Originally posted by Thomas Eric:
Without these foolish companies, there is little chance to find an architect with experience!
Experience is unquestionably very important, but it's not everything. A bad wine will be bad after ten years. If you have a good brain, a good communication skill and team spirit, you are good for it. Unfortunately, it seems this point of view is not widely shared.
Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:
I utterly disagree. Smart companies hire experienced senior developers to be architects. On average, most people with even a few years work experience would be better architects than someone with no experience whatsoever. Unless you've seen good designs and bad (which aren't taught in college classes), you're likely to make mistakes.
--Mark
You fellows are talking about different kinds of experience, Mark. Tom is referring to lack of experience
as an architect while you mean that any architect should have solid years of experience as an implementor and a designer beforehand. In Tom's view that means no experience as an architect the first time.
You are absolutely correct, BTW. Any good senior designer with the ability to step up their viewpoint to a systemwide level will make a better architect than 80% of the people holding the title today. Indeed the effective architecture on almost every project I've ever seen is accomplished at this level.