My friends all forward people with architecture questions to me, and I mentor/consult people. I learned architecture by working at AWS, and I've gathered a ton

My friends all forward people with architecture questions to me, and I mentor/consult people. I learned architecture by working at AWS, and I've gathered a ton of insight by mentoring people over the years. Beyond being in the boiler room and being a part of a principal engineering community, I basically just do the math and think about it. I also try new things, and I'm building my own architecture at the moment. The core challenge is that architecture is fundamentally about trade-offs, and it's hard to navigate because we don't share challenges. The essential skill is to solicit a sufficient number of requirements to understand how the trade-offs pull in any direction. The other thing: there is no perfect, no silver bullet. There can be, however, slam dunks which companies will monetize for specific verticals.