Fire all architect and you will lose all good engineer and only bad one will stay (hoping to become managers). The problem with "individual contributors" (read

Fire all architect and you will lose all good engineer and only bad one will stay (hoping to become managers). The problem with "individual contributors" (read engineers) is that the only way they can raise on the ladder is to become "architect". If that possibility becomes unobtainable (or insecure), oh well maybe Informatica or Oracle is hiring... Anyway, good architects are very very important. If you want to succeed you need a secret sauce and person how can to break that secret saurce into deliverable pieces for which a good architect is worth gold.