Are roles important in IT sector?

Nowadays we can see a lot of made up and overly hyped IT roles such as “Full Stack Principal Architect”, “Full Stack UI/UX Architect”, “Senior team lead” and etc.

What do all these roles actually mean and are they important?

Few years ago I was working on a project where after I gathered lot of experience of the domain and the project itself, I was promoted from the position of Developer to Team Architect.

At this stage of my IT career the promotion meant a lot to me and I really wanted my career to continue this path.

Shortly after, I was moved from the above mentioned project to another one where I was again a Developer. Although there was nothing wrong with the role, I felt like the hype disappeared.

It took me some time to come to the realisation.

Everyone needs to understand that these roles always differ per company/project. When you move on or change the company/project, the only thing you carry with you are all the skills and experience that you have gained over months and years, but the roles stay in the company or in the specific project.

The main message that I would like to portray with this blog is:

Don’t give that much attention to the roles. It is important to gain experience on a project or domain, expand your knowledge and learn new skills. What makes you a good Developer are skills and not roles because these skills are always something that you can bring with you wherever the future might take you.