No coding as a system architect
I am a L5 system architect at Google working with various teams including PM, SWE, HWE, external vendor and others to define a target spec. of products and get agreements of all key stakeholders. Organizing a weekly meeting to reduce any gaps between teams and my role is more like a feature owner or like an engineer version of PM. As a result, I don’t do any coding but use spreadsheet or calculator only. So far, I like this role a lot and my performance has been great. But I am not sure if it is a right path from a long term perspective. Feeling like I am losing my sharp engineering skills as an engineer. Do you agree? Or is it natural getting away from hands on coding once you are getting more experienced? #Google #Apple #systemdesign
L5 system architect? Did you mean to say “solution architect”, like the ones at Amazon? That’s even worse than a TPM; it’s a sales role.
No. It has nothing to do with sales. Definitely it is a technical role. For example, I define target Wifi spec for a certain application. Wifi team does not know the application as much as I do and PM does not know technical nuisances as much as I do. Working with external/internal team to change the spec and negotiate with trade off.
PhD + 8 year of experience.
System architect could be a very important role in the org, the bridge between teams and even final decisions making. It would be more suitable for a very senior person with significant credit. I think the problem is nothing to do with coding but the vision and experiences. The architects I know are all yoe20+. More like IC. And of course, it's totally not solution arch/sales.
TPM mostly tracks and monitors status of project. But I suggest engineering solutions based on my prior experiences. Disagree with my role is same as TPM.