They do the same thing building architects do. They draw pretty pictures of the end product that may of may not be structurally sound, then rely on engineers to build it and make sure it doesn’t collapse.

Wait, did you find out? Can you tell us?

A good software engineer is also an architect. You don’t need dedicated architects if you have good developers.

But on the other hand there are much more questionable and unnecessary jobs like product managers or managers of managers.

I tried to get a software architect to explain their job to me once, it was like a “lean startup”, a libertarian, and a psychic had written an elevator pitch together.

The good ones: design and adjust software development processes, standards for cross-project functionality and reusability and in general try and improve at a high level the process of making, maintaining and improving software in a company.

The bad ones: junior/mid-level software design with a thick layer of bullshit on top to spin it as advanced stuff.

If you want to see bad software architecture, just look at most of Google’s frameworks and libraries.