[Rabidgremlin]

I've had an "architect" job in some form or another for 20+ years, so have learnt plenty of things that would have greatly surprised my younger self...

My day job is basically to be a "force multiplier" and it boils down to:

- cat herding = meetings, discussions, negotiation, "shoulder to cry on" = way more soft skills then I ever thought I'd need

- Big picture stuff = "town planning" for tech, second order thinking, pulling together cohesive plans/strategies, principles, constraints = way harder to effectively communicate this stuff than my younger stuff would have thought

- rapid altitude changes = dropping from the 10000ft view down to helping a team troubleshoot some production issue, helping a junior dev with a code issue, solving a dispute between devs, hands on evaluation of some new tech, then jumping back up to talk to a leadership team about some new grand strategy, or to planning out a multi year program of work = a ton of skills that my younger self would have never have guessed at, finance, budgets, "business" language, operating models along with keeping my technical skills sharp

In terms of resources:

- Anything around learning to story tell and communicate effectively

- The "97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know" essays

- Your tech skills - write PoC apps, side-projects, try out new tech, learn to quickly grok strengths & weaknesses of tech