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We run migrations across 2,800 microservices

monzo.com

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Re: We run migrations across 2,800 microservices

#3

Post by HenryBemis »

Or as I call it "death by a thousand microcuts".

I always wonder why some (most) banks are proud of being reckless.. oh well, it keeps me well paid.

Also, Monzo decided to remove the "dark mode" option back-in-the-day. When I wrote to them about it "please return it as optional - as it already was" they responded with a polite "nope, suck it up". My next message to them was to close my account. Well.. "nope, suck it up" back right at you.

Re: We run migrations across 2,800 microservices

#4

Post by [deleted] »

HenryBemis wrote: post #3

Or as I call it "death by a thousand microcuts". I always wonder why some (most) banks are proud of being reckless.. oh well, it keeps me well paid. Also, Monzo decided to remove the "dark mode" option back-in-the-day. When I wrote to them about it "please return it as optional - as it already was" they responded with a polite "nope, suck it up". My next message to them was to close my account. Well.. "nope, suck it…

[deleted]

Re: We run migrations across 2,800 microservices

#5

Post by piva00 »

jjice wrote: post #2

What constitutes a micro service when you have 2800? Are these individual lambdas for each endpoint and background task or something?

2800 is not even that many depending on the company size. At my current employer I'd guess we have somewhere between 2-3x that, and those are more complex services than a simple lambda + endpoint in each. Just my user with its groups gives me ownership of some 200+ components.

Those are only backend microservices, not counting data pipelines, and other supporting applications.

What constitutes a microservice is a philosophical question very related to the company's culture, some companies will prefer very small single use-case services, some will develop microservices that support a whole isolated functionality (with business logic) to be re-used across the stack. There's no single definition that can be applicable to such variety of architectures.

Re: We run migrations across 2,800 microservices

#6

Post by willsewell »

jjice wrote: post #2

What constitutes a micro service when you have 2800? Are these individual lambdas for each endpoint and background task or something?

I think we've gone back on forth on this over the years. The rate of new services is decreasing, so I think we have shifted more from lots of very small services (low thousands lines of code) to bigger ones that are more like an entire product (e.g. 100k LoC+). But I wouldn't be surprised if the pendulum shifts back again in the future - there are downsides with the larger services, like greater contention withe other engineers.

Re: We run migrations across 2,800 microservices

#8

Post by superzamp »

HenryBemis wrote: post #3

Or as I call it "death by a thousand microcuts". I always wonder why some (most) banks are proud of being reckless.. oh well, it keeps me well paid. Also, Monzo decided to remove the "dark mode" option back-in-the-day. When I wrote to them about it "please return it as optional - as it already was" they responded with a polite "nope, suck it up". My next message to them was to close my account. Well.. "nope, suck it…

If you see micro-services as (a domain boundary + an atomic infrastructural unit), maybe the latter is debatable but the application domain do need 2800 boundaries anyway? Especially for such a large company, especially for a company operating in financial services.
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