Burned out by complex tech?
Microservices are often the root cause.
I've led billion-dollar scale-up teams. Even they struggle to tame microservices. Your 3-person squad just can't.
You dream to copy Netflix or Meta. Then get buried in ops overhead. Debugging is a pain. Cycle time is through the roof.
Microservices demand discipline. You don't have it yet.
Early-stage startups don't need distributed systems. Your goal must be speed, learning, adaptability. You have neither the budget nor the time to maintain that yet.
Here's the playbook: build a modular monolith. It's not sexy. It just wins. One deploy. One brain. Zero chaos.
→ Refactor in hours. Ship in minutes.
Don't split it early. Split it when scaling hurts. When growth forces your hand.
Evolve as fast as your business. Everything else is self-imposed technical debt.