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On balance, the role might be net-negative. Like PMs. There are _good people_ doing _hard jobs_, at most orgs. However, a role where you're not responsible for
by flerchin 4y ago
On balance, the role might be net-negative. Like PMs. There are _good people_ doing _hard jobs_, at most orgs. However, a role where you're not responsible for the systems you create is one where the feedback loops are too large to add value beyond random chance.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoThere’s many kinds of responsibility. You can just as easily tell the inverse story, where you need architects and PMs to be in charge because engineers aren’t responsible for the business value of the systems they create.
- flerchin 4y agoPMs seem to be responsible for dates and budgets, but in what way is an Architect held responsible for business value?
- SpicyLemonZest 4y agoIdeally, an architect's job performance is measured in terms of revenue or attributed cost savings for the products they architect. A good architect will produce streamlined designs that make lots of money with little development effort; a bad architect will produce convoluted designs that require more effort to produce less money. How often are architects actually measured that way? I'm not sure, in the areas I work in these days it's not a trendy title to have. I've heard the same horror stories you have of "architecture astronauts", who design pointless frameworks and then get evaluated based on how many people they can bully into adopting the framework. But I know people doing valuable work in similar roles, so I can't get behind the idea that it's illegitimate in some fundamental way.