Or there's nobody to blame and we're stuck in a very shitty local maximum. Developers want to deploy to every device on the globe instantaneously, users want to get their software without having to fight with the IT department, and while everybody was looking at the JVM as the runtime to beat the browser was picking up features like some demented katamari.

When I look at the massive backlog of requests from my users, not a single one is "speed."

I was referring to API calls between server components of what is essentially a monolithic application.

I've recently come across several such applications that were "split up" for no good reason. Just because it's the current fad to do the microservices thing. Someone liked that fad and decided that over-architecting everything is going to keep them employed.

To clarify: This was strictly worse in every possible way. No shortcuts were taken. No time was saved. Significant time and effort was invested into making the final product much worse.