Operator in the Kubernetes world is a different thing from a human operator of a computer system. The Kubernetes operator is software that continually compares

Operator in the Kubernetes world is a different thing from a human operator of a computer system. The Kubernetes operator is software that continually compares what-is to what-should-be and makes a change that changes the state of the world to be closer to what-should-be. You specify what-should-be and (if all is well with the world) the system morphs itself into that in a more or less expeditious way. The original article described this pretty well.