a friendly reminder for all you recent graduates (or those looking for work) relative to those upcoming interviews: it's almost never about who you are or what names are on your resume. it isn't about fancy schools or who your studio professor was.

it's about what you've done. what you've actually, genuinely accomplished. and to that end, you're primarily limited by your imagination and motivation. 

(from the folks at amazon, via the wsj. yes, it's about mba's, but just replace that with 'MArch or BArch" and it holds up well). 

  everyone's talking about 'green shoots' these days - either they're sprouting or being choked out before they ever begin.  green shoots? how about full on growing plants.   right now...  it feels.... busy - at least at my firm. we're winning a lot of opportunities, hiring...

interesting dichotomy of numbers out today.   on the one hand, the aia's architecture billings index (which i am a participant with) is truly picking up steam over the past few months. at the very least, reading through the tea leaves, it indicates that work is picking up overall. and i...

much ink has been spilled the past couple of weeks over yahoo ceo marissa mayer's recent decision to require all employees to work inside the office. a vast majority of the knee jerk responses have focused in on why at-home workers are more productive, have a healthier work-life balance and...

we've been beating this drum, relative to what will help 'right' our economy, since 2009:   it's all about construction. all. about. construction.   it's really this simple: get construction spending back to 'normal' levels and everything else will fall into place.   so, it's nice...

a confluence of articles out today are worth collating and reading in sum. all, as you may have guessed from today's title, are about jobs. or employment. or 'how are we going to get people working again?'   robert samuelson argues, yet again, that we're in a particularly stubborn situation...

so we have a har-bowl after all. bleah. can't really root for either team, so it's time to catch up on some reading...   following up on my last post, it really is all about teams...   you a winner? or a loser? hope you're the former...   about that corner office...   i...

well, it's getting to be crunch time for the nfl. my current hometown falcons are playing a meaningful game in late january, we still have the option of a 'bi-coastal tech bowl (sf and new england/boston)', a all-bird bowl (falcons/ravens); the 'har-bowl' (as nominated below)* and whatever you...

it's going to be a full sprint through the beginning of the next year, so finding time to develop any of the topics on my list is....well....going to be impossible. but there's some loose ends, throughout the year, that i'd like toss out for your holiday reading pleasure:   for those of you...

for anyone "looking for a job", the following equation will almost certainly drive the decision about how much pay will be offered: (fees/expenses) + ((skill-sets+need)/availability) = rate x (duration of project) or some variation thereof. in shorthand: the rate's driven by a combination of the...

  if you've lasted 4 or 5 years in this profession, you know that entry level wages for architects aren't the highest among the 'learned' professionals. constantly bemoaned, it's a murky subject, shrouded in a lot of secrecy, and fueled by fierce competition in the marketplace. it's the root...

  yet another post about the rise of the contract worker.   yes, there are people for whom this kind of lifestyle is something to be desired. but my experiences and discussions tend to confirm the opposite: most people crave stability. not all, but most. for a ton of obvious reasons...

  recently, we put our first advertised job posting out in four years. there's several reasons for the time lag, not all of them due to the economy or a downturn in our fortunes. on the contrary, we've done relatively well- steady, but well - during that stretch. the biggest issue is we...

what's been danced around, mostly, as the great recession has lingered on is exactly what kinds of jobs have been lost and what kinds of jobs are coming back.    it comes as no surprise to see, in the nytimes today, a report that validates this supposition. the upshot? as you can see...

  Today’s meditation is on the ‘producer’. No, we’re not referring to a grocer or sales generator. For our purposes, we’re looking to the recording industry for some inspiration. A producer, in the world of recorded music, is the person “whose job is to...

  it's pretty rare that a single chart can show so much about the current state of the industry, but this one, from Macro Monitor, does a great job.    the upshot? 2.27M construction payroll jobs lost between '06 and '11. only 60k net new jobs since feb. 2011.    only...

with the greek election behind us (and mixed initial reactions), let's take a quick snapshot as to where our own economy is. i found this article based on David Rosenburg's studies sobering and enlightening at the same time. the summary?     Forty-five million Americans (one in...

One of the more persistent sentiments I’ve personally seen more openly laid out over the past few years of this recession is one which claims ‘there’s too much overhead at my firm’. Most often, this statement is being made by someone who is presumably not part of that...

out from the commerce department today: "WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. builders increased their spending on construction projects for a second month in April. A pickup in home construction and commercial projects offset a fifth consecutive decline in government spending.   The Commerce...

a quick update today: as reported on tuesday, the latest case-shiller housing price index taunts us with a mixed report.    the good news? phoenix, denver, miami all seem to have hit their bottom and are rebounding since the same time last year. this is relative of course - phoenix and...

"why didn’t anyone teach us ‘business skills’ in school?"     if a nickel were deposited in my bank account for each time that phrase has been uttered the past 4+ years, i’d be… well… mark zuckerberg (or at least as wealthy on paper. at the ipo.)...

last friday, i caught dwain cox of chik-fil-a as he spoke at the atlanta creative mornings series. beyond being a great speaker and head of innovation for the cow-run company, he's also the former owner of his own design consultancy. in fact, as he tells it, the main reason for the jump to...

in the autobiography on steve jobs, he claimed to spend a lot of his time designing 'the company' as much as any of apple's products. this was especially true during his last few years - after the cancer became manifest and, presumably, a concern for his legacy brought into sharper relief. and...

it's been a long couple of weeks - massive proposals, a respiratory illness, responding to people coming off the last couple of posts. hopefully, we're finally back on schedule.   for some weekend reading, this piece in the nytimes today sums up the cultural trend that...

In the companion to this post, we took a look at some of the challenges and barriers to creating an incubator culture that could support architectural startups. But, when you take a step back, would accelerating the number of new startups really solve some of our most pressing issues? The notion...

  There must be something in the air.  My last post - about a recent conversation FastCo had with fuseproject’s Yves Behar - looked at that design firm’s equity role with some of the startup clients they work with. Later that week, David Fano and Steve Sanderson of CASE took...

  been swamped doing proposals (green shoots in the air!) but fast company beat me to by next post, which was going to feature fuseproject, the industrial design firm headed by yves behar.    best quote: 'Where most design firms work for a fee and then part ways with their client...

  so, just to muddy the waters of the study put out by georgetown university yesterday, this evening the wall street journal's reports on the Department of Labor's annual average unemployment figures, released today as part of the overall jobs report (positive news on the whole. still...

so, the above graph is taken from an article by the washington post, on projected unemployment rates for upcoming 2012 graduates in various professions. you can read the whole article (as short as it is) here.   i'm not sure what's more depressing on a 20 degree morning in atlanta - the fact...

“Networking”, as the OED may tell us, is “a supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having a common interest:” Simple enough, right? Except… what kind of system? Who are the individuals and groups? And most...