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I find this distinction harmful. Are we going back to the days where there were programmers who did the grunt work and architects who told them what to do? Doe

I find this distinction harmful. Are we going back to the days where there were programmers who did the grunt work and architects who told them what to do? Doesn't this distinction exist in every profession? Experienced people start doing less and less of the day to day tasks, and start doing more strategic work. Only in software do we think this is a terrible thing, and that an acceptable use of someones 10 or 20 years experiences is for them to be down in the trenches centering divs with the new grads. Hence terms like "staff engineer", which is a modern architect but with a name that pays lip-service to egalitarian fantasies.

jackblemming 4y ago
HA said the master craftsman to the apprentice. Doth thou really think a master such as myself would hammer nails? I am in important zoom meetings! Surely it would be distasteful to touch such dirty tools at my level.
- xeromal 4y ago
  It's not snobbery. It's that their time is better spent planning and being strategic. it's like throwing Eisenhower into the trenches. Sure, he's a good soldier, but it's time and experience wasted.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  How much nail hammering does a foreman at a construction site do? He's hammered nails before. Hammering different looking ones in a new location is not going to be very useful or educational for him. And I've seen what happens when a whole team of devs get invited into a zoom meeting like that - they're bored out of their skull, most likely sitting there browsing the social media du jour, and I can't blame them.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > Doth thou really think a master such as myself would hammer nails? I am in important zoom meetings! Yes because aligning goals, putting together a system,scoping work, and synching business goals with technical milestones adds no value at all. It's the nail-hammerer who believes that JIRA tickets spring from the JIRA ticket tree magically aligned that caries the whole org on their shoulders.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  At my last job, somebody made everyone custom, "Don't blame me, it was {excuse}" t-shirts, tailored to their roles. My manager's shirt said, "Don't blame me, I was in a meeting".
varjag 4y ago
Just how many architects with decades of coding experience have you actually met? I'm yet to see one (in my 3rd decade of professional programming). Usually it is people who branched out from programming very early.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  I'm one and I still code in my free time. How anyone could actually BE an architect without a lot of actual developer experience is something I'd like to know. Are you sure you're not just being unfair to the architects around you for disagreeing with you on things? I cannot fathom an architect who wouldn't be a strong developer if slotted into that role.
  - varjag 4y ago
    I've mostly stayed on engineering tracks where architects are untypical roles so had a fortune observing from a distance. Only did a few year stint with Java + CIM where architects were endemic. Now that you asked I sifted through memories a bit and yeah none of the one I worked with or observed have been coding for more than 3-4 years prior to their ascension.
    - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
      I just don't see how any architect can ever be very good without a strong background in development. I'm of the opinion that an architect who isn't regularly getting feedback from the implementing teams is probably a bad architect. Their decisions will often make the implementing teams job harder and they need to understand that in order to balance broader needs with implementation smoothness.
      - majormajor 4y ago
        > I just don't see how any architect can ever be very good without a strong background in development. I think the disconnect here is that the majority of architects I've worked with haven't been "good" in a technical sense from a "actually building software" perspective. I'm assuming this is true for a lot of folks here, based on people's responses in this thread. The day to day of some of these roles has been: * sit in meetings with high-up product managers and biz leaders * come up with pretty diagrams of how to totally re-build (sorry, re-architect) the system. Often this is jargon-heavy - protobuf this, envoy that, circuit-breakers the other thing. * talk engineering management into this plan What's been meaningfully missing is the details of point A -> point B to achieve their plan. None of the jargon is necessarily wrong but it's not grounded in the reality of the current software systems at all. This comes about when the technical VPs aren't hands-on with the system anymore either. If non-technical leadership is saying something like "improve uptime" and you go get hire an architect into the company and you'll get a lot of presentations about things the devs on the team may already know about but haven't been able to get prioritized, but it's still on the existing devs to actually build it. "Paying someone fancy to convince non-technical business leaders to let the devs build what's needed" isn't necessarily a bad decision from a CTO or SVP of Engineering, even! But the devs who have been saying the same shit this whole time only to now see the credit go to the higher-ups and the new architect, after getting the blame for the old status quo, don't exactly have a positive view of the architect's actual engineering competency.
thr0wawayf00 4y ago
Agreed, just because a particular job function isn't someone's responsibility doesn't mean that they can't learn from those who do. A junior developer isn't going to be making architecture decisions at most organizations and in a lot of cases, architects are in more of the strategy meetings that lesser experienced engineers bemoan having to attend anyway.
- xhdichv 4y ago
  Organisations who don't give architecture work to juniors are terrible places to work for juniors. Zero career progression. You can only really learn good architecture through practicing and making a lot of bad design decisions. I did architecture work when I was a junior. It's what made me a senior. I got asked if I wanted to do architecture work recently. I told them that's what we hire juniors for. Architecture is piss easy. Any senior thinking juniors can't do it are full of themselves.
Aeolun 4y ago
It’s more that when push comes to shove a staff engineer will center divs with the new grads, while a ‘software architect’ will say it’s not their job to center divs.
- shagie 4y ago
  From C2 https://wiki.c2.com/?ArchitectsPlayGolf https://wiki.c2.com/?ArchitectsPlayGolf and https://wiki.c2.com/?ArchitectsDontCode https://wiki.c2.com/?ArchitectsDontCode > "The SystemArchitect responsible for designing your system hasn't written a line of code in two years. But they've produced quite a lot of ISO9001-compliant documentation and are quite proud of it."

jackblemming 4y ago

HA said the master craftsman to the apprentice. Doth thou really think a master such as myself would hammer nails? I am in important zoom meetings! Surely it would be distasteful to touch such dirty tools at my level.

xeromal 4y ago
It's not snobbery. It's that their time is better spent planning and being strategic. it's like throwing Eisenhower into the trenches. Sure, he's a good soldier, but it's time and experience wasted.
LAC-Tech 4y ago
How much nail hammering does a foreman at a construction site do? He's hammered nails before. Hammering different looking ones in a new location is not going to be very useful or educational for him. And I've seen what happens when a whole team of devs get invited into a zoom meeting like that - they're bored out of their skull, most likely sitting there browsing the social media du jour, and I can't blame them.
arinlen 4y ago
> Doth thou really think a master such as myself would hammer nails? I am in important zoom meetings! Yes because aligning goals, putting together a system,scoping work, and synching business goals with technical milestones adds no value at all. It's the nail-hammerer who believes that JIRA tickets spring from the JIRA ticket tree magically aligned that caries the whole org on their shoulders.
sgtnoodle 4y ago
At my last job, somebody made everyone custom, "Don't blame me, it was {excuse}" t-shirts, tailored to their roles. My manager's shirt said, "Don't blame me, I was in a meeting".

varjag 4y ago

Just how many architects with decades of coding experience have you actually met? I'm yet to see one (in my 3rd decade of professional programming). Usually it is people who branched out from programming very early.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
I'm one and I still code in my free time. How anyone could actually BE an architect without a lot of actual developer experience is something I'd like to know. Are you sure you're not just being unfair to the architects around you for disagreeing with you on things? I cannot fathom an architect who wouldn't be a strong developer if slotted into that role.
- varjag 4y ago
  I've mostly stayed on engineering tracks where architects are untypical roles so had a fortune observing from a distance. Only did a few year stint with Java + CIM where architects were endemic. Now that you asked I sifted through memories a bit and yeah none of the one I worked with or observed have been coding for more than 3-4 years prior to their ascension.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    I just don't see how any architect can ever be very good without a strong background in development. I'm of the opinion that an architect who isn't regularly getting feedback from the implementing teams is probably a bad architect. Their decisions will often make the implementing teams job harder and they need to understand that in order to balance broader needs with implementation smoothness.
    - majormajor 4y ago
      > I just don't see how any architect can ever be very good without a strong background in development. I think the disconnect here is that the majority of architects I've worked with haven't been "good" in a technical sense from a "actually building software" perspective. I'm assuming this is true for a lot of folks here, based on people's responses in this thread. The day to day of some of these roles has been: * sit in meetings with high-up product managers and biz leaders * come up with pretty diagrams of how to totally re-build (sorry, re-architect) the system. Often this is jargon-heavy - protobuf this, envoy that, circuit-breakers the other thing. * talk engineering management into this plan What's been meaningfully missing is the details of point A -> point B to achieve their plan. None of the jargon is necessarily wrong but it's not grounded in the reality of the current software systems at all. This comes about when the technical VPs aren't hands-on with the system anymore either. If non-technical leadership is saying something like "improve uptime" and you go get hire an architect into the company and you'll get a lot of presentations about things the devs on the team may already know about but haven't been able to get prioritized, but it's still on the existing devs to actually build it. "Paying someone fancy to convince non-technical business leaders to let the devs build what's needed" isn't necessarily a bad decision from a CTO or SVP of Engineering, even! But the devs who have been saying the same shit this whole time only to now see the credit go to the higher-ups and the new architect, after getting the blame for the old status quo, don't exactly have a positive view of the architect's actual engineering competency.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago

Agreed, just because a particular job function isn't someone's responsibility doesn't mean that they can't learn from those who do. A junior developer isn't going to be making architecture decisions at most organizations and in a lot of cases, architects are in more of the strategy meetings that lesser experienced engineers bemoan having to attend anyway.

xhdichv 4y ago
Organisations who don't give architecture work to juniors are terrible places to work for juniors. Zero career progression. You can only really learn good architecture through practicing and making a lot of bad design decisions. I did architecture work when I was a junior. It's what made me a senior. I got asked if I wanted to do architecture work recently. I told them that's what we hire juniors for. Architecture is piss easy. Any senior thinking juniors can't do it are full of themselves.

Aeolun 4y ago

It’s more that when push comes to shove a staff engineer will center divs with the new grads, while a ‘software architect’ will say it’s not their job to center divs.

shagie 4y ago
From C2 https://wiki.c2.com/?ArchitectsPlayGolf https://wiki.c2.com/?ArchitectsPlayGolf and https://wiki.c2.com/?ArchitectsDontCode https://wiki.c2.com/?ArchitectsDontCode > "The SystemArchitect responsible for designing your system hasn't written a line of code in two years. But they've produced quite a lot of ISO9001-compliant documentation and are quite proud of it."