Architecture and coding are two distinct skillsets. I know that most senior developers haven't touched a book about architecture for a long time if ever but still feel competent about such topics - falling in the "You don't know what you don't know" trap. This is as problematic as the architect with rusty coding skills or who hasn't worked as a professional developer beforehand. Coding should be a small part of the architect role but this role is usually reserved for very complex systems where the majority of your work isn't anymore about coding because there is enough to fill a full time job otherwise there is no need for an architect at your company.
Why are books important? Senior engineers should be seeing design documents and code reviews that involve architecture and design patterns all the time.
Sure, there's room for external learning, especially at companies where software isn't the primary focus, but almost none of the best software architects I know spend much of their time reading about architecture.
Speaking personally, I've learned more about architecture from reading code and system design interview prep materials than I ever did from any book. The closest I found to a useful book was the "architecure of open source applications" series which is essentially reading code with a senior eng to walk you through it.
I hear the "Why are books important" pretty often when guiding developers. All of the best architects i know of spend much time honing their skills. That won't happen if all you see is just the company you're working at. The worst architects i've worked with stopped learning outside of their job tasks. It's also a step to understand that design patterns and system design are all within the core competency of the senior developer and that the role of the architect has many other responsibilities.
While I'm sure that the best employees make their entire lives about work skills, I just can't imagine that being a fulfilling life personally. If i have to spend my nights reading books about work, outside of work, then I don't want to be the best. I have other hobbies I'm more interested in than, "becoming a better employee".
Now, I do feel different about academia though. I could understand doing fundamental research and dedicating most of your living hours to those problems. But i guess I just feel like the research mission is infinitely more valuable than the corporate one. I say this having never had the chance to really contribute anything meaningful to any company I've worked for, and never having worked for a company who's mission felt personally fulfilling to me.
I'm glad that there are people who work their butts off for work in important places but I just can't imagine doing that myself and not just disintegrating with regret when I turned 65.
> I just can't imagine that being a fulfilling life personally. If i have to spend my nights reading books about work, outside of work, then I don't want to be the best. I have other hobbies I'm more interested in than, "becoming a better employee".
I'm the guy who reads books about my career (not about my work) outside of work (in my free-time) and during working hours as well. I love my career (computer science) and I love reading well-known tech/cs books. I don't do it to be the "best employee". I couldn't care less about what I do at work (I, like 99% of the people here, work for a totally useless tech company that nobody would care about if it disappeared tomorrow). What I do at work is stupid distributed systems in Go + Kafka + postgres + k8s (totally uninteresting stuff, but pays very well though). I genuinely enjoy readings books from Stevens, Kerrisk, Kleppmann, etc., just like I enjoy reading sci-fi/drama/etc. novels. I usually end up learning stuff that's actually useful at work, and once in a while I apply such knowledge at work, but I do it only for the raises and promotions.
There are people out there who doesn't give a fuck about tech companies, but care deeply about tech.
