A strong architect is paid to say "no" earlier than everyone else.
A strong architect is paid to say "no" earlier than everyone else. When was the last time your "senior" decision reduced options instead of adding features?
In most SMBs modernizing, the senior engineer is the safest pair of hands. They can ship, unblock teams, and keep the AWS bill from catching fire.
So leadership assumes the next step up is "the same, but with more experience."
It is not.
Senior engineers optimize the path to a solution. Architects optimize the cost of choosing the wrong solution.
The quiet failure mode is upstream: you pick Salesforce because sales needs it, SAP because finance trusts it, Stripe because payments must work, then you discover the real system is the seams between them.
If nobody owns the seams, every sprint becomes integration work disguised as product work. You do not see it until the second vendor renewal, the first big customer escalation, or the third rewrite of the same workflow.
The best architects spend more time naming constraints than proposing tools. They force tradeoffs into the open while they are still cheap.
The teams I see struggle are rarely short on senior engineers. They are short on someone willing to make an irreversible decision look irreversible.