Comment by necovek

In regards to (software) architects being regulated, the problem was always going to be that someone can jump in and build a "skyscraper" in their room/garage — and they have!

I honestly have failed to see the value of anyone wearing an official "Software Architect" hat in my 20 years of being in or leading high performing software development teams: yes, we built and maintained complex systems with multi-team dependencies, did that effectively and maintained and evolved them over time.

I've seen an Architect who is still doing the coding, but they are never available when you need them. I've seen an Architect who is always available, but so far removed from actual project that their advice is only somewhat worse (if they are good — or a lot worse if they are bad) than what a good senior in the team engineer or tech lead would offer. And an Architect who would happily design for the use cases that might come in 2 years (read never) using complex abstractions only they can understand, leading to decoupling of architectural pieces to 10 teams which could be built better by 1 or 2.

Do I want our industry to be regulated by these folk? No.