For reference (as per Wikipedia):
Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.
— Melvin E. Conway
Imagine interpreting that as advice on how you should try to design things, lol.
Tbf, I think most of the post is just typical LinkedIn fluff, but I didn’t want to take the poor fellow out of context.
Nowhere in that text does it say “managers are the real software architects”. What it does say is “what managers do affects software architecture”. Sure you can extrapolate that to delusions of grandeur, but if you take into account the explicit call for collaboration it is much more likely what was meant is more along the lines of “we can mess things up if we ignore the architecture, so let’s talk to the real software architects before making org decisions”.
About the comic: That one does have the line “management designs software architecture”, much closer to the negative interpretation; but that too can be interpreted in a more positive way as “… and we are not good at that, so let’s make sure to bring in the people who are good at it at important points”.
That’s an extrapolation itself and I think a much less likely intention. The post takes an obvious concept (alignment) and somehow pretentiously comes to the conclusion that managers are actually system architects while downplaying the role of technical contributors, you know, the ones actually designing the systems. It takes two to “harmonize”, so if that’s what you bring to the table, the technical components are doing that and their actual job. This is just a dude on LinkedIn jerking himself off.
The comic is very accurate though, at least the part where the manager is lounging with his feet up on his desk doing dick all thinking about how he can take credit for someone else’s job.