Being a Software Architect
I don't like Software Architects.<p>What is implicit in the SA role is that the rest of the dev team is full of dummies that can't think strategically or architect big parts of the system.<p>This naturally leads to the SA producing ever higher and more complicated abstractions that the simian developer tries to implement, poorly, and the SA becomes an irreplaceable high priest -- inflating their salaries and prominence and depressing the salaries of the rest of the team.<p>Where I work, every developer is expected to be "architect-quality". Sure, more junior folks don't have the experience, but they're expected to have the <i>capacity</i> for strategic, high-level thinking. As they mature, they take on more and more architectural decisions. If they can't do that, then we've hired the wrong person.<p>Ultimately, that's the only way I know how to scale dev teams and produce amazing software. The SA/Dev stratification is an anti-pattern.