Every few months, I stumble across a GitHub repo or a startup’s architecture diagram that proudly showcases ten microservices talking to each other across a Kubernetes cluster—usually orchestrated by a team of two or three developers. The frontend has a dedicated GraphQL gateway, each microservice has its own database, and there’s a message queue sitting right in the middle. It’s impressive… on paper. But it’s also insane.
Let me be clear: microservices are not inherently bad. In fact, they’re a great tool when used appropriately—especially for large teams working on complex domains with scalability and independence at the forefront. But what I keep seeing is small teams, often solo developers, building relatively simple applications using microservices from day one. And it’s killing productivity.
You Don’t Need a Distributed System for a To-Do App
You’re not Netflix. You’re not Amazon. You don’t need to optimize for global failover, horizontal scaling, and service boundaries on day one. You need to ship. You need to learn from real users. You need to validate your idea. Microservices only slow you down unless you’re solving a very specific set of problems.
In a small team, splitting your app into services means:
- You now have multiple deployables to manage.
- You need to coordinate versioning and API contracts across services.
- You’ve introduced network latency and error handling complexity where there was none.
- You’ll probably spend more time fixing infra bugs than building product features.
What’s worse is that microservices look like progress. They look clean, modular, and “enterprisey”. But behind the scenes, you’re duct-taping dev environments, mocking services just to run a local test, and getting paged at 2am because Redis crashed and service B can’t talk to service C anymore.
What You Actually Need
Start with a monolith. It’s not a dirty word. Monoliths are simple. They let you move fast. They’re easier to debug. They’re easier to deploy. And they’re incredibly effective when your product scope still fits in your head (which it usually does in the early days).
Want to enforce separation of concerns? You can do that within a monolith using good architecture—layered design, modularity, clear boundaries. You don’t need Docker Compose just to run your login system.
Want to scale later? Great. Design your monolith as if you’ll split it up one day. Use domain-driven design principles. Think in modules. Use clean APIs internally. But don’t split too early. You can always extract services when the time comes—and when it actually makes your life easier.
Complexity Is a Cost
People treat complexity like it’s free. But it’s not. It compounds. Every extra piece you add—every service, queue, retry mechanism—comes with maintenance overhead. Monitoring, logging, metrics, alerting. These are not “one-time setups.” They become part of your daily workflow. And if you’re not careful, they become your entire workflow.
What’s worse is that junior teams often copy the architecture of mature companies without understanding the why behind each decision. They think it’s the path to becoming a “real” engineering team. But in practice, it’s a fast track to burnout and technical debt.
The Right Time for Microservices
Microservices start to make sense when:
- Your team is large enough that coordination around a monolith becomes a bottleneck.
- You have distinct business domains with clearly different lifecycles and scalability needs.
- You’ve already validated your product and are optimizing for robustness and velocity across multiple teams.
Until then? Keep it simple. Build something that works. Don’t architect for a scale you haven’t reached yet. Premature optimization isn’t just a waste of time—it’s often the thing that kills your momentum entirely.
If this hits a little close to home, don’t worry. Most of us have been there. Myself included. The key is learning when simplicity is your biggest asset—not complexity.
Build smart. Not impressive.
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