u/PickAffectionate1938

How did my Node.js + MongoDB API take 13 seconds to respond? 😭

I recently ran into a performance issue in one of my backend APIs.

The API was built with Node.js + MongoDB, and the response time was nearly 13 seconds. 🫠

At first, I thought:

“Maybe MongoDB is slow?”

But obviously, there was more going on.

Now I'm trying to identify the actual bottleneck and optimize the API properly — database queries, indexing, population/aggregation, unnecessary processing, network calls, etc.

For developers who have worked on Node.js + MongoDB production APIs:

What would you check first when an API takes ~13 seconds to respond?

Would love to hear how you would debug this step-by-step

I’m currently working at a startup, and the environment has become extremely toxic. There’s no proper planning, no structure, and everything feels chaotic all the time. Work is scattered everywhere, responsibilities are unclear, and somehow one person is expected to handle everything perfectly.

Average work hours are around 13–14 hours daily, and despite that, there’s constant pressure, unrealistic expectations, verbal abuse, and even threats to resign if things don’t go exactly as they want.

Instead of teamwork and support, it feels like continuous stress and blame culture. I joined to learn and grow, but it’s starting to affect my mental peace and motivation badly.

Has anyone else gone through something similar in startups? How did you handle it, and when did you decide it was finally time to leave?