Cloud computing has become the backbone of modern software development, with promises of increased scalability, resilience, and agility. Organizations are rapidly migrating workloads and re-architecting systems using microservices, containers, and managed services, convinced these steps will eliminate the rigidity and risks of traditional monolithic applications. However, beneath the surface, many cloud architectures fall into subtle traps, unwittingly recreating the same monolithic patterns they sought to escape—resulting in architectures that are "monoliths in disguise."