@architectsassemble

The Engineering Decision That Seems Small and Costs £40,000

15h ago · 5 min read · Nobody sets out to make a £40,000 mistake. The decision that costs £40,000 looks, at the time it's made, like a reasonable call under time pressure. An engineer with solid instincts and not quite enou

Why Payment State Is the Hardest Problem in Distributed Systems

6d ago · 6 min read · Most engineering teams underestimate payment state until it bites them. Not during the build. During the build, managing payment state feels straightforward. A payment is initiated, processed, confirm

The Microservices Mistake That Quietly Kills Fintech Engineering Velocity

Mar 7 · 5 min read · There's a pattern I see repeatedly when reviewing cloud architecture for early-stage fintech companies. A team of 10–15 engineers. Series A funded. Processing payments, handling reconciliation, managi

Your Engineers Are Ready. Your Architecture Isn't. That's the Real Bottleneck.

Mar 6 · 5 min read · Your sprint board looks healthy. Standups are fine. Retros are constructive. But every two weeks, the same thing happens: a ticket hits a wall. Not because your engineers can't build it but because no

Can You Reduce AWS Costs Without Changing Your Architecture?

Jan 28 · 15 min read · Before answering that question, it's worth asking a prior one — whether the cost problem is a tooling gap or an accountability gap. They have different solutions. Yes many organisations can reduce AWS