I'm one and I still code in my free time.

How anyone could actually BE an architect without a lot of actual developer experience is something I'd like to know. Are you sure you're not just being unfair to the architects around you for disagreeing with you on things?

I cannot fathom an architect who wouldn't be a strong developer if slotted into that role.

I'm about 15 years into my career, and I've been writing code the whole time. In hindsight, a lot of my code has held up well. I just heard that code I wrote 10 years ago is flying in space, so that's cool. I've been at my current job 6 years, and since it was a small startup when I joined and it's grown fairly big, I'm one of the most senior employees. About a year ago I was given the title, "software architect", mainly just so that I can officially make unilateral technical decisions in the presence of ambiguity when there's a schedule crunch.

Just in the last few months, I've found it difficult to be personally productive writing much code. Between catching COVID, then a string of other viruses, and having a young daughter and a baby on the way, I just haven't had a lot of quality focus time. Instead to feel like I'm earning my paycheck, I've had success in writing out high level architecture documents and diagrams, then relying on my coworkers to take over ownership and execute on the details. It's actually seemingly working out well, since I'll be going out on paternity leave toward the end of the year.

I just got the job and have 16 years of coding experience, with complex stuff touching major operations in several companies (not to brag, but to prove :)). Now I am doing still coding of the left-overs, but the new role is really mostly designing systems. So I think your experience is not that universal. But yeah, I've also met several architects that have like two years experience, and then branched out.

I was one, though my job title was even snootier. I still wrote a lot of code but there was some precedent for that in my immediate group, and we were always short of (real) senior engineers. Zooming out, I don’t think the natural born hackers and the people promoted to Architect overlapped too much. But once in a while, yes.