I don’t think it’s super useful for production (I prefer chef/vagrant)

Yeah!

Docker and OCI get abused a lot to thoughtlessly ship a copy of the developer’s laptop into production.

Life is so much simpler after taking the time to build thoughtful correct recipes in an orchestration tool.

Anything that makes it less painful for a dev to destroy and rebuild an environment that’s corrupt or even just a bit spooky pays for itself almost immediately.

Exactly. The learning curve is mean, but it’s worth it quickly as soon as the first mystery bug dies in a rebuild fire.