Do you want to be a software architect? You must feel intimidated at the thought. Let me assuage those fears. It’s not that hard. Just steal lines from capable software engineers and call yourself an architect. There. Done. Like magic.

I do speak from experience but not as a perpetrator. I would never claim to be anything unless someone already holding the title bestows it upon me. However, I’ve been fucked by such “architects”.

A few years ago I had to deal with a person that gave himself the title of software architect. I know for a fact that was not his official title. He did not even have a software degree, he was some art major. But one day he was calling himself a software architect and leadership was treating him as such. I was wondering what I was missing. And one day…

One day I was put in charge of figuring out a very hard software bug. The whole team was in panic mode and the architect dude shows up and asks me how’s it going and what I’m thinking. I gave him my thoughts about what the problem was and he thanked me and went away. Two hours later I’m having a meeting with a VP who was very upset about this problem, who then said “Well, The Architect thinks the problem is…” and proceeded to say verbatim what I had told the asshole. The architect, that fucker, that piece of shit asshole, gave the explanation I had given him as his own to this VP and now this VP was asking us (me) to look into this angle that The Architect had suggested.

This architect is now Chief Architect in a Big Company where he has no business being the architect of anything. This professional bullshitter is giving advice to other Big Companies by reciting solutions given to him by unsuspecting victims without having any real understanding.

I do begrudgingly admire his con, though.