You're not expecting them to set k8s up from scratch, just as you'd not expect the dev team to set up the datacentre power or networking from scratch for the server in your "scp and sysctl restart" scenario.
Typically, a k8s installation is looked after by a cross-functional Platform team, who look after not just the k8s cluster but also the gateways, service mesh, secrets management, observability and other common services, shared container images, CI/CD tooling, as well as platform security and governance.
These platform services then get consumed by the feature dev teams (of which there could be anywhere between half a dozen and multiple thousands). To deploy a new app, those dev teams need only create a repo and a helm chart, and the platform's self-service tooling will do the rest automatically. It really shouldn't take more than a few minutes for a team with some experience.
Yes, it's optimised for a very different scale of operation than a single server at a managed hosting provider. But there are plenty of situations in which that scale is required, and it's there that k8s shines.
Typically, a k8s installation is looked after by a cross-functional Platform team, who look after not just the k8s cluster but also the gateways, service mesh, secrets management, observability and other common services, shared container images, CI/CD tooling, as well as platform security and governance.
These platform services then get consumed by the feature dev teams (of which there could be anywhere between half a dozen and multiple thousands). To deploy a new app, those dev teams need only create a repo and a helm chart, and the platform's self-service tooling will do the rest automatically. It really shouldn't take more than a few minutes for a team with some experience.
Yes, it's optimised for a very different scale of operation than a single server at a managed hosting provider. But there are plenty of situations in which that scale is required, and it's there that k8s shines.