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ROHIT SINGH
ROHIT SINGH

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🔥 Microservices Were a Mistake (For Most Teams)

“Distributed systems are expensive — teams massively underestimate the cost.”

Microservices were sold as the holy grail of scalability.
Independent deployments.
Smaller services.
Faster teams.

But for most teams?

👉 Microservices made things worse, not better.

Let’s talk about why.

🚨 The Promise vs Reality

🟢 What Microservices Promised

  • Independent teams
  • Faster deployments
  • Better scalability
  • Fault isolation
  • Technology freedom

🔴 What Most Teams Actually Got

  • Slower development
  • Harder debugging
  • Broken local setups
  • Network failures
  • Operational nightmares

Microservices didn’t fail.

👉 Premature microservices did.

🧠 The Biggest Lie: “Microservices = Scalability”

Scalability is not your first problem.

For most companies:

  • Traffic is low
  • Teams are small
  • Requirements change weekly

Yet they build systems designed for Google-scale traffic.

This is like buying a cargo ship to cross a river.

💸 Hidden Cost #1: Operational Overhead

A monolith needs:

  • One deployment
  • One database
  • One monitoring setup

Microservices need:

  • Service discovery
  • API gateways
  • Distributed tracing
  • Centralized logging
  • Retry logic
  • Circuit breakers
  • Kubernetes expertise

Result?

You spend more time maintaining infrastructure than building features.

🌐 Hidden Cost #2: Network Is Not Free

In a monolith:

user = getUser(id)
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In microservices:

user = await fetch('user-service/api/users/1')
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Now you deal with:

  • Latency
  • Timeouts
  • Partial failures
  • Retries
  • Inconsistent data

Your system is no longer deterministic.

🐛 Hidden Cost #3: Debugging Becomes Hell

Bug in production?

Monolith:

  • Check logs
  • Reproduce locally
  • Fix

Microservices:

  • Which service?
  • Which version?
  • Which request?
  • Which region?
  • Which retry?

Now you need distributed tracing just to debug a button click.

🔄 Hidden Cost #4: Data Consistency Nightmares

Monolith:

  • Single database
  • ACID transactions

Microservices:

  • Multiple databases
  • Eventual consistency
  • Saga patterns
  • Compensating transactions

You didn’t just build services.

👉 You built a distributed database system (whether you wanted to or not).

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Team Size Reality Check

Microservices work when:

  • Teams are autonomous
  • Clear service ownership exists
  • DevOps maturity is high
  • Engineers understand distributed systems

Most teams:

  • < 10 developers
  • Shared ownership
  • Limited infra experience

Microservices multiply coordination, not productivity.

🔥 The “Netflix Fallacy”

Everyone points to:

  • Netflix
  • Uber
  • Amazon

What they forget:

  • Massive engineering teams
  • Dedicated SREs
  • Years of evolution
  • Custom internal tooling

You don’t need Netflix architecture.

You need your architecture.

✅ When Microservices Actually Make Sense

Microservices are great when used intentionally.

Use them if:

  • You have clear domain boundaries
  • Independent scaling is required
  • Teams are large and autonomous
  • Deployment frequency is high
  • Failure isolation is critical

Otherwise?

You’re paying enterprise costs for startup problems.

🟢 The Better Default: Modular Monolith

Most teams should start with a:

🧱 Modular Monolith

  • Single codebase
  • Clear module boundaries
  • Independent logic layers
  • Shared database (initially)

You get:

  • Simple deployment
  • Easy debugging
  • Faster development
  • Clear path to split later

Monolith ≠ Bad
Unstructured monolith = bad

🛣️ Migration Strategy That Actually Works

1️⃣ Start with a modular monolith
2️⃣ Identify real bottlenecks
3️⃣ Extract only critical services
4️⃣ Add infra when pain is real

Architecture should evolve — not be forced.

❌ Common Microservices Myths

❌ “Microservices make teams faster”
❌ “We’ll scale later easily”
❌ “Everyone uses them”
❌ “Kubernetes will solve it”

Tools don’t solve architectural mistakes.

🏁 Final Verdict

Microservices were not a mistake.

But using them too early absolutely was.

Most teams don’t need:

  • Distributed systems
  • Network complexity
  • Operational overhead

They need:

  • Clear boundaries
  • Simple deployments
  • Faster feedback loops

💬 Let’s Debate

Are microservices overused — or just misunderstood?
Drop your experience 👇

If this hit close to home, share it with your team 🔁

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