From Intern to Software Architect

I like Russ Cox's summary that "software engineering is programming, including time and other people". When people become senior programmers (say, 8-12 years of experience), you expect them to be able to anticipate how a certain practice will encourage / enable the ecosystem over time, even if the exact requirements of the future can't be anticipated.

This is, of course, before we had automatic coding machines.

For any interns or junior developers reading this post, this is not a realistic description of the evolution of a software career. For example, it says that a "Senior Software Engineer" is when you "care about the whole app" which is bad advice. Or for example it suggests that only an Architect is when you "start to connect with other teams" which is just nonsense.

The analogy to layers of abstraction is simplistic, but to continue with the analogy, you should view these career layers are deliberately leaky, in both directions. If you want to get from intern to software architect, you start by trying to understand as much as you can about how software is made at your company, and the next day try to understand a little bit more.