#1 Microservices and monoliths

In this episode, Toby and Krisztian dig into one of software engineering's most debated topics: monoliths versus microservices. They break down what each architecture actually means, where the industry went wrong by treating microservices as a default, and when a well-structured monolith is the smarter choice. The conversation covers real-world scaling challenges, infrastructure complexity, team organisation, Kubernetes fatigue, and the hidden costs of over-engineering early-stage products.

https://techleaguepodcast.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techleague-podcast/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/techleaguepodcast/

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-league/id1852602975

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1zx8UIe2EjawuVU3I31fdP

Chapters

0:00 Introduction

0:40 What is a monolith?

2:31 What are microservices?

3:50 The case for monoliths

7:46 Scaling problems with monoliths

8:17 Running a monolith like a microservice

14:00 The infrastructure cost of microservices

19:15 Pros and cons of microservices

22:03 Infrastructure as code and service ownership

24:00 Architectural mistakes and migration pain

28:41 Technology diversity: freedom or fragmentation?

33:25 The danger of nano-services

35:21 When should you use a monolith?

39:39 When should you use microservices?

42:44 ECS Fargate vs Kubernetes

43:01 The history of container orchestration

51:06 Is the complexity worth it?

58:13 Conclusions and takeaways

1:01:36 How to build a monolith you can grow out of

Technologies Mentioned

Docker - https://www.docker.com

Kubernetes - https://kubernetes.io

Amazon ECS - https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/

AWS Fargate - https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/

AWS Lambda - https://aws.amazon.com/lambda/

Terraform - https://www.terraform.io

Apache Mesos - https://mesos.apache.org

Google Cloud Run - https://cloud.google.com/run

Helm - https://helm.sh