along the same lines, wouldn't it be simpler to run the setup jobs as init containers of the gms deployment?

hey Matt, that would mean every pod restart or scale up would run those setupjobs. They only required to run when the versions are updated.

but they're idempotent, so what's the harm

I see your point. In case of upgrades for big deployments (multiple gms's), it would start the init container simultaneously and it could cause problems in case of ES reindexing.