Photo by Lacie Slezak

A [individual] who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.

— Confucius

In my career I have worn many different hats. The hat I wear today is the one of an Enterprise Architect. I come from a consulting career and have worked for the big four, and also small shops claiming to be consultants.

While working for the big four, I grew my eminence quickly. I once was the prime factor for the biggest risk project in the 200,000 person company due to my age and experience. The project although became a huge success and we were praised in the news for it. The internal architecture team who once deemed me as a risk, brought me in and place me in a SME Architect role for the company.

The company was Deloitte, the project was Kentucky’s ACA implementation (Obama-Care), and my role was Lead Software Architect. Wait, wasn’t ACA a failure? Yes it was, but primarily the federal system was. States and Commonwealths could elect to build their own systems, and KY did just that and successfully. I know success compared to other failures should diminish the reward, but at the time ACA was one of the most complicated systems being developed.

Since Deloitte, I worked for several smaller companies in various roles. From architecting smaller solutions for smaller projects to being a development manager. Through this time, it was interesting to see the problems projects had self inflicted or not and how they were being solved. Sometimes I could influence change, and others I had to just sit back and watch the train wreck.

Consulting gives a unique breath and depth to technology, as problems and technologies are constantly changing between projects. Some people might believe short stints don’t grow one’s experience, but I’ll have to strongly disagree. Not keeping communications open after finishing your role limits individuals.

Some of the greatest rewards, is the kudos I receive from developers years later. I joined a project, and first meeting on the first day, their best senior developer stands up and says, “This guy is the reason I’m an asshole about coding standards.”

So here I am today, reading all these tech blogs telling me don’t do this or that. Arriving at these conclusions that are contradicting to my beliefs. (If I contradict you, let’s chat.) I believe some of these conclusions are wrong, so I’m here to tell you why.