Engineering vs. Architecture which is Better?
Transcript
hi skew bouncer from the CTO visor calm with a coffee chat we're going to talk about architect versus engineer I think is appropriate that we have a white board in the background because this is one of those topics that I found on Twitter to be extremely surprisingly polarizing one of the reasons that it's polarizing is because it's very subjective from one organization to another organization the title architect is very fluid it's a fungible concept if you're an engineer that loves getting into the nitty-gritty details of
a technology understanding what knobs needs to be turned you spend a lot of time on certifications and not just passing the test but annoying the protocols to a deep deep level then architecture might be a path that you want to pursue not gingerly but at least knowingly that there's a big difference between being a architect and being an engineer in some organizations the term engineer can also include a lot of architectural responsibilities but I think the nature of the challenge is talking about what it is
you want to do with your career architects are not as technical as engineers so what do I mean by that does that mean that if you give a architect and engineer the same task that the architect could not do the task no that's not what I mean I mean the nature of the job is different than an engineer our architect is X to do something different than what a engineer is X to do do you want to be a heads-down technical expert that only focuses on
the technology whether that's designing the system which is architecture or do you want to be a engineer that's focused on execution and deployment or do you want to be a quote unquote architect that deals with a lot of the this challenges associated with technology a architect is almost always going to gather requirements take those requirements negotiate those requirements between the engineering group and the business and make sure that the engineering spec meets the business requirements architect will manage vendor relationships architect will sometimes do project management
and architect has to be willing to be a little bit fungible on where responsibilities lies so a lot of things that engineers typically don't have to deal with so project management vendor contracts negotiations dealing with budgets negotiating budgets a lot of what's considered managerial tasks architects take on that role so while you may remain technical in very deep least technically skilled you don't necessarily get to leverage that in your day-to-day job every day your expectation may also be to be the expert in the given technology
and do all this other stuff and this dis all this other stuff that I talk about what I'm talking about you may not be happy or tread carefully when you think about pursuing the architecture route if you just like to take your hand and keep it down and into the keyboard and into the weeds architecture is not that roll it baby architect and specifically brand an enterprise architect is much more complicated that's it for this CTO Weiser talk to you guys next coffee chat next time
follow me on the web at CTL visor on Twitter ww CTO visor comm is the website and where you can also find the podcast which is also available in iTunes talk to you guys next time
