I think the op's solution of looking more closely at the hot paths and solving for those is a far better solution than re-architecting the application in ways that could, or can, create unintended consequences. People don't consider that enough, at all.
Don't forget that hot path resolution is the antithesis of 'premature optimization'.
> you could mitigate some of that with good management and access patterns
the CTO fired me for making those sorts of suggestions about better management, and then got fired himself a couple months later... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯... even with the macro events, their stock is down 72% since it opened, which doesn't surprise me in the least bit having been on the inside...
Is that, uhh, rose-tinted glasses?
2020: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/saying-goodbye-to-the-best-gi...
Previously, 2018: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/why-i-left-google-to-join-gra...
[I don't have any knowledge of Grab or the people involved other than reading these two blog posts, or of the parent commenter].
I came along as an aquihire of a Vietnamese team that I just happened to be managing at the time. Great team of people. I negotiated a stupid high salary, probably because they weren't used to someone negotiating at all (highest eng in all of Singapore) and that was part of why they were upset at me, I was making more than that VP of Eng and stirring the pot with comments about their poor architecture decisions.
Yegge was a good hire, but probably wrong company for him given the political differences. I think Yegge started a bit after I was fired. I remember thinking to myself that he's either not going to be very effective or he won't last long. To his credit, I think he lasted longer than I would have bet he would have. They had had another ex FB CTO much earlier before me, that was a train wreck [1] and ended up suing the company. They were without a CTO for a long time, probably thought Yegge could fill that roll and ended up hiring Mark instead.
There was a definite distinction between the Singapore and US/Seattle teams, at least the short time while I was there, they pretty much didn't talk to or like each other at all. It made getting those API calls almost impossible.
