I used to have pretty much the same reaction as most of the comments here on gojek engineering posts. Coming from a telco background the RPS figures were quite low while the complexity of architecture seemed completely over the top.
However, I now know more about the company. They have one of the most lean engineering teams of comparable companies here. Their CTO & VP Eng are incredibly practical guys whose advice would resonate with pretty much everyone here (Eg interview here[0] where they repeat the dangers of scaling too fast). They have small multifunctional product teams and the microservices architecture fits to this (as opposed to building it for fanciness / resumes sake). And they did it. Theres dozens of "features" in the app which are entire giant businesses in their own right.
So Id imagine the shortest path to getting this up and running this was definitely considered, would have been nice to go into more detail as to why simpler / outsourced solutions would work but id guess theres a good reason.
Sometimes there are no good reasons, and we should have the ability to question it sometimes, that's how progress is made, in science and in engineering.
However, I now know more about the company. They have one of the most lean engineering teams of comparable companies here. Their CTO & VP Eng are incredibly practical guys whose advice would resonate with pretty much everyone here (Eg interview here[0] where they repeat the dangers of scaling too fast). They have small multifunctional product teams and the microservices architecture fits to this (as opposed to building it for fanciness / resumes sake). And they did it. Theres dozens of "features" in the app which are entire giant businesses in their own right.
So Id imagine the shortest path to getting this up and running this was definitely considered, would have been nice to go into more detail as to why simpler / outsourced solutions would work but id guess theres a good reason.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He0XBBfCEVk