Great article. I agree, the decentralization of the software architect role has led to it being neglected and it lowered software quality. This was particularly tough for me since I had wanted to focus on software architecture since before I went to university. I was obsessed with figuring out what the ideal abstractions were to provide the optimal balance of maintainability, scalability and performance.

IMO, it's more exciting and challenging than normal architecture because, in software, you have to consider not only the current reality but also future requirement changes. A good software architect should have an engineering mindset to come up with good, efficient abstractions but also a business mindset to anticipate a range of possible future requirement changes. You need to take into account what kinds of changes may be advantageous business-wise. You need to ask business stakeholders the right questions to help you to anticipate requirements.

This would have been the perfect career for me but unfortunately, the role disappeared before I even graduated from university. It coincided with a shift in focus towards job creation in big tech.