I'm sick of complexity.
Not the unavoidable kind that comes with solving real problems. I mean the manufactured complexity that's everywhere in software today.
Then vs Now
We ran entire space programs on computers less powerful than a pocket calculator. Full blown applications lived on floppy disks. Now? Simple apps take forever to load and require lengthy tutorials just to find basic features.
Hardware got better, but software got more confusing and bloated.
The worst part isn't just that everything is slower. It's that we've convinced ourselves this is normal. Menus with 47 options. Settings pages that need their own navigation.
Behind the scenes, we're doing the same thing with infrastructure. Teams now default to serverless architectures with dozens of microservices for applications that could run perfectly fine on a single server for the first few months or even years. We've turned simple problems into distributed systems nightmares, all in the name of "best practices."
Bernhard, my co-founder and CTO, loves proposing elaborate architectures, too. Every few weeks there's a new idea - microservices, event sourcing, serverless everything. I always ask what problem this solves. The answer is always the same: "Scalability. Best practices. Future-proofing."
We argue about this constantly. Since we’ve grown our user base significantly in the past few years, he does have a point, and it makes sense for us. But oftentimes it’s also just complexity for complexity's sake, dressed up as engineering excellence.
Why We Keep Adding Complexity
A few forces create this mess, but three stand out:
Feature creep feels like progress. It's easier to sell "more capabilities" than "we do the core things really well." Each feature seems logical in isolation, but collectively they create an overwhelming mess.
Complexity as differentiation. Simple solutions look basic in feature comparison charts. Having 100 options signals you're "enterprise-ready" even if 90 of them confuse users.
The myth of power users. We build for the 5% who want infinite customization while the other 95% just want things to work. Most users never dig deeper than the surface.
The Real Cost
All this complexity has a price:
- Longer learning curves
- More support tickets
- User abandonment
- Decision paralysis
- Feature bloat that hides what actually matters
Meanwhile, the simple solutions often work better. They're easier to learn, faster to use, and more likely to actually get adopted. There's a reason small tools keep disrupting bloated enterprise software.
Back to Basics
Maybe the real innovation isn't adding more features or offering more options. Maybe it's having the discipline to say no. To keep things simple. To solve real problems instead of creating imaginary ones.
Clarity beats cleverness.
Simplicity beats sophistication.
Working beats perfect.
