Being a Software Architect
I don't like Software Architects.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.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.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 capacity 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.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.