13: Architecting software solutions and Conscious career breaks

In this conversation with Sivaguru, Anupama shares her experience related to:  -Efficient algorithms  -Skills an architect needs  -Differences in architecting small and large applications  -Tips for women who need to or want to take a break This episode covers 2 broad aspects of software architecture - 1\. Evolution of architecting a software system, from over 15 years ago to today, and the evolution of a software architect's role.  Starts at 5:13 2\. Differences in architecture for small v/s large organizations & dilemmas architects face when things are ambiguous.  Starts at 28:45 Anupama, has been developing software, for the last 25 years and has built applications across different domains - manufacturing, customer service, storage, e-commerce, health tech. She has dabbled with multiple technologies and languages, starting from C/C++, Microsoft MFC and MS SQL Server and then moving on to Java / JEE, MySQL and Postgres and AWS platforms. Most recently she was responsible for the architecture and delivery of Hospital Management System, a part of the health tech product suite. In this role, she has scaled the product architecture from the small hospitals segment to a medium-large hospitals. She has played a key role in seamlessly evolving the architecture from a predominantly on-premise deployments to cloud-hosted / SaaS and hybrid deployments. She had designed and built data server / tape server products which helped enterprises backup terabytes of data, most efficiently, on a regular basis. She has led teams delivering custom and add-on services around these products, and also built medium to large scale e-commerce and web applications on Microsoft and JEE platforms. For a brief period in between, to be able to devote more time for her kids and family, she was freelancing as consultant architect with very early stage startups, setting up their product architecture and development frameworks. She actively engaged with a group of women all working out of home, to build and deliver end-to-end custom software for small startups.