3 ms·

Sorry Sriram, I was going to let this whole point slide, but I just can't. I think your advice on the architect issue is out-of-whack. When I hear the phrase '

by _sh 14y ago

Sorry Sriram, I was going to let this whole point slide, but I just can't. I think your advice on the architect issue is out-of-whack. When I hear the phrase 'fire anyone who has architect in their title', here's what I hear in my internal monologue: Yes! Fire all the architects! Front line engineers know what every other development group is doing and can integrate their systems in a pinch! They are also across the application security requirements recently mandated in government regulation and can implement that too! No-one needs company-wide frameworks, because each development unit's home-grown libraries are good enough. Systems design? Pfft, overrated. Just check it in and break things, it's called 'agile'. I apologise if my internal monologue sounds shrill, but your advice to 'fire all the architects' sounds similar to advice from developers to 'fire all the marketing department'. edit: I am not an architect, this is not a defensive rant.

irahul 14y ago
> Front line engineers know what every other development group is doing and can integrate their systems in a pinch! Well, no one knows what every other development group does in a company of significant size. And more often than not, no one can integrate systems in a pinch; and when it comes to integrating, the front line engineer does it. Unless your hypothetical architect has magical powers, I don't see how your point is relevant. It's up to the other development teams to expose an interface to their services and make their libraries re-usable; and most importantly, document them and let other teams know. A company should encourage, and somewhat mandate(Bezos directive regarding no stinking db accesses, only services). > They are also across the application security requirements recently mandated in government regulation I don't know where you work, but the places I have worked, all mandated and non-mandated security requirements are implemented by engineers. I am curious. Care to quote me some of these security requirements of yours? > can implement that too! Implement what? I haven't implemented a hashing algorithm, or public-private key encryption ever, and most likely am not going to - I use tested, out of box components like I should. What's rocket science in storing hashed-salted passwords, or using SSL for transport, or PGP for offline...which engineers are incapable of? If they indeed are incapable of using bcrypt for storing passwords, well, I don't know what to say - words fail me. > No-one needs company-wide frameworks, because each development unit's home-grown libraries are good enough I am yet to see a company-wide framework which is relevant to anything beyond a small team, let alone useful. That said, I need to secure encode input and that other news team which takes news feed from variety of providers in multiple languages has already something for sanitizing markup. Are you implying without this architect of yours, I won't talk to the other team, or look at the code; and go in my cave to re-implement that? That makes 0 sense to me. > Systems design? Pfft, overrated. Just check it in and break things, it's called 'agile'. Where does this come from? > but your advice to 'fire all the architects' The architects in the article refer to a particular kind of person who finds it beneath himself to actually implement something, and spends his day making slide deck and uml diagrams. And yes, they should be fired, unless they are capable of and interested in implementing the stuff they swore by in their slides. Do a PoC and the engineer will take it from there. But don't come in with your ppt - you are wasting everyone's time.
- j_col 14y ago
  > The architects in the article refer to a particular kind of person who finds it beneath himself to actually implement something, and spends his day making slide deck and uml diagrams. And yes, they should be fired, unless they are capable of and interested in implementing the stuff they swore by in their slides. So if I understand correctly, the only value-add to software development is cutting code? Let me put this another way via an analogy: should the architect who designs your house also be required to wire the electrics, install the plumbing, and lay the blocks too? And if he/she is not interested in "implementing" (because a design deliverable is not an implementation right?), then they should be fired? Wow.
  - irahul 14y ago
    > So if I understand correctly, the only value-add to software development is cutting code? The only value add to software development is people who can do software development. If all you do is pull slides out of your ass, you aren't welcome. > Let me put this another way via an analogy: should the architect who designs your house also be required to wire the electrics, install the plumbing, and lay the blocks too? Yeah. Surely a building architect and software architect are comparable. /s I am not interested in wiring and plumbing(tests, deployment scripts if you will), but if you come raving about how bayes classification is so sub-par, and you should use svm, you better know what is linear classification, non-linear classification(svm), and have a PoC with the data set comparable to what is being used in the application which cross-validates and proves svm is better than my bayes. If you just read about it in some book(or blog or wherever), and can't implement it or you just think you can drop slides on me and I am supposed to do it, the door is over there - please show yourselves out and quit wasting my time. Your ppts and umls mean shit to me. If the upper management tolerates(or worse, appreciates it), do the dance for them. I am not impressed.
    - route66 14y ago
      > The only value add to software development is people who can do software development. You just described why projects fail. Developers Developers Developers. Architects? We don't need, we are so smart we integrate everything ourselves. Marketing? Sales? Who needs that, my github repository sells and when it doesn't, there is always oDesk. And don't get me started over "customers" and "clients". To cut the sarcasm here, yes, I know that a lot of MBA's and Architects suck. As do a lot of software developers, even if they call themselves agile or know that svm is somehow related to classification. So I do not really see where this straw man burning leads to .
nostrademons 14y ago
At Google (& presumably Facebook and other tech companies), people do all that, but they have the title "engineer". Because unless you actually know what's going on in the coding front-lines, you won't be effective at integrating with other systems. And if you don't understand how your company-wide frameworks are being used in actual code, you will build shitty frameworks. There's a good reason why "engineer", "architect", and "systems integrator" should not be distinct roles.
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  NO real "architects" should only be allowed out under medical supervison and alowed to chouse the color of paint to use on the walls. Why Medical Supervsion I hear you ask - Well you can get a nasty paper cut from pantone color swatches.
wpietri 14y ago
That rant sounds good. But then I note that every small company everywhere still manages to solve issues of integration, security, code reuse, and systems design. That's because you can do all of those things in ways other than top-down, hierarchical control from a central office. I have never seen a company where "architects" empowered to boss people around via white paper and mandate didn't cause far more problems than they solved.
kabdib 14y ago
I've known more than a few "architects" worthy of that title. Then there are the bozos. They stand out pretty dramatically, so maybe that's why the title is a little poisonous in my head. "You're an /arrrccchhhitect?/ I'm the Queen of England, we should have lunch." (<--- not actually said :-) ) My touchstone is: If an architect is unwilling to write code then they belong in the second camp. If they're willing to write code, but don't have enough time, I look at when they last wrote code; if it's been more than a couple of years I start getting critical. In this industry, I think it's important to stay grounded in code. You can get away without that if you're a pure career manager, but you'd better realize that you're no longer capable of designing systems at that point.
mycodebreaks 14y ago
The point he is trying to make is that the title 'Architect' has been abused at Yahoo.

by _sh 14y ago

irahul 14y ago

> Front line engineers know what every other development group is doing and can integrate their systems in a pinch! Well, no one knows what every other development group does in a company of significant size. And more often than not, no one can integrate systems in a pinch; and when it comes to integrating, the front line engineer does it. Unless your hypothetical architect has magical powers, I don't see how your point is relevant. It's up to the other development teams to expose an interface to their services and make their libraries re-usable; and most importantly, document them and let other teams know. A company should encourage, and somewhat mandate(Bezos directive regarding no stinking db accesses, only services). > They are also across the application security requirements recently mandated in government regulation I don't know where you work, but the places I have worked, all mandated and non-mandated security requirements are implemented by engineers. I am curious. Care to quote me some of these security requirements of yours? > can implement that too! Implement what? I haven't implemented a hashing algorithm, or public-private key encryption ever, and most likely am not going to - I use tested, out of box components like I should. What's rocket science in storing hashed-salted passwords, or using SSL for transport, or PGP for offline...which engineers are incapable of? If they indeed are incapable of using bcrypt for storing passwords, well, I don't know what to say - words fail me. > No-one needs company-wide frameworks, because each development unit's home-grown libraries are good enough I am yet to see a company-wide framework which is relevant to anything beyond a small team, let alone useful. That said, I need to secure encode input and that other news team which takes news feed from variety of providers in multiple languages has already something for sanitizing markup. Are you implying without this architect of yours, I won't talk to the other team, or look at the code; and go in my cave to re-implement that? That makes 0 sense to me. > Systems design? Pfft, overrated. Just check it in and break things, it's called 'agile'. Where does this come from? > but your advice to 'fire all the architects' The architects in the article refer to a particular kind of person who finds it beneath himself to actually implement something, and spends his day making slide deck and uml diagrams. And yes, they should be fired, unless they are capable of and interested in implementing the stuff they swore by in their slides. Do a PoC and the engineer will take it from there. But don't come in with your ppt - you are wasting everyone's time.

j_col 14y ago
> The architects in the article refer to a particular kind of person who finds it beneath himself to actually implement something, and spends his day making slide deck and uml diagrams. And yes, they should be fired, unless they are capable of and interested in implementing the stuff they swore by in their slides. So if I understand correctly, the only value-add to software development is cutting code? Let me put this another way via an analogy: should the architect who designs your house also be required to wire the electrics, install the plumbing, and lay the blocks too? And if he/she is not interested in "implementing" (because a design deliverable is not an implementation right?), then they should be fired? Wow.
- irahul 14y ago
  > So if I understand correctly, the only value-add to software development is cutting code? The only value add to software development is people who can do software development. If all you do is pull slides out of your ass, you aren't welcome. > Let me put this another way via an analogy: should the architect who designs your house also be required to wire the electrics, install the plumbing, and lay the blocks too? Yeah. Surely a building architect and software architect are comparable. /s I am not interested in wiring and plumbing(tests, deployment scripts if you will), but if you come raving about how bayes classification is so sub-par, and you should use svm, you better know what is linear classification, non-linear classification(svm), and have a PoC with the data set comparable to what is being used in the application which cross-validates and proves svm is better than my bayes. If you just read about it in some book(or blog or wherever), and can't implement it or you just think you can drop slides on me and I am supposed to do it, the door is over there - please show yourselves out and quit wasting my time. Your ppts and umls mean shit to me. If the upper management tolerates(or worse, appreciates it), do the dance for them. I am not impressed.
  - route66 14y ago
    > The only value add to software development is people who can do software development. You just described why projects fail. Developers Developers Developers. Architects? We don't need, we are so smart we integrate everything ourselves. Marketing? Sales? Who needs that, my github repository sells and when it doesn't, there is always oDesk. And don't get me started over "customers" and "clients". To cut the sarcasm here, yes, I know that a lot of MBA's and Architects suck. As do a lot of software developers, even if they call themselves agile or know that svm is somehow related to classification. So I do not really see where this straw man burning leads to .

nostrademons 14y ago

At Google (& presumably Facebook and other tech companies), people do all that, but they have the title "engineer". Because unless you actually know what's going on in the coding front-lines, you won't be effective at integrating with other systems. And if you don't understand how your company-wide frameworks are being used in actual code, you will build shitty frameworks. There's a good reason why "engineer", "architect", and "systems integrator" should not be distinct roles.

mjwalshe 14y ago
NO real "architects" should only be allowed out under medical supervison and alowed to chouse the color of paint to use on the walls. Why Medical Supervsion I hear you ask - Well you can get a nasty paper cut from pantone color swatches.

wpietri 14y ago

That rant sounds good. But then I note that every small company everywhere still manages to solve issues of integration, security, code reuse, and systems design. That's because you can do all of those things in ways other than top-down, hierarchical control from a central office. I have never seen a company where "architects" empowered to boss people around via white paper and mandate didn't cause far more problems than they solved.

kabdib 14y ago

I've known more than a few "architects" worthy of that title. Then there are the bozos. They stand out pretty dramatically, so maybe that's why the title is a little poisonous in my head. "You're an /arrrccchhhitect?/ I'm the Queen of England, we should have lunch." (<--- not actually said :-) ) My touchstone is: If an architect is unwilling to write code then they belong in the second camp. If they're willing to write code, but don't have enough time, I look at when they last wrote code; if it's been more than a couple of years I start getting critical. In this industry, I think it's important to stay grounded in code. You can get away without that if you're a pure career manager, but you'd better realize that you're no longer capable of designing systems at that point.

mycodebreaks 14y ago

The point he is trying to make is that the title 'Architect' has been abused at Yahoo.