Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Microservices are an antipattern
Search
Lindsay Holmwood
April 18, 2019
Technology
0
240
Microservices are an antipattern
Lindsay Holmwood
April 18, 2019
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Lindsay Holmwood
See All by Lindsay Holmwood
Protecting sensitive data in DynamoDB with searchable encryption
auxesis
0
22
Your API ain't as secure as you think
auxesis
0
160
Footguns and factorisation: how to make users of your cryptographic library successful
auxesis
0
1.5k
Levelling up database security by thinking in APIs
auxesis
0
170
How to thwart your devops transformation with counterinsurgency doctrine
auxesis
1
110
Mirrors, networks, and boundaries
auxesis
0
160
Managing remotely, while remotely managing
auxesis
13
4.7k
Testing Conway’s Law in open source communities
auxesis
6
850
Building and scaling effective distributed teams
auxesis
4
280
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
LINEヤフーにおけるAI駆動開発組織のプロデュース施策
lycorptech_jp
PRO
0
380
JAWS DAYS 2026 CDP道場 事前説明会 / JAWS DAYS 2026 CDP Dojo briefing document
naospon
0
110
【SLO】"多様な期待値" と向き合ってみた
z63d
2
290
社内でAWS BuilderCards体験会を立ち上げ、得られた気づき / 20260225 Masaki Okuda
shift_evolve
PRO
1
150
1 年間の育休から時短勤務で復帰した私が、 AI を駆使して立ち上がりを早めた話
lycorptech_jp
PRO
0
210
Microsoft Fabric のワークスペースと容量の設計原則
ryomaru0825
2
230
マネージャー版 "提案のレベル" を上げる
konifar
10
4.4k
Digitization部 紹介資料
sansan33
PRO
1
7k
全自動で回せ!Claude Codeマーケットプレイス運用術
yukyu30
3
150
LINE Messengerの次世代ストレージ選定
lycorptech_jp
PRO
17
6.9k
Windows ネットワークを再確認する
murachiakira
PRO
0
230
ソフトウェアアーキテクトのための意思決定術: Create Decision Readiness—The Real Skill Behind Architectural Decision
snoozer05
PRO
27
8.3k
Featured
See All Featured
Save Time (by Creating Custom Rails Generators)
garrettdimon
PRO
32
2.3k
A brief & incomplete history of UX Design for the World Wide Web: 1989–2019
jct
1
310
SEO Brein meetup: CTRL+C is not how to scale international SEO
lindahogenes
0
2.4k
Building a Modern Day E-commerce SEO Strategy
aleyda
45
8.7k
Templates, Plugins, & Blocks: Oh My! Creating the theme that thinks of everything
marktimemedia
31
2.7k
Avoiding the “Bad Training, Faster” Trap in the Age of AI
tmiket
0
96
brightonSEO & MeasureFest 2025 - Christian Goodrich - Winning strategies for Black Friday CRO & PPC
cargoodrich
3
110
Fight the Zombie Pattern Library - RWD Summit 2016
marcelosomers
234
17k
Bash Introduction
62gerente
615
210k
Making Projects Easy
brettharned
120
6.6k
Dealing with People You Can't Stand - Big Design 2015
cassininazir
367
27k
Color Theory Basics | Prateek | Gurzu
gurzu
0
220
Transcript
Microservices are an antipattern Lindsay Holmwood
Microservices are an antipattern Lindsay Holmwood
Why microservices?
Design strategy to manage complexity in our systems
Design strategy to manage complexity in our systems
If the system or team get too big, we: 1.
Split the system
If the system or team get too big, we: 1.
Split the system
If the system or team get too big, we: 2.
Split the team
Popularised by the devops movement
Popularised by the devops movement
CD + containers were the drivers
CD + containers were the drivers
In use at the big end of town
“It works for Google, so we’ll scale it down and
get the same benefits!”
We cargo culted a design strategy without understanding the tradeoffs
Real talk: The smallest microservice at Google probably does more
transactions than the largest service in your organisation.
Real talk: We took a pattern for managing huge systems,
extrapolated it down to our size, and hoped it worked.
Real talk: Hope is not a strategy.
Some downsides you should think about:
Some downsides you should think about:
You’re replacing function calls with network calls
Source: “Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud” by Brendan Gregg
Is that latency worth it?
What hard limits are you imposing to control unpredictability?
Microservices are a systems multiplier for your shitty code
None
How is your ◦ modularity? ◦ isolation? ◦ encapsulation?
Refactor first
Then scale when the performance impacts users
1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make
it fast
1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make
it fast Refactor
1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make
it fast Refactor Microservice
Microservices have a higher cost of ownership
Operational requirements: ◦ CD pipelines ◦ Network & compute &
storage ◦ Logging ◦ Monitoring ◦ Tracing & observability
Security requirements: ◦ Authentication ◦ Identity ◦ Monitoring
This costs more (both in systems bills and engineering time)
But what if we just… didn’t?
But what if we just… didn’t?
Problems are harder to debug
Incidents have > MTTD & MTTR
Delivery slows
Increased communication + coordination overhead between teams
Sequencing of changes across multiple services
Poor service boundaries? You have to get multiple teams moving
in the same direction to deliver a change.
Stakeholders for technical changes are rarely exclusively technical
Requires coordination across disciplines like product, design, marketing, analytics, …
You need established and understood communication paths
You need established and understood change coordination
You need established cultural norms for resolving conflict
Microservices are an effective way to separate concerns in complex
systems
Microservices are an inefficient way of organising people in organisations
< 1,000 people
The smaller the org, the smaller the return
You are not Google/Netflix/ AWS/Facebook/…
Do the job you have, not the job you want.
Thank you! (fight me)