The architect at my company is by far the most talented programmer I know, and his position as architect is more often "programming the cross-functional, low and high level pieces that touch across multiple stacks and helping implement the first stages of large projects" than "sitting around and designing things". I have tons of respect for him and his grasp of subjects across many aspects of programming is profound.
So along with that, I resent the idea that an architect must be some neckbeard who spends his days conjecturing and drafting and doesn't contribute. I know the cool thing now is to have flat-hierarchy companies consisting entirely of coders, but then again Google is a very young. I'd bet in the next five years you'll see people moving into architecture positions much like the one I describe.
Just to be clear, your argument is entirely over a word, and not about anything in reality -- right? Words are pointers to concepts. When you say "architect", you mean something different from what most people mean when they say "architect".
At a market rate of ~$4USD per pound of bacon that puts an average weight developer at the $600-800. Assuming this developer is paid that amount per day it will be about 150k - 200k USD per year. I'd say that would be an accurate amount of money for someone that is worth their weight in bacon.
So along with that, I resent the idea that an architect must be some neckbeard who spends his days conjecturing and drafting and doesn't contribute. I know the cool thing now is to have flat-hierarchy companies consisting entirely of coders, but then again Google is a very young. I'd bet in the next five years you'll see people moving into architecture positions much like the one I describe.