This isn't so much the symptom of a distributed architecture as it is one of a badly designed distributed architecture. Distributed architectures are the only

This isn't so much the symptom of a distributed architecture as it is one of a badly designed distributed architecture. Distributed architectures are the only way to go once you reach a certain size both in terms of scale and in terms of team size. You can certainly make do without it (Wikipedia) but you'll have a much more robust product with it (Netflix). The trick is always using the design appropriate for the current needs. It's good to think ahead, but it mustn't come at the expense of the present. At the beginning—which is the case for most startups, since few make it to the later stages—it's often a good idea to go with a monolithic codebase based on a lean framework. As you grow, you're going to want to start adding components like a message queue for async work, rethinking your data store for scale, etc. As you grow even further, you're going to want to transition to a distributed architecture. I don't know what comes next… I haven't gotten there yet. But I'm sure as you grow even further, your needs are going to change yet again.