I for one prefer to look down on the masses by choice of programming language not job title! But in all seriousness, yes our job titles are BS to a large degre

I for one prefer to look down on the masses by choice of programming language not job title! But in all seriousness, yes our job titles are BS to a large degree and we have the tendency to look down on other programmers for various reasons like job title, programming language, operating system and editor/IDE of choice. What I said about the progression of skill still holds true and if I would include Architect in that list I would define him as: * is able to set up an architecture for a system * is able to consider all layers of the system (frontend, backend, services, deployment…) * is able to change/update an architecture of a system if the requirements change and is capable to predict possible requirement changes in the original architecture Honestly you can’t be an “architect” if you haven’t been an “engineer” and to become one you will have to have been a “developer”. You just can’t start at the top. What is more interesting is that not every “engineer” wants to become an “architect”. There is theoretical prestige in that title but it also takes you away from the code and I know people who have quit their jobs when their role started to become to detached from actual day to day coding.