> What a lot of people don't seem to realise is that by trying to split up a system into more smaller pieces in an attempt to decrease complexity, it's often the case that you end up with even more complexity, just hidden in the interactions between the pieces.

I think that is a good observation that I also made and I want to add to that. Moving from a monolith to microservices, is moving the complexity from inside the monolithic system to the interactions between microservices. This means that the job of developers becomes easier since a developer only has to think in terms of the microservice he/she is developing and ensuring that that 'simple' system externally behaves according to spec. But it also means that the job of the architect becomes more difficult because he/she has to get a grasp on all communication (synchronously/asynchronously) between the different microservices.

So, even though there might be more complexity overall, I do believe that from the point of view of a developer, the complexity is lower.