AlmightyArchitect

The architect thing started as a way to give some seniority to folks who wanted to stay technical but still progress within a company. And it blew out of control: suddenly noone wanted to be just a programmer any more, and everyone had to be an architect because then they'd get to boss everyone else around and tell them what to program and how to program it, and besides they'd get to play with kool stuff and they wouldn't have to be one of the deadline fodder any more: they'd have made it.

I don't know where to start criticising this madness. System architects and system architecture have their place, but god knows this isn't it. Let's start with the belief that being an architect means you no longer have to get your hands dirty on the project shop floor. Wrong! (see also http://www.bell-labs.com/cgi-user/OrgPatterns/OrgPatterns?ArchitectAlsoImplements) Hankering after status rather than earning the respect of your peers? Wrong! (This is one of the more insidious after effects of the dot com share option frenzy, where only those high up the greasy pole got enough options with a soon enough vesting date to actually get to the payola.) Confusing greater technical knowledge (due to longer experience) with some sort of superiority over lesser beings? Wrong!

To go out on a limb, I think that this organisational antipattern is a way of keeping programmers in their place in the bowels of poorly managed companies: it keeps the workers silent as they compete against each other for the few 'AlmightyArchitect' positions available and hence does away with the need to change management structures to improve the lot of project teams. And of course once you get to attain the almighty architect's throne the last thing you want to do is change the structure that got you there...

The other side of this coin is the AllProgrammersAreMonkeysSyndrome. ³host³³date³April 14, 2002³agent³Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; UK2.NET - UK's biggest host)³AlmightyArchitect