Best of both worlds usually means worst of both

“Best of Both Worlds” usually means worst of both.

A company acquires a competitor.
The acquired product: modern UI, fragile backend. The acquiring company: solid infrastructure, dated design.

Leadership decides:
“Let’s use their frontend with our backend. Best of both worlds.”

Sounds smart, right?

Here’s what actually happened:

• The “modern” UI was built for a completely different data model
• Every integration required workarounds and middleware.
• Performance degraded because the UI expected structures that didn’t exist
• The team spent 6 months building translation layers instead of features

I’ve watched this pattern destroy quarters of productivity.

The mistake: Choosing what looks good over what’s structurally sound.

In product organizations, foundation matters more than facade. You can’t build the future on architecture that can’t carry the weight.

The hard truth: Sometimes the best decision is to pick one strong foundation and rebuild what needs rebuilding - even if it means a less impressive integration story.

In the end, impressive-sounding architecture that doesn’t work isn’t architecture. It’s expensive fiction.

Ask yourself: Are we building on our strongest technical base, or on what makes the best slide?