I completely agree with you. To me a good architect is someone who enhances software developers and if not mentors them then guides them in the same direction.

I completely agree with you. To me a good architect is someone who enhances software developers and if not mentors them then guides them in the same direction. Unfortunately there are simply so many barriers in the way of this ever becoming an actual option in most organisations. You'll need this unicorn situation where you have architects with very good social, communication and change management skills who are also technical apt and very good at dealing with "developers". I put developers in quotes because if we're honest with ourselves we all know that we're probably one of the most unmanageable groups of employees out there. This is the easy part. The hard part is to find an organisation which will give your architects and software developers the time they need to actually perform this sort of work, and, you need IT management with clear role definitions so it doesn't end up in a confusing mess where nobody really knows who can decide anything. Since this rarely happens, most architects either become managers or go back to being developers leaving only the people who actually enjoy the "process" more than "results" being long time architects. Obviously not in 100% of the cases, but in most of them. There is nothing I personally dislike more than "process" people. I used to think of them as an unecessary evil that I just didn't understand, but then Covid happened while I was working in a 6000 employee organisation. Virtually every one of our "process" people was unable of doing any sort of work for 9 months, and during those 9 months our production and employee happiness sky-rocketed across every field. Well... happiness didn't increase for middle managers or "process" people, but...