Importance of skills: coding vs software architecture vs system design

Let me start with my controversial observation: skill that engineers lacks the most is ability to write clean and easy to understand code.

In my company (during recruitment and during making new services) there is a lot of focus put on system design (high level components, designs, etc.) which of course is important. No doubts.

However, I feel being the only one who actually put more focus to software architecture (e.g. how classes are designed, what layers there are, if they are lously coupled) and coding (methods and class namings, short functions, business logic not spread across different layers, proper abstractions).

I often found that engineers we’re recruiting can talk about designing system, but then struggles to write neat, readable, and easy to extend code.

I have 2 questions: – have you observed similar things by yourself? – how to explain to management that ability to design system and ability to write clean code are 2 different, yet equally important things?