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That visualisation graph is horrific. There's no way someone can look at 1,600 services and say that this is a good idea.

• Nextgrid 7y ago
  It is a good idea when "profit" is way down on your companies' list of objectives but "being hip" and "bragging about complex tech" is at the top. The more complexity they have, the more people they can justify to hire, the more "growth" they get, the more investment money they can solicit. This kind of complexity benefits everyone individually. London has a huge bullshit startup scene that enjoys complexity for complexity's sake (for the aforementioned reasons) so it's a good career move for these developers to have "microservices" on their CV. Managers also gain as they have to manage a team 10x the size. The people above the managers can boast about how they're "scaling teams" and battling complex engineering problems (even though these problems are self-inflicted). The company enjoys it because it makes them look hip and is presumably good bait for investors (just like AI and blockchain). As a whole, everyone loses because a simple task is now taking 10x the effort thus money but cares about that as the downside is a long-term cost that is distributed across everyone when the upside is a direct, personal benefit to someone's career. When you're playing with investor's money it's a very good idea. When you're playing with your own money and doing a cost/benefit analysis it's a terrible idea.