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 is pretty much a given. Why else write about it at all?

I read it similar, but also kind of from the other side: If your organization is set up in a way that ignores the technical requirements of the product, your are going to have a bad time.

And yes, of course this is more often on the bad side than on the good side in practice. If everything was already fine most of the time, there would be no point in discussing this topic.

The original post advocates for a holistic, collaborative approach; management and technical experts should be working together to align technical and organizational structure. I fully agree with that view (and I’m not a manager).

There is more than enough “shit managers say” material out there, but this is not it.