Avoiding the Overengineering Trap: Build What’s Needed First

When I first started learning system design, I had a bad habit:

Overengineering everything.

Every small feature I touched had to include:

• Queues
• Microservices
• Sharding
• CDNs

...even before a single user had visited the system.

I thought I was being clever.

In reality, I was just adding complexity for no reason.

❌ The Problem with Overengineering

When you're just starting out, it's easy to get caught up in scaling for imagined problems. You hear about Netflix, Uber, and Google and try to mimic their architecture.

But here's the truth:

You don’t need to scale for a million users when you don’t even have ten.

Overengineering:

• Slows you down
• Increases bugs
• Adds unnecessary cost
• Makes onboarding harder for new developers

✅ What You Should Do Instead

Just build what’s needed.

Start with:

• A simple monolith
• Clean code and separation of concerns
• A clear roadmap for when and how to scale

When your product starts gaining traction, that’s when:

• You analyze bottlenecks
• You modularize your architecture
• You scale responsibly using proven patterns

🧘🏽‍♂️ Remember This:

“You don’t need a sword to kill an ant.”

Optimize for learning and shipping — not for imaginary scale.

Build smart. Build simple. Then scale when it actually matters.

Keep Coding 🔥