Please. I am not dissing architecture. Not by a long-shot. I have been part of very large projects ($15 million dollars?) that involved such things as architectural work on a ten story commercial building as well as the design and installation of the technical infrastructure (server and other stuff). As the director of engineering of such projects I oversaw all of it and, yes, interfaced with architects and all of the trades involved. I have always been a very hands-on guy, so I get this stuff at the elemental level. For example, on one of these projects I jumped at the opportunity to improve my welding skills. A couple of us came in over a weekend and, armed with our MIG welders, welded-up the seismic sub-floor supports for the server racks. Hard work, but very rewarding.

Fundamentally architecture and software engineering can be very similar. The basics of both arts don't really change a whole lot. However, in software engineering, you can't possibly go ten years --maybe not even five these days-- without learning piles and piles of new stuff just to remain viable and competitive. If you've done this a few times you tend to get pretty good at adopting new frameworks and paradigms. That's why I said that, to an experienced software developer, something like iOS is just another platform.

Both arts do suffer from the same problem: naive clients. That will probably never change. I've had discussions with clients about to commit to a ten million dollar facility project who, as you said, expected to be able to do all the TI for $35 per square foot. Right.

The one advantage that you have is that there is no way to outsource huge chunks of your work. A client can't come up and say that they heard they can get the framing done in India for 1/10th. of the money. Yes, they can bring up this or that contractor, cousin, friend who can do it for half the money, but there are limits.

I just got done adding a new room to my house. I took the opportunity to teach my son about home remodeling and construction. Frankly, in the end, it probably cost me more than what a contractor would have charged me. This is particularly true if you consider opportunity cost. Of course, there was the ulterior motive of using it as an opportunity to educate. From that perspective alone it was worth it.

Kids are growing-up without knowing how to make things. Legos are neat, but they present an idealized version of making stuff. I find that whenever I talk to a client who has no experience building anything at all they tend to be the most unreasonable and clueless people. I always ask them what hobbies they have. If they are into woodworking, model airplanes, art or other hobbies where you experience the process of creating something from scratch I usually know I am going to be able to have a reasonable conversation with them.

Here's a true story: I was working on the layout of some racks over a custom computer floor. The investor's wife came into the room and was looking over my shoulder. After several questions she points at the AutoCAD printout and asks me why the holes under the racks were not larger. I explained that given the number of cables that had to enter this rack the holes were fine. We were only going to use 30% of the capacity --a 3x safety margin. The next day I get an irate call from the investor telling me that he was going to sue us if the holes were not large enough in the future. He was a friggin stock broker who'd never built a damn thing in his life.

What did we do? Of course, the holes became as large as the footprint of the racks. And, yes, I made him sign a piece of paper that exonerated us of any responsibility stemming from the lack of structural support due to the way they wanted us to cut-up the floor. Sometimes there are battles you just can't win, particularly when ignorance is involved.