It goes something like: "Hey, new Engineer, I need you to work on experimental feature X". - Then the engineer builds system Y to provide feature X, probably poorly architected and not scalable, not expecting it to go anywhere. Some months later, app containing feature X gets distributed to thousands of users, or goes viral and hits millions of users.
Congratulations, like it or not, you have now become the lead architect of the now-widely-deployed "experimental" system Y, and you are going to either crash and burn or become a damn good software architect by maintaining it out of sheer necessity. Later, you find yourself putting "Lead Software Designer" on your resume, having earned that role and title.
A lot of successful software was originally designed "by mistake" and grows far, far greater than its original purpose. And in contrast, you get the well-designed software that was properly architected, but never goes anywhere because it never saw the light of a successful deployment at scale.
Of course in really large companies I suppose having these as a seperate role is a necessary evil. But I still think there should be much more collaboration and interaction between people in these different roles than I generally see.
