Craft on Hatem Zidi

The Bad Architect Thinks They Are Good

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it.”
– David Chipperfield

There is a specific kind of architect that worries me.
Not the junior one learning the ropes. Not the experienced one who double checks the consequences.
I mean the architect who is absolutely convinced they are right, and talks incessantly to prove it.

Survival of the Architect

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I was in the war room at 2 AM, staring to the aftermath of what was supposed to be our next evolutionary leap.

We pushed the final piece of our cloud migration at midnight.
By 12:07 AM, 60% of our customers couldn’t log in.
By 12:15 AM, the rollback plan failed because the servers it was meant to restore to didn’t even exist anymore.

Despite the thorough migration plan, the old system was gone … extinct in a single night, and our “evolved” architecture had nowhere to run.
We didn’t anticipate the blind spots, and the post-mortem read like a crime scene report where we were both the victim and the suspect.

That’s when I realised Darwin’s theory applied to software too: Software behaves like living organisms.

The Doubtful Architect

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Show me an architecture no one questions,
and I’ll show you a system no one understands.

A few years back, I walked into a post-mortem where the architecture was being blamed for everything from latency spikes to the office coffee machine malfunctioning.
The architect? Well, he was calm. Unbothered. Certain.

“It’s not the design,” he said.
“The team just didn’t implement it properly.”

There it was: the dead giveaway. He wasn’t doubting the design. He was defending it like gospel.

Right then, I knew.
The most dangerous architect isn’t the one who lacks answers.
It’s the one who never asks questions.

If you’re an architect or becoming one, doubt isn’t your enemy.
It’s your sharpest tool.

A Good Architect Should Become Useless

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A few years ago, I took a week off. First vacation in months. On day two, I got six Slack messages, three “urgent” calls, and by Wednesday, the team had spun up a new feature that killed the application’s performance like a toddler on an espresso overdose: fast, chaotic, and entirely unsupervised.

That’s when it hit me: I hadn’t built a system, I’d built a babysitting job.

Architects Are Useless... Until They're Not

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Back in 2014, I was at a meeting with a prominent French bank about a challenging project. At the time, “low-code” was a fresh concept, and the bank aimed to build its own low-code IDE to let business analysts craft UIs and speed up delivery.

The team already knew each other from previous projects, so introductions were a formality. Our manager introduced everyone: “This elegant lady is the delivery manager, that serious gentleman is the team lead…”
When he got to me, the bank’s IT manager interrupted, winked, and joked, “The guy’s doing nothing!”

We laughed sincerely and moved on.

5 Behaviors of Top Architects

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Being an Architect is like being a conductor¹ in an orchestra. You’re not playing all the instruments, but your job is to make sure everyone is in concert [pun intended] and that the result is harmonious.

I once saw Simon Rattle conducting 6 Berlin school orchestras playing Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite. As a matter of fact, they never worked nor rehearsed together before. Their first play was awful and cacophonic, but after multiple corrections and rehearsals, Rattle transformed the final performance into a beautiful and majestical piece.

Architects Aren’t Made in Classrooms: The Real Way to Learn the Craft

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After a ~~heavy~~ lunch break with a team, Dorian, one (among others) young and competent developer, enthusiastically asked me: “How does someone become an Architect, and what’s the path to follow and what to learn to be one?”

I wasn’t asked this question for the first time, and to be honest, I was never able to answer it properly.

Am I a Senior or an Obsolete Architect?

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

As I am in my late 40ies, I’ll be closing my 25th year as an IT engineer this year and my 20th year as an architect.

As I was reflecting about the journey, I wondered: Am I really a Senior or just a Vintage, a Relic?

We often tend to think that a person with considerable years of experience is usually a respected Senior (as a rank and age), but Experience in some careers is viewed as universally positive, but that’s not necessarily the case in tech.

In other careers, the craft matures. It becomes less technical and more artistic, and people gain more knowledge while effortlessly getting things done.

Lawyers and doctors are respected when they cross into their 50’s. They are held in high esteem. Tech workers don’t collectively share the same belief.

In our case, the rapid change in technologies and tools, plus the weird label that stuck to us as technology handlers, are making us prone to being obsolete in a few years, if not months.

How did I evaluate my success as an architect?

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

During an after-work with some dear colleagues, one asked: “How can we define our success?”.

People started throwing answers like : by the customer’s happiness, by listing the greatest achievements, the metrics hit, by the completed tasks and goals, the career evolution or even by the gain accumulated.

Unsurprisingly, I was unsatisfied. These answers looked more like a standard pitch to succeed in an interview rather than deep thoughts.

In my opinion, one’s success can’t be measured only by corporate expectations; a career can’t be measured only by goals, achievements or accumulated wealth; a professional can’t be successful only by positive feedback or customer satisfaction.

And what about Architects, as the disgraced-and-always-blamed people in an organization ?
How can they measure their successes, especially since they only provide listening, more questions and rarely one option?

From Specialist to Polyglot: An Architect's Journey

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Most architects get pushed toward deeper specialisation over time. I went the other way, and I’ve grown comfortable with the ambiguity that comes with it.

The word “polyglot” has drifted well beyond its linguistic origins. For me, it describes an approach that values breadth over depth in any single stack.

What I learned from ... (other professions)

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always been fascinated and reflecting about the peacefulness and the respect that emerges when watching some masters doing their professions.
So, I spent lately some ~~years~~ time observing and trying to see the world through their lenses and may be, and if I’m good enough, adopt their skills and get inspired to improve myself personally and professionally.

Lessons Learned as/to be a Software Architect

me@hatemzidi.com (Hatem ZIDI) — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 10:17:14 +0000

The role of the software architect remains a subject of considerable debate: it is vaguely defined, difficult to pin down, and sometimes leads to nonsensical responsibilities in certain job descriptions.

I will not discuss here the precise day-to-day responsibilities of an architect within a team or company, but I will attempt, through my experience, to describe some of the aspects and qualities that any architect should possess.