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You will see these kinds of titles in Silicon Valley's IT departments (these are different from Engineering) and in B2B sales related arms. Architect vs. dev is

You will see these kinds of titles in Silicon Valley's IT departments (these are different from Engineering) and in B2B sales related arms. Architect vs. dev is not normally how their core software engineering functions are organized. Everyone is a "software engineer" and everyone has a "design and architecture" competency to meet. It's more emphasized at senior levels, but it's always there.

gabereiser 4y ago
I see these kinds of titles in product teams. I’m not disputing what you claim, that architects are primarily B2B in Silicon Valley. It’s just not true anywhere else. I’ve been a coder and engineer for a really long time. Now I’m an architect after finding management not to be my thing. I code. I build products. Any organization where the developers are also the architects are just flying by the seat of their pants and again, aren’t doing anything at scale (yet?). It’s extremely important to recognize the different areas of architecture. Enterprise and Solutions architecture is primarily B2B focused. Software Architecture and Systems Architecture can be B2C focused or product focused. I’ve worked as a software engineer at places where everyone did architecture and it always ended up in a hairball mess that some senior/principal would recommend rewriting after 2 years.
- oaiey 4y ago
  This. Architects are needed once scale makes it impossible for the majority of engineers to understand the big picture.
- pdhborges 4y ago
  > Any organization where the developers are also the architects are just flying by the seat of their pants and again, aren’t doing anything at scale (yet?). How did you reach this conclusion? Both Amazon and Google don't structure their software engineering teams around an 'Architect' title. I also searched the Google Carrera page for Architect positions and the great majority of them are customer facing roles with very few Architect positions assigned to specialized fields.
- closeparen 4y ago
  An architect who codes and builds products is what we would call a senior or staff engineer. We don't have any room on or teams for people who are solely devs/coders; even new grads are expected to grow into small scale design and architecture over time.

gabereiser 4y ago

I see these kinds of titles in product teams. I’m not disputing what you claim, that architects are primarily B2B in Silicon Valley. It’s just not true anywhere else. I’ve been a coder and engineer for a really long time. Now I’m an architect after finding management not to be my thing. I code. I build products. Any organization where the developers are also the architects are just flying by the seat of their pants and again, aren’t doing anything at scale (yet?). It’s extremely important to recognize the different areas of architecture. Enterprise and Solutions architecture is primarily B2B focused. Software Architecture and Systems Architecture can be B2C focused or product focused. I’ve worked as a software engineer at places where everyone did architecture and it always ended up in a hairball mess that some senior/principal would recommend rewriting after 2 years.

oaiey 4y ago
This. Architects are needed once scale makes it impossible for the majority of engineers to understand the big picture.
pdhborges 4y ago
> Any organization where the developers are also the architects are just flying by the seat of their pants and again, aren’t doing anything at scale (yet?). How did you reach this conclusion? Both Amazon and Google don't structure their software engineering teams around an 'Architect' title. I also searched the Google Carrera page for Architect positions and the great majority of them are customer facing roles with very few Architect positions assigned to specialized fields.
closeparen 4y ago
An architect who codes and builds products is what we would call a senior or staff engineer. We don't have any room on or teams for people who are solely devs/coders; even new grads are expected to grow into small scale design and architecture over time.