[opportune]

Is it possible to even get into software architecture without pretty significant experience? From my experience in the workplace anybody making purely architectural decisions without having to implement them is a team lead or higher in the organizational architecture.

[phrh8]

Not sure it would happen that way out of choice, but the role can get unexpectedly thrust upon someone, experienced or not (Think startups, desperate to make ends meet with a handful of inexperienced engineers...or even at medium sized companies, remember back when Google had "20% projects"?). At startups especially though: they don't have money to go out of their way to hire an overpriced "experienced software architect"...

It goes something like: "Hey, new Engineer, I need you to work on experimental feature X". - Then the engineer builds system Y to provide feature X, probably poorly architected and not scalable, not expecting it to go anywhere. Some months later, app containing feature X gets distributed to thousands of users, or goes viral and hits millions of users.

Congratulations, like it or not, you have now become the lead architect of the now-widely-deployed "experimental" system Y, and you are going to either crash and burn or become a damn good software architect by maintaining it out of sheer necessity. Later, you find yourself putting "Lead Software Designer" on your resume, having earned that role and title.

A lot of successful software was originally designed "by mistake" and grows far, far greater than its original purpose. And in contrast, you get the well-designed software that was properly architected, but never goes anywhere because it never saw the light of a successful deployment at scale.

[bmiller2]

I think you’ve accurately described the vast, vast majority of production code that’s hasn’t been through a second wave of engineers/management and rewritten. If it works, and requirements aren’t changing, then your MVP has become the gold standard

[Aeolun]

It’s the best way to get into it anyway. Making architectural decisions without experience implementing them sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

[notyourwork]

Which makes sense right? Same reason a military general doesn’t start as a general. Architecture takes experience in the weeds to give a breadth you can leverage as you reason through architecture. Architecture isn’t aslways black and white decision making based on some specs which is where experience can help a ton.

[Aeolun]

Generals often start out as lieutenants though (e.g. officer academy drops you in on a higher rank).

[skh]

In the U.S. military this is not true. People graduating from OCS, ROTC, or one of the academies start off at O-1 (2nd Lieutenant).

[learc83]

What's your disagreement? 1st Lieutenant vs 2nd Lieutenant? Lieutenant is commonly used to refer to both.

Or are you saying that you start of at O-1 and not a higher paygrade? If that's the case, the OP was pointing out that you start off outranking enlisted service members, not that you start out above O-1.

[skh]

Well, I misread the comment I responded to. I thought they said that academy graduates don’t start off at lieutenant and start off at a higher rate.

[jsmeaton]

No I wouldn’t think so. But knowing about a role and angling towards it early if that sounds more interesting is hopefully helpful information.

[sjg007]

Yes it is possible.