There’s a common refrain among engineering teams: “We can’t outsource this; it’s too customized.” It’s the kind of reasoning that keeps teams locked in a cycle of over-engineering and under-delivering. But here’s the thing. If your platform is too customized to hand off to someone else, that’s not a sign of its sophistication. It’s a red flag.
Customization often creates more problems than it solves. It makes platforms harder to maintain, harder to scale, and harder for anyone else to work with. Simplifying isn’t about giving up control. It’s about focusing your energy where it matters most. Instead of burning cycles on maintaining something overly complicated, why not free up your team to focus on solving problems for your users?
Simplicity isn’t just a technical choice. It’s a business strategy. A streamlined platform is easier to adopt, easier to scale, and far less expensive to manage. When developers don’t have to wrestle with tools that don’t align with their workflows, they can focus on delivering value. And when your platform is simple enough to grow with your organization, it becomes an enabler of innovation, not a bottleneck.
At the end of the day, platform engineering isn’t about building monuments to technical brilliance. It’s about solving real problems for real people. When we let go of the hero complex, listen to our users, and prioritize simplicity, we stop building for applause and start building for impact. That is what truly matters.
Portainer embraces this very philosophy in our product strategy. By focusing on simplicity and user-centric design, Portainer offers just enough capability for most organizations to get started with containerization and Kubernetes without the need for deep expertise. The platform reduces operational overhead and complexity, enabling teams to focus on delivering value rather than wrestling with bespoke solutions. Portainer provides a practical, scalable foundation that evolves with needs; all while maintaining a commitment to simplicity and usability.
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