[davidjnelson]

Perhaps the middle ground is a software architect who codes, yet has high emotional intelligence and acts as a servant leader. Someone who honestly wants to help their teammates, and doesn't feel "better than them".

Perhaps they lay out a system design as a suggestion on a wiki and ask their teammates including themselves to collaborate on it until everyone's content with it.

Then perhaps they code a particular layer primarily and are humble and open to criticisms and mistakes they make in their own coding. They understand that they and others are not perfect, nor is the code they or others produce.

That and good relationships and communication with the product, design, management, qa, and support teams are what I feel would define a valuable "Software Architect".