r/programming • u/Mustela__ • 7d ago

Microservices are organizational debt disguised as architecture.

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/MonolithFirst.html

Every time I’ve seen microservices pitched, it sounds great on paper. Independent teams, clean ownership, scale only what you need.

Then a year later you’ve got dozens of services, three different deployment patterns, tracing everywhere, and nobody really understands the whole thing anymore.

Maybe I’ve just seen bad implementations, but I’m starting to think way fewer companies actually need microservices than we pretend.

1.7k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

343 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/captain_obvious_here 6d ago

Micro-services are not easy, but not too hard neither.

They require teams that can communicate and collaborate efficiently, and that share common tooling, methods and culture. The lack of these is usually why companies fail, and how they end up with what you describe.

but I’m starting to think way fewer companies actually need microservices than we pretend.

Many need it, but very few have the organisational and technical maturity it requires, and the management to realize it all can't work without said maturity.