Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#1

Post by antoaravinth » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 12:57 PM UTC

Hi HN,

I work in a company, where I do Javascript and Java dev works. The work is challenging and I'm loving it. Its been almost 3 years, I have been in dev role.

I want to became an Software Architect; thats my ultimate goal. But I'm not sure, what all consideration, I need to keep in mind, while I work as dev role so that I can became an efficient software architect in the future.

Currently, what ever technical problems that occur in my work, I could able to debug and solve most of them. I do read every year atleast an technical book.

With all these in mind, I want to ask few question to HN: 1. How should I plan my career path from dev to architect? 2. Should I measure myself, say every year, how I have grown in my knowledge? If so how? 3. What all best qualities an dev should have to became to an good architect? 4. Other plans if any, kindly let me know.

Thanks HN.

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#2

Post by jaimebuelta » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 1:05 PM UTC

Architect is a not-standard role in tech. Sometimes mean a thing, others a different one.

That said, normally it's referred to people dealing with architecture problems, not so involved with the specifics on a single system, but on the interaction of different ones.

- If you want to plan to career to be architect, either ask for it if your company has this role or keep an eye on openings in other companies.

- It's a work which involves a lot of communication. Create good design docs, convince people of your design and solve their doubts, get requirements of different parties to have a design that covers everything...

- Learn about different languages and systems. Be able to see common structures (e.g. design patterns) and when to apply and when not...

- Learn about "the support parts" of software. Logging, HA, scalability, deployment... Everything that makes a production system truly "production"

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#3

Post by Fr3dd1 » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

I think you should just start to act like one. The following are things you could do for example:

- Try to look at the bigger picture during your work

- Engage in discussions about the whole system

- Document the bigger thing

- Maybe build some test solution with important designs that are being used in your project so that new devs can learn with it.

I am not a big fan of measurements because in my opinion measurements are never really objective.

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#4

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 2:45 PM UTC

I'd echo some of the other answers here, what do you think "architect" means? And then ask what could you do as an architect that you can't do as a developer?

There are places like IBM and Oracle where they have specific job functions defined for the architect role (and training to get you there) so if their idea meets your idea you would do well to just work for a company that trains for that role.

There are also people who have a lot of experience who are sometimes called "architect" but that is a function of how much experience they have, which really you can't push faster than the passage of time. You spend all your days working on the technology and encounter many different situations and then 10 to 15 years later people start thinking of you as an expert/architect.

There are developers who have better design sense. I don't know if that is a talent thing or just that they pay attention to not only what their code is doing but the structure of it and the underlying problems it solves. People will experience their code not only solving the problem but anticipating future problems and either handling them or having a clear evolutionary path to handle them. They start being called architects at some point in their career.

So why do you want to be an architect?

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#5

Post by imechura » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 3:07 PM UTC

I would be glad to discuss it with you over email. My address is in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#6

Post by mattbrewsbytes » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 3:36 PM UTC

There are defined Architect roles when you work at large companies where the division of labor requires more specific roles.

Like others have said, the focus should be on the bigger picture of the overall system(s) and how they inter-relate.

As you move around in your career, look for roles where you have more say in how the system is designed in the beginning. Take on more responsibility in how different modules/components interact.

Also read up on design patterns - including the book Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler (and read his blog/site too).

Much of architecture is focusing on the parts of the system that have high risk and making them less risky, usually these are the parts where the systems interact with each other.

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#7

Post by palidanx » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 4:39 PM UTC

The fastest way is to be mentored by other architects. To me, these are the tools architects should know.

UML

1) Sequence diagrams

2) Domain diagrams

3) Sitemap diagrams

Other 1) Ability to do domain to data model conversions

2) Ability to create diagrams defining data flows

3) Ability to define interfaces and data exchanges in between systems.

If you have any qs, also feel free to pm me.

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#8

Post by antoaravinth » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

imechura wrote: post #5

I would be glad to discuss it with you over email. My address is in my profile.

Thanks for your response. I couldn't able to see your email id in your profile. Anyways this is my email id anto.aravinth.cse@gmail.com.Just give a ping, have several questions for you.

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#9

Post by antoaravinth » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 5:23 PM UTC

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #6

There are defined Architect roles when you work at large companies where the division of labor requires more specific roles. Like others have said, the focus should be on the bigger picture of the overall system(s) and how they inter-relate. As you move around in your career, look for roles where you have more say in how the system is designed in the beginning. Take on more responsibility in how different modules/com…

Thanks for your response. So its all about designing the system and reduce the riskness involved in system interactions?

Re: Ask HN: How to plan your career for an Architect role?

#10

Post by antoaravinth » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 5:24 PM UTC

palidanx wrote: post #7

The fastest way is to be mentored by other architects. To me, these are the tools architects should know. UML 1) Sequence diagrams 2) Domain diagrams 3) Sitemap diagrams Other 1) Ability to do domain to data model conversions 2) Ability to create diagrams defining data flows 3) Ability to define interfaces and data exchanges in between systems. If you have any qs, also feel free to pm me.

Thanks for your response. Interesting to see how a tool knowledge is mandate for an architect!