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Comment by jasondclinton | Hacker News Reader

I was surprised to see the title "System Architect" was the second most-common job title among respondents. Use of that phrase is culturally taboo within Google. Are there regions in the world where its common to use that title? I see that the respondents were from all over the world in 14 languages.

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So many weird job titles/euphemisms for programmers. Engineer, Architect, Developer, Scientist. How about none of them. You're a programmer. You're not building bridges.

Hummm I find this view very disturbing.

While it is true that some developer builds yet another e-commerce cart on JavaScript or PHP, some of is work in critical systems.

Systems that in one way or another allow our world to keep working.

What if DNS stop working? What if the service that get unemployment claims stop to work? What if the system that manages patients in a big hospital stop working? What if an avionics system in a big Boeing is done wrong? What if a database that keep track of citizenship corrupt data?

Those are problem just as serious as bridges falling down.

Some structural engineers build houses some other huge bridges. Some software engineers build carts for e-commerce, other fundamental systems of our world.

It doesn't mean the job is not important. It just means it's a different job from the other job titles which have existed for hundreds of years in the physical domain.

Programming is more like being a lawyer than engineering. But let's stop making analogies to other professions and just call it what it is: programming.

Most rust users probably aren't working at google.

Why is it considered culturally taboo within Google?

Just answering the question, not saying that it's true: it's seen as describing someone who has opinions about how to develop software or design systems without having the engineering expertise to back up those opinions.

Whether they have the chops or not, the Architect role has little to no skin in the game. The half-life for their knowledge of the system is on the order of a year, and it's a role you want some longevity in.

I've had better luck splitting architecture up between three or five leads (not four).

This is usually the problem, especially with Java architects. The many that I've encountered are often using dated methodologies/tooling that have been eclipsed by something else. The challenge is often keeping up with what's changed in the last x years, which has little incentive if one does not program much if at all.

I’m not just talking about industry standards. The system slowly changes away from them every time the people doing the work disagree, and sometimes even when they don’t. Eventually their model of the system and what it will do with new inputs or requirements becomes fiction.

I've seen some engineers making a distinction between "programmers" and "developers". The second imply "creating (developing) solutions to broad problems" where code is "just" (while a big) part of the solution.

There is no "developer" in the list, but "system architect" is what match the definition.

Many senior Engineers I know willingly use that title externally, even though their title internally is something different and simple.

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