> a small group of folks that are at least as competent as the folks at WhatsApp pre-acquistion That's a success case... beware survivorship bias. > if there

> a small group of folks that are at least as competent as the folks at WhatsApp pre-acquistion That's a success case... beware survivorship bias. > if there are lots of bozos in the startup No arguing that quality engineers are fundamental to quality engineering. That said... by this standard, there's no point in having this entire discussion. Every good db/store out there is good. They all work very well if used as they should be, with due respect to tradeoffs. Yet, almost everyone has db problems. Almost every one of these problems occur well within the technical limits of postgres or whatnot. "It shouldn't be a problem" when it usually is irl is tunnel vision. There is an empirical reality disagreeing with you. Walking into it with "this shouldn't be a problem unless everyone is a moron" is bad strategy. If you can't think of reasons why architecture can and will become a problem, then just assume that you (or some of you, some of the time) are morons, and try to make it moron proof.