Finished grad school last December, got a part time job last June and still have it now. small firm (i'm the only staff other than my bosses), 2-3 days a week. CAD/photoshop/sketchup/a little designing here and there. i enjoy it but of course a full time position would be more desirable (considering i have to start paying loans by June). they can't give me FT so i have to look somewhere else... but where, i dunno.

Where are you btw? good luck.

First unbuilt: the interior walls for an ENT clinic.
First Built: rehabilitation of an exterior facade wall.

First job: US Corporate firm.

Wasn't bad actually but the people were kind of shitty - not a very diverse atmosphere as they hired a bunch of people who all came from the same school. Very gossipy and cliquey.

Got to do a lot of designing, photoshop and most of all tons of rendering since that was my sorta forte. I also did a lot of presentation work. After a while, I when I kinda started demanding more architecture work I was put on a project that required some CA. I learned a lot from this. the work was primarily mix use, planning, hospitality, and retail.

Even though I was ready to leave after two weeks of being employed there, I stayed for about 2 years. Then jumped ship to a larger more global firm that paid way better and treated me like a professional.

Although I might have not liked working there, I learned a lot and it set a bar for me in terms of finding places that were good overall fits for me. I'm on my fourth firm now! I usually gave about two years for each place.

There are jobs in DC just so people know!

I was furloughed from my firm in late January and started at a new job in early March. I interviewed at about 10 firms and got around 6 offers. It wasn not like this 16 months ago. So if you are interested in moving to the capital - come on over!

I am going to tell you what my favorite Arch. professor told me about starting out in the professional world: "It's going to suck". Breaking into any industry is tough. Stay positive and always try to go above and beyond no matter the task.

My experience is similar to Med. The first job I had out of school didn't have awesome people. No one even invited me out to lunch or spent time getting to know me. I had the worst desk location in the office and was paid less than everyone else. I stuck to it though, remembering what my professor said. I worked there for 1.5 years, absorbing everything the place had to teach me and taking advantage of their contacts and resources.

Because of that initial investment in my career, while it sucked, I am now at a super sweet firm in San Francisco (I was in Virginia Beach prior), very well paid, and working with amazing people. All of those sad lonely insecure feelings are gone.

What??? people are happy in architecture?... no increase in suicidal tendencies as you get further into your career? No its great and I'm glad to hear that if you put in the hard work you will get the rewards. To Med. and Alexi especially, how much influence did your first job have on your current lives? I mean was it a well known firm that looked good on your CV or was it the experience you got that allowed you to move onto better offices.

I mean as a first job I know you shouldn't be picky, but personally Im looking at firms that are smaller boutique and do nice-ish projects, a) so I learn more and b) because I want to be excited about the designs I work on.

Maybe that will come and I need to stick it out and take the first job that comes? dunno. thought.

My first job was while I was still in school, part time at a small very very, very busy firm in Northern California. Started out filing, etc...then got a few drafting opps. started making $6.50 an hour. One year later, owner offered me full time if I quit school, since you don't need a degree in CA to qualify for exams. I did it...stayed 12 years, worked my way up to PM making over $80K a year. Designed some nice buildings..Then.....RECESSION! got layed off.

Got another job within a month.
Now taking my exams and a PM with the Worlds 5th largest Architectural firm....(I'm miserable....global ain't for me...)

Living in a great house designed by one of FLLW's best apprentices, and once licensed I will be flying solo.

Living the dream...almost.

first job (1-year internship during grad school): famous design firm in Switzerland. 300 people. Great design work, amazing co-workers, decent hours and good pay. duties - concept design, sketches, physical models, 3d models (rhino), 2d drawings, presentations (usually in that order). Amazing experience. Left only to go back & finish school

then (first 9 months after graduation): famous design firm in Rome. 40 people. Stressful environment, shitty pay, long hours. Great co-workers, but high turnover. duties - 3D modeling, looking busy. spent a lot of time on the clock learning grasshopper. Left to move to China, now working for a huge international firm.

Can't complain.

evanc how many languages do you speak?

jbushkey: none

First job was a summer gig after Freshman year (1986). My job was splicing pre-printed mylar title blocks onto blank mylar sheets. You have no idea....I also ran blueprints, made coffee, and ran errands for the boss in my own car including picking up packages from his "friend" aka coke dealer.

hard for me to figure which would count as 'first job':

high school: sales guy, truck loader/unloader, delivery, storm/screen door repair, paint mixer, stocker, etc at a local building supply store.

first yr: residential house construction

second yr: almost identical to donna's above, except legitimate errands in company runner car. also got to draft some. my official job title, i think, was 'runner' and the print room was my domain.

third-thru-fifth year: intern in the best office in which i've worked to date. did whatever was needed, but got to have a hand in some wonderful projects - detail development, shop drawing review, model building...

immediately after graduation: drafter for a land surveyor.

6mos after graduation-thru-18mos after graduation: counter guy at a mall cookie shop, bookstore, and 2 music stores.

18mos after grad: intern in architecture office, but really not very good work. learned a lot, stayed for 1yr.

after that my career got more normal. i landed in a much better office and stayed for almost 10yrs.

i think my ability to fight for good design (which i still find difficult) arose from the struggle i had even finding an architecture job after school. my whole experience up through graduation should have launched me sky-high and i was poised to go a pure/high-design kind of path. but then i graduated in a bad economy (like now), with no ability to afford grad school, and no jobs on the horizon. the firm in which i had worked for three years had just laid off everyone and i traveled to several cities to interview - pounding the pavements - before realizing that i needed to take the cookie counter job just to pay rent. the first firm in which i did find work was a cut-and-paste prototype hotel and shopping center kind of office. by the time i was in a position to push for good design again, i had become much more pragmatic. still am, i guess.

First job was making windows. Loved it, especially running the saws.
Second job was for a civil engineer, my title was Office Princess.
It went downhill after that.

Thanks for sharing Steven. It is good to know that people have found their way back into the field after working menial jobs.

that sounds just about right, handsum. i know a lot of recent grads wouldn't think that kind of job is OK, but it's really a great immersive experience. i'd encourage everyone to pursue that kind of job at some point; maybe, if possible, prior to graduation so that you can launch right in after. but even after, if the options are scarce, the everything-intern is a good person to be.

glad if my list gives some positive spin on things, jbushkey. if it helps, now i'm a partner in a 15 person firm!

First full time job out of college was with a medium sized A/E firm. This was 20 years ago. My first task on the first day of work was to update a set of as-built drawings for a large hospital. It was an ink-on-mylar (pin bar) drawing set, so I had update each the mylar base sheet based on all the construction changes that ocurred in the field. It took 3 weeks.
Our office was also integrating CAD, so I spent a lot of time developing the standard details in the office. I moved into more production work and towards the end of my 4 years at the firm, I started doing a little design work. In many respects, it was like the Karate Kid: "Wipe-on, Wipe-off". Overall, it wasn't glamorous, but it wasn't until much later I saw the value and benefits I learned on the job. It was valuable experience I still use to this day.

A lot has changed in just 20 years...

like many here, but advance level ink on mylar fucking.
tracing, and shortly after, constructing beautifully detailed cabinet sections (bars, furniture, and rest of the complicated f&f designs) on mylar sheets because chief architects, SOM, wanted it that way. it was for a hi rise hotel interiors with many bars and restaurants and spas, finish schedules, hardware specs, etc... mylar eats Koh-I-Noor rapidograph tips like a cannibal. i can't believe how much costly stuff they threw on my way, a lowly architecture student intern. learned a lot at 5$ per hour.

Lots of old farts/cokeheads chiming in. :)

Gotta represent the 90's myself.

First job was a 4 month internship. I was still a few years away from graduation. The firm made its mark by designing sports arenas (mostly hockey) across the continent. Rest of their work was unapologetic PoMo.

All my time went into schematic design (or their version of SD). I worked mostly in a program called Corel Draw. Corel Draw was an amazing program that made (even today's) Adobe Illustrator look like Microsoft Paint. Unfortunately, Corel Draw had a tendency of crashing every 60 minutes or so. Such computer behavior was fashionable in the '90's.

The firm only recently switched from Win 3.11 to Win 95, so every workstation was still equipped with a computer, a drafting table, and this weird Ouija board that only worked with DOS version of AutoCad (v. 11?). The board had all the typical Cad commands mapped out on it, and you took the pointing device (not quite a mouse) that came with it and clicked over the action you desired to perform.

One of my bosses was a bag of misery. His persona often popped up in different host bodies in later parts of my career. About 10% of architects are horrible monsters, and it was nice to be introduced to the type so early on.

Senior partners were all one foot in the grave, and I am not sure what they did on daily basis. If anything.

While there, I worked on my only competition where the winner was pre-determined. We won! Luckily nothing ever got built.

The company is still in business. Their website has not changed since that time. The original partners all kicked the bucket, so at some point the new management decided to re-brand the firm. Yay?

The whole experience was extremely educational, yet a huge letdown. I took offense with the fact that most of my working hours were spent sitting in a chair. Since then I worked for much better firms, with much better people, yet sitting on my ass remained a common theme.

In those early days, I looked up to those project managers that always seemed to be on the move. Little did I know that they were only rushing to other places where they had to sit on their ass for extended periods of time.

Noone ever offered any coke.

This is what the Acad tablet kind of looked like. Only much bigger.

What memories. Before our computers were networked, we were supposed to check out each cad file (floor plans, etc) from our "CAD coordinator" and he'd give us a floppy disc. We would make the changes and give the disc back. Once our office was finally networked, we still had bugs. When somebody's machine showed signs of crashing (which happened a lot), they yelled "Quicksave!" to the studio and we all tried to save in time before the whole network went down. We never took things for granted.

@Rusty!....Your office sounded just like mine. I also remember those tablets well. We worked w/ Release 9 and it seems like we always had to re-calibrating them.

What is the proper way to list drug runs on your resume? Maybe that's the magic that mine is missing!