This won't be a long post. I said almost everything I wanted to in the post's title.
And sometimes a post doesn't need to be long to be epic. I learned this from Brian.
You should know that I've been managing software engineers for two decades. Architecture conversations are where we always go. No one wants to build software that won't scale. And I get that.
But here's the thing—if your interface and user experience are complicated, you won't necessarily have to scale all that much.
I've had the opportunity to re-build several applications that needed to scale, because there was good engagement. But when products have never gained traction (because of poor user experience), I've rarely been able to double down the investment.
So I'll end how I began:
A great interface and user experience trumps a great architecture every time.