design is not a senior privilege
I have worked on teams that treated architecture as a separate role, reserved for “senior” engineers. They drew the diagrams, made the decisions, and handed over the work.
I think that separation is the problem.
Design was never a reward for time served. It is a skill, and skills improve with practice. Like any skill I think it belongs in the job from the start.
You grow by doing
I did not learn implementation all at once. I started small: an endpoint, a form, a script. Then a bigger piece: auth, infra, a data flow. Eventually whole services across teams.
The work changed in size and scope but never in kind. Building an endpoint in year one was not that different from building one in year ten. What changed was how fast I got there and how sure I was on the way.
Nobody asked me to wait a decade before writing real code. I wrote it early and learned as I went. I think design works the same way.
Experience sharpens judgment
With time I started seeing what the original design missed. Some parts did not hold up in production. Others were more complicated than they needed to be. I kept noticing the same things:
- unclear or outdated requirements
- missing integration or dependency awareness
- unnecessary complexity
- weak technical justification
- tradeoffs made for convenience
- decisions taken without user feedback
Those moments were the lesson for me. There was never one way to build the thing, and judgment turned out to be learned rather than handed over.
Design is a collaboration
Which is why I try to design early instead of only writing code. Take a problem, shape it, talk to people, make the tradeoffs. Write the doc, get feedback, revise it properly.
On the good teams I have been on this was unremarkable. Someone hands you a small but real component. You lead the doc. The team gives input. It gets better.
Design is everyone’s responsibility
What I want is for your design to land where mine would. You have one year, I have more, and I would like the result to hold up the same.
Leading was never doing it all myself. It is setting the structure, gathering the context, and keeping the conversation moving.
A culture that trusts people to grow by doing. That is the whole thing.