Over-engineering has killed more tech startups than a bad business idea ⚡

Arpit Bhayani

Arpit Bhayani

Feb 15, 2024 • 1 min read


Over-engineering has killed more tech startups than a bad business idea ⚡

I have seen startups with more microservices than the number of paying customers. I have seen startups with more lines of code than the users using their products. I know a mid-size org with more microservices than the number of employees.

These are all clear indicators of over-engineering.

So, if you join an early-stage or a mid-size org, ensure you do not over-engineer a solution, nor do you let founders or peers do it. So, keep asking great questions that keep implementations simple, elevate the product, and help the business make money.

Always remember, business >> product >> engineering.

This one line holds for every single company out there. The sooner you understand this, the better it is for your career.

⚡ I keep writing and sharing my practical experience and learnings every day, so if you resonate then follow along. I keep it no fluff.

Arpit Bhayani

Principal Engineer II at Razorpay - building Agent Studio, Ex-staff engg at GCP Memorystore & Dataproc, Creator of DiceDB, ex-Amazon Fast Data, ex-Director of Engg. SRE and Data Engineering at Unacademy. I spark engineering curiosity through my no-fluff engineering videos on YouTube and my courses