For that matter, pushing for SRE roles that manage orchestrating the K8s environment and as a developer you can focus on a local docker-compose, and spend more time in testing (unit and integration). The Developer is responsible for Dockerfile, and the CI/CD build and test portions of the process.
Considering the level of options from Kubernetes, heml, istio, etc can get complex, the developer can focus on the boundary requirements... expected environment variables and peer systems/services.
I think that’s precisely the opposite of the SRE/DevOps model. The developers shouldn’t be managing their own clusters (istio, etc) but they should be able to define and maintain their own applications (not just the container code but also supporting infra).
Assuming that I can now take away time from other things to gain the knowledge to do so, sure. Also, taking away the development time from all other developers to do so.
Considering the level of options from Kubernetes, heml, istio, etc can get complex, the developer can focus on the boundary requirements... expected environment variables and peer systems/services.