microservice communication: sync versus async, what's your go-to strategy

Hey everyone, I've been thinking a lot about how different services communicate in a microservice setup. We all know the pros and cons of synchronous methods, like REST calls, versus asynchronous ones, such as message queues. Sync is easier to get going with, but it can cause a chain reaction of failures and make your services too dependent on each other. Async is more resilient and scales better, but it's more complex to manage with eventual consistency, dead-letter queues, and monitoring. So, what are your favorite ways to decide between sync and async? Are there particular situations or designs where you really lean towards one? I'm keen to hear about what works for you and any problems I should look out for.