But the existing situation is the reverse of what you described.
The largest tech companies out there (usually? anecdotal) do not have this distinction, it's the smaller and older companies that continue to enforce this arbitrary divide.
The largest tech companies out there (usually? anecdotal) do not have this distinction, it's the smaller and older companies that continue to enforce this arbitrary divide.
Great Architects work closely with the dev teams to give them reference diagrams, proof of concept code, and the art of the possible. Bad architects drop a big requirements doc and walk away. Almost every large organization has architects (enterprise, solutions, software, and cloud).
I’ve worked as a software engineer at places where everyone did architecture and it always ended up in a hairball mess that some senior/principal would recommend rewriting after 2 years.
How did you reach this conclusion? Both Amazon and Google don't structure their software engineering teams around an 'Architect' title.
I also searched the Google Carrera page for Architect positions and the great majority of them are customer facing roles with very few Architect positions assigned to specialized fields.