31/07/2025
… minutes read
Overengineering is the pain in the ass of every ecommerce developer, merchant, and agency on the planet.
If you can build a car with four wheels, why would you build it with six? Yet people do exactly that in software all the time. You ask them why, and they say something like, "Six wheels are better." No evidence. No real explanation. Just say so.
It sounds like a joke, but I've seen it over and over again in real Magento projects. What starts as a simple solution quickly becomes something that's bloated, impossible to maintain, and guaranteed to blow up when touched.
At run_as_root, we work with big, struggling projects, the kind where multiple agencies have already failed, the code is a mess, and nobody wants to touch it anymore. We step in when things are falling apart, and let me tell you, overengineering is always at the heart of the chaos.
From the outside, it might look like developers are just being "thorough." But in reality, overengineering creates:
Higher maintenance costs
Longer development cycles
More complexity in every future update
Tests that are harder to write and maintain
A system nobody wants to touch
Every new feature ends up taking more time, costing more money, and creating more risk. Why? Because the original design is too complicated for what the business actually needs.
You don't just pay more once. You pay more forever.
Overengineering is a nightmare when you're trying to give estimates.
You look at a simple feature request, something that should take a day or two. You start digging into the code. You realise the system isn't doing things in a straight line, it's spiraling through layers of unnecessary logic. You keep digging and digging, and suddenly what looked like a 10-day job becomes 20.
You go back to the client, who understandably isn't happy. They didn't plan for double the cost. Now everyone's frustrated. And all of it can be traced back to one guy, years ago, who thought building a six-wheeled car was a smart idea.
There's no single fix. It depends on how bad the problem is and how much the business depends on that piece of code. But here are the most common strategies we use.
This is the bare minimum. You need to build tests around the critical functionality so that future changes don't break everything. Even if the code is ugly, you can still monitor it with tests. This gives you a safety net.
Yes, writing tests around overengineered code is painful. But it's less painful than fixing surprise bugs after every release.
If the overengineered part is completely out of control, we try to isolate it. Sometimes that means duplicating part of it elsewhere and rebuilding a cleaner version. This isn't always pretty, but it works when you can't refactor everything at once.
I prefer this approach. It allows you to move forward without getting sucked into a swamp of legacy decisions.
In some cases, you can chip away at the problem. Small refactors, one step at a time. Before you do this, talk with your developers and stakeholders. Figure out how risky the changes are. Ask if this part of the system is stable or if it's breaking all the time.
If nobody touches it and it just works, leave it alone, especially if you already have tests. But if it's fragile and changing often, start planning a proper refactor.
If you hire a cheap team to do a complex job, I guarantee you'll end up with overengineered, legacy code.
Don't choose based on hourly rate. Choose based on technical maturity. Choose based on long-term partnership. Because once the system is overcomplicated, fixing it costs far more than building it right the first time.
I say this as someone who's made a career cleaning up after bad code.
If you're tempted to overengineer something, stop. Ask someone more experienced for input.
If you still do it anyway, just know this: every developer after you is going to run git blame, see your name, and curse you under their breath.
Not because you wrote code. Because you made things unnecessarily difficult for no benefit.
There's nothing wrong with clever code, but it has to serve a purpose. It has to make the system better, not just more complicated.
Overengineering is one of the most expensive, invisible problems in ecommerce. It leads to poor estimates, missed deadlines, broken releases, and constant tension between agencies and merchants.
It's avoidable. But once it's there, you need to manage it carefully.
If you're dealing with this already, focus on test coverage, isolate risky areas, and plan gradual refactors. If you're starting fresh, make simplicity a core principle.
Build the four-wheeled car. Not the six-wheeled one. Nobody needs six wheels.
Need help untangling your overengineered ecommerce platform? We do this every day. Let's talk.
We help untangle overengineered ecommerce platforms every day. Let's talk about your project.
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