All of which can be handled with horizontal scaling of identical components.

None of which explains poor latency when opening UI elements, which is more likely be explained by overuse of SPA or spaghetti code in microservices.

Update: yup, that’s exactly it, just as I guessed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47912867

This whole thread is so embarrassing for GitHub.

The idea that you would change your product design in this way as a quick fix to solve a performance problem is insane.

This would be like if the battery life on a MacBook Pro was too short so Apple fixed it by removing the screen.

Job’s done, boss!