Pros
High ownership. If you want impact, you get it. Smart, driven individuals who care about building. Leadership is now focused on cost discipline and operational efficiency. Real opportunity to simplify and improve the system.
Cons
The platform expanded into ~200 repositories and extensive microservice fragmentation, with heavy Terraform templating. This increased coordination overhead and infrastructure cost. For a reviews-focused product (structured text + ratings), IO/network-heavy service boundaries introduced measurable latency in core workflows (e.g., dashboard load times). Infrastructure and inter-service traffic grew disproportionate to the actual domain complexity. Several outdated or effectively unmaintained dependencies increased operational friction and technical risk. There was strong resistance to adopting modern productivity tooling — including AI-assisted development — which materially limited experimentation and engineering velocity. Restructuring and cost-cutting efforts impacted morale.