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Ok I'll bite, what's a "software architect"?
I mean as a job description.
I've been a software engineer for over 15 years. I have a grasp of what "architecture" means in terms of a large-scale enterprise application. But a handful (not all or even most) of my jobs have had a guy I would sort of report to called a "software architect" and best I can tell he answers some occasional questions about frameworks to use, etc.
But like is that what he does all day? There seem to be long swaths of time when nobody on the dev team interacts with the guy at all. What is he doing then?
I guess what I'm asking is, is this a good grift?
I held this title a number of times in my career. It can mean anything, from "a fancy title to give to a senior developer when you want to give them something but $$$ for some reason is not your first choice" to "a person responsible for overseeing the complex software project and ensure individual developers do the right thing and do not step on each other toes and do not pull the project apart by each doing their favorite thing and ignoring the bigger picture". I know this is also used to mean "an expensive consultant that would sell you some kind of highbrow methodology, supposed to make everything better but you will never know whether it did" - but I personally never been on either end of this one, thankfully.
The quality of a grift is not measured by the title. Titles can mean anything, and in different companies usually mean different things. But what's a good grift for you? Lotsa money? Doing much less for the same money? Having fancy title that impresses persons of the sex you find attractive? Doing exciting things nobody did before? Being paid for doing whatever you find interesting, without anybody pulling your strings? Hard to give an answer without knowing it. As I said, I personally had this title a number of times, and I like my job and plan to do roughly the same thing as long as there are people willing to pay good money for it. I'd hate to sit around and do mostly nothing all day though, that'd be depressing. In fact, I changed jobs when I had a suspicion that's what is going to happen to me. But I know people who would dream of it. Not judging, to each their own.
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