[i_play_stax]

Have you ever done a systems design interview? There's a lot of complexity in seemingly simple systems. This is humorously demonstrated in this skit on MicroServices, https://youtu.be/y8OnoxKotPQ

It's all too accurate.

Let's add up a few factors - Reddit is an 18yr old startup with Peter Pan syndrome. - Mountains of tech debt, like every other company - Industry incentives promote people to squirt out a feature, receive titles or money, and move on - Freedom of speech brings all the evils with it, like CP, that Reddit has complicated systems to catch and moderate - IPO desires mean financial belt tightening to look as mature as possible - Industry wide layoffs have created a fertile ground of new startups germinating. VCs are actively hunting for the next big AI unicorn. Torrential increases in traffic are hitting the company. And why? Reddit is a curation engine. The data is sorted and labeled to a degree. All this to say, there's a lot of refactoring needed on top of shifting ground created by the intersection of tech debt and IPO aspirations. - Guessing by all public measures, Reddit has a ton of traffic already. Extrapolating from other large companies I have worked for, the infrastructure and transport costs are significant. - 3P apps scrubbing Reddit ads and substituting their own are a brand and liability risk

TL;DR toil from legacy, more complexity than you can imagine, pressure of market