It's a long-running argument in software architecture and I've seen some quite emotional comments on it. But it's the wrong argument. The right question is surely one about ratios:
"What ratio of non-coding architects to coders will work best for us?"
A ballpark answer to this question would follow logically from calculating how many full-time-developers worth of work results in an amount of non-coding-but-still-requires-deep-or-broad-technical-understanding-and-vision work that adds up to one full time job.
I suggest, based mostly on e-commerce & similar SMEs, something like:
(1) 25 developers' worth of coding results in 1 full-time non-coding-architect's worth of work.
(2) Every team needs at least one coding-architect-or-architecturally-competent-developer per 5 developers
Which gets me to a ratio of
1:5:25
for
non-coding-architect : coding-architect-or-lead-dev : developer
Architecture features plenty of non-coding work. Dealing with people, plans, business change, technical design, design decisions, frameworks, principles, patterns, catalogues, quality attributes... There's more than enough of it if you have 25 coders' worth of development going on.
So in a workplace with 100 developers, you may want a chief architect, 3 or 4 non-coding architects and 20 coding-architects-or-architecturally-competent-developers. But if you are chief architect or even CTO of a company with 15 developers, you probably still code.
There's no right answer to the question, how much coding does a coding-architects-or-architecturally-competent-developers do. It can vary from nearly-nothing to 95% as projects progress. Perhaps 50% is a good average?
Discussions
There having been not one but two still-live threads on this on LinkedIn software groups since 2012:
LinkedIn - 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know - Should architects continue coding ... ?
LinkedIn - IASA - Should software architects code?
Anthony Langsworth's 2012 post