System Architect - what position will be next?

About 15 years ago I defined a goal for my career -- to became a system architect.

How you can decide whether your goals achieved?

I think that the most reliable mean to measure it - to fulfill the corresponding responsibilities and be accepted among professionals you are working with.

Once you have achieved it -- what's then?

If you do still love development, I think that the next step may be a consultant career.

Why?

Several reasons.

Because it may help you to share your experience among many teams making this world better! :)

At the same time you will be still able to gain much new experience because you'll be involved in many projects also allowing you to develop some non-development skills such as presentation skill.


Today EPAM Systems offered me a new opportunity -- a head of R&D center.

Prior that I passed a couple of interview and found out that this position correlates with my goal -- to became a well-known consultant like Martin Fowler :)


So I accepted this offer.

I consider it as a new step in my career and I'll do my best to became famous and accepted among professionals! :)

UPDATE:

Unfortunately, in one month I decided to accept job proposal from another company.

My decision was made because this way may lead me to achieve the goal which I was chasing when accepted EPAM job proposal more than one year ago (yep, I failed to achieve that goal while working in EPAM, sorry :( )

It was not very easy decision. I liked to work in CDP Team -- nice, smart people, good opportunities, knowledgable and nice boss.

But I believe that in a few years I will get back to consulting career! :)

Poor, confused C# compiler

A very interesting cause when C# compiled failed to handle a special case of cross-references in structures:

Poor, confused C# compiler

Now wonder that I don't know it! It's just because I don't use struct keyword very often :)

P.S. DON'T ASK THIS QUESTION DURING JOB INTERVIEW! INTERVIEWEE WOULD THINK THAT YOU ARE NOT VERY GOOD AT INTERVIEWING! :)

Need a real tasks -- tired to do nothing for a few months

I fed up with just sitting on my ass and inventing tasks on myself.

I paid well, but I paid for nothing.

If I don't do the work I love and this way my coding skills will degrade very quickly.

Recently I started to promote myself as a free-of-tasks specialist during my presentations, so finally one of my listeners came to me and proposed to join his team for a while to help his team to adopt BDD practice.

Will start on Monday afternoon.

I hope it will help me as well to restore my coding skills. It'll be a fun to work within a team as well.