16 architecturalist papers: you work for the future GM

One of the most challenging parts of the job of strategic software architect is that your job is to think about the future, and the GM’s job is to think about the present. And what’s worse, your planning horizon is typically beyond the planning horizon of the current GM.

Why is that a problem? Because we hate our future selves.

There is a lot of behavioral research that suggests we hate our future selves. We will do things that optimize for current happiness vs future happiness. Explains so many things about our choices.

This, for example, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5611653/ or a more accessible and possibly more useful version here: https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/anderson-review/future-self-health

And this leads to my favorite story about the conflict between GM’s and their Strategic Software Architects.

In 2006 I sat in a room with Guy Churchward while at NetApp.

He was the new GM, and it was our first 1:1. And I told him: Look, Guy, you’re going to be gone in 18 months. And I’m going to be here for 3-5. My job is to make sure you don’t screw this technology up. If you do something I think is stupid, I will assure you it will not happen. Because I will make sure the dumbest, worst engineers are working on it. If you want to do something smart, I will make sure it succeeds. So you need to get me on board. And even if you get the smart guys to work on it, I will undermine their success, because it’s my job to make sure there is a technology that the next guy sitting across me has to go to market with.

It was a breathtakingly arrogant comment. But it was a true comment. Guy looked at me wondering if Technical Directors at NetApp could be fired.

Unfortunately for NetApp, he left way too soon from his job. And I left shortly thereafter.

He left not because he failed, but the nature of the GM job tenure is less than the tenure of the strategic software architect, and that is by design. We want the GM to be more short term focused and we want the strategic software architect to take the longer view.

The challenge is that we are working for the next GM. And the current GM is not interested in helping the future GM who is probably going to be somebody different.

So the architect – in some sense – is that person who gets in the way of the current GM plan’s to help the future GM, someone the current GM hates (even if it’s him in 2 years).

So then what?

As architects, we are constantly fighting our current boss.

How does this manifest itself concretely:

If I am a GM and I have a product, to hit my numbers, I only need junior engineers. But if none of those turn into senior engineers in 1-2 years then product will have problems in 4. And if none of them turn into architects in 3, the product is dead in 7.

We can argue about the dates and ranges but the story holds true. If you don’t have senior technologists thinking about the future, then you miss the future.

So now what?

As strategic software architects, our job is to make the current GM think that the future GM is working for him.

Here’s how I always try to do that.

1. Make sure that the Strategic Software Architecture is something that the current GM will profit from. A GM has to make sales to companies who want to believe the company has a future, he has to attract technologists to build the current stuff, having a compelling technology strategy is very useful for both.

2. Make sure that the Strategic Software Architecture adds value all of the time to the current GM. This means that future pieces deliver value now.

3. Hire for the people you need to build the future, and have them build the present. This is this weird thing. You bring in someone to build your future, and have them work on the immediate problem. While you are doing that you wonder if you are making a mistake. I think of it as a twofer. The new gal learns something new AND gains credibility AND will build the future thing better.

4. Be flexible in planning. Every new GM will have new priorities, so be willing to change what you recommend to be built.

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