Architecture for the jilted generation

Riding my bike to work this morning through the pouring rain was excellent. The noise in my head from the Chinese water-torture going on with the rain dripping against my hoodie made me almost as creative as trying to sleep a late night.

The subject that keept me thinking so hard I almost don't remember the actual bike ride was architecture (ok I admit, this probably says a lot about me on a not-so-subconcious level).

How do one become an architect? What are the traits that we associate with the role? If we should post a job opening for architect what would be write? Some might say it is easy but is it really? For a discipline that we still seem to argue a bit about (how to deploy it and what it means) it surely can't be easy to recruit people to do it?

I think there are some interesting questions associated with the architecture role. For a SW-company would you even consider an architect without programming experience? I would guess not, or? What about an embedded-SW company delivering tangible consumer products such as cell phones, rockets or cars? I lean (no pun intened) towards a no but this is not so black&white in reality. What about other non-technical skills? Ever considered requiring pedagogy skills or offer that as training to an architect? Or should that be an innate skill? How about rethorical skills?

If you would hire a rookie straight from the Uni and show him the path towards becoming an architect what would that look like? In real life the system engineer often become the architect but does great system knowledge automatically mean that you are a strategist able to see the bigger picture?

Hm a lot of questions and not so many personal opinions. I'll take a stab at it:
* I think that architect shouldn't automatically imply promotion. It is a role with equal value to the system engineer, the coder, the tester.

* I think architect implies a certain personality, the person that can stand infront of an intersection and convince everyone to turn left.

* I think that an architect, whether it is a system architect or a software architect, should be able to "think programming" (some got it some don't, it is like e.g. philosophy... you can read a lot and learn philosophy but that doesn't mean you think philosophy... and I believe you can think philosophy without reading a lot).

* I think a system architect must have a commercial side being able to connect with product management and the market.

* I think an architect must have a skill-set that ables him/her to vizualise ideas.

So to shape the rookie I might suggest something like this straight of the bat:
- Work a bit where it happens, with the systems engineers and coders.
- Work a bit with testing. Everyone in our business should work with testing at some point.
- Learn e.g. UML
- If the existing architecture is e.g. modular with different concepts try to understand those
- Work a bit with project management
- Try to work a bit with the product management

Give this 5-10 years.