>> architects are fun killers!

I strongly disagree with this. Fun killers are working late nights to remedy poor planning, or getting paged multiple times every night because people didn't make informed choices. It kills the fun for the employees as well as others they interact with.

A good architect includes someone who understands the needs of the people in terms of growth and satisfaction. They'll push back on schemes that introduce toil and try to align around good bets that contribute to your skill set. That may involve blocking use of technology X which has Y long term consequences. The consequences of that long-term choice need to have counters to keep the people engaged, so the good architect considers how to manage that. They don't always get that right and we have some less well-rounded architects, but we should aspire to doing this.

Oh yeah, the fun! Not making business deadline because the code base is unreadable due to over engineered solution using non-documented brittle, but cool, libraries!

Oh boy we have fun in the 5w and retrospectives when changing one corner of the app crashes everything else and the legal team now is in deep conversation with insurance to cover claims from customers.

/s

Most likely because they are:

* Experienced devs who have "seen it all"

* Have to deal with the consequences and have more responsibility

That is what it should be. From what I've seen most architects aren't like this, they play with whatever is cool then move on to the next company while the rest of us try to untangle the mess.

Let's say 'Good architects are fun killers' - but really there is still a lot of fun to be had - and if not maybe one should move to a more mentally challenging job haha.