I find it easier to talk to people about what I do these days because I feel more confident in the software architect role than any of my other roles like team leader or project manager. Software architecture is a pleasant topic to discuss because I don’t find software development as rigorous science, as most people prefer to think about it. I think about it as the most social activity one can do in one professional life. In a specific scope, you can formalise it and quantify lots of things in software development. Still, outside the strict scope of engineering, there’s an immense amount of space for communication, visualisation, imagination and creativity – just as much as about engineering in this industry.

One can talk to forty thousand people via a single model in the form of software. A model that simplifies reality to solve some of their general problems, at least to some extent, you have to understand the situation you’re dealing with. Still, even more importantly, you have to know how those people understand the solution you’re pitching and delivering to them. Therefore you have to bridge as many people as possible with the fewest answers. Most often, you have to look beyond yes/no, and that requires a lot of social skills that are neither scientific nor magical but simply need a lot of work in that area. If you look at it from that perspective, software development is a massively complex and almost purely social activity.

Similarly, there is a lot more of doh moments, and fun to it than most people outside the business would think there is.