We Stopped Using Microservices. Here Is What We Learned.
Two years ago we split our monolith into 12 microservices. Eighteen months ago we merged five of them back. Here is what that taught us.
Why We Split
Deploy times were 45 minutes. Teams were stepping on each other. We thought microservices would fix it.
What Microservices Actually Gave Us
Distributed tracing complexity. Network partition headaches. Data consistency nightmares. Deployment coordination across teams. More infrastructure cost.
Why We Merged Back
The problem was not the architecture. It was the team structure. Microservices require clear domain ownership. We had overlapping boundaries and constant coordination overhead.
What Stayed Split
Services that genuinely have different scaling profiles. Payment processing stays separate from the main app. Public API stays separate.
The Lesson
Microservices are an organizational pattern, not a technical one. If your team structure is not ready, the architecture will fight you.
What is your architecture?