6 months is time.
i think 3 months is even a good amount of time.
we are having officewide reviews next week. having only worked here for a month i am planning on asking for a salary review in two more months.

Do you have a nice boss? I was just handed a raise by my nice boss after 8-9 months. The same thing happened to my intern architect husband after 8 months. That made me think that either a- we were both underpaid to start off with or b - we could have asked for a raise sooner. Or I guess c - we just have great bosses. Husband got 1.00/hour raise. I got $5,000 year raise. Both equal about 8% increase.

From what I can tell so far - which isn't much since I just started - he seems like a pretty nice guy. Maybe it's a bit premature of me to be thinking of pay raises so soon in the game, but I've always been like that. I like to work towards certain expectations. Anyway, both of your responses have been helpful and very much appreciated. Thank you. I feel that I am being slightly underpaid and could have gotten a little more, but being that I needed a job quickly I didn't want to push things in the wrong direction. So, yeah, your responses give me hope and will make my day a bit better having this new information handy.

Is there an office policy for pay review. My employer has a policy of one annual pay review with 6 month review for special purposes - i.e. getting licensed.

You should probably take a very objective look at your value before asking for a raise after only 6 months in the workforce. My experience is that I lose money on interns, but that they all think that they are "worth" more than they are getting paid. All the hours that someone is showing an intern how to do something, or the time it takes to re-do something that is incorrect, or the extra time it takes due to a "learning-curve" is unbillable. I am not talking about you personally, but this is true of interns in my experience.

The biggest misconception is that because they work "hard" (long hours) that they are profitable. The exact opposite is true. Because they work long hours they cost me more and because they cannot produce as much (due to inexperience) I cannot bill them out for all their hours (and at a much lower rate than our project architects). But it is human nature to think that you are more valuable than you are. Just like everyone thinks that they are above average drivers.

If I could buy architects for what they are actually "worth" and sell them for what they think they are "worth" I would be a very wealthy person.

i never hurts to as. i think 6 months is a rather short time to ask for one though, especially as an intern, unless having a review at 3 or 6 months was negotiated when hired. you may have started out with a "generally low pay" but you did agree to that pay. i think 6 months of "good work" is what you got hired to do at the pay you agreed to do it at. 6 months of exceptional work might give you better legs to stand on when asking for that raise.

Here's a tip from "the Early Show" this morning. The visiting bio-rythum expert suggests asking for a raise at 11:00 in the morning when energy levels are up, and avoid discussing in the late afternoon when energy levels are down. (Also eating chocolate at 11:00 is recommended, in case anyone needed an excuse.)

tyvek I couldn't agree with you more. Although I haven't ever had any conflicts with new staff over salary I do remember thinking that I should be paid more. More often than not they are very expendable. The investment in time, teaching them to be a productive part of an office takes time. doing cool 3d graphics, models and competition drawings are often non billable work....fun work but a real lost leader for the office. Never really met too many interns who understood how to truly put a building together ( just have to do a content review of all the dialogue on this web site to figure that out), that why you have the old guys in the office who really know the craft of making Architecture.

in my experience, it's the job captains who are the most valuable. they've been around, know how a building goes together, can research, know how to put together a set of documents, coordinate all the work both in house and with consultants, are efficient and know about budgets and billable hours to projects. these are the people who without proper care from the employer will jump ship for opportunity and compensation. often times they're on the verge of being licensed or are recently licensed so they're looking for added responsiblity. they're really looking at that next level.

True

from an intern's perspective...i think the real problem is that the skills the average intern posesses are (unfortunately) not generally valued by very much by the mainstream profession. after spending so many years in a school environment that values theoretical and analytical considerations over the pragmatic and where individual expression reigns supreme, it's kind of dissappointing to enter the profession and suddenly have that all turned on its head. there is so much (needless) red tape involved in the practice of architecture that i feel like someone who went to medical school to be a brain surgeon only to end up being made to spend his life filling out forms in the hospital administrative office.



there are few opportunities, particularly at the entry level, to excercise them in the profession.

on the other hand, a project architect's skills are highly valued, yet i've encountered very few people at that level who i can truly say took pleasure in their career. if school had prepared me for the realities of the profession, i probably never would have entered it

sorry ignore middle paragraph of last post.

bryan-that red tape is what keeps the buildings up... more seriously though, welcome to the disconnect between academia and the profession. true, the skills you possess out of school do not seem very useful amidst all the procedure that colors the everyday, but what you are really getting out of school is not the ability to express yourself--instead you are developing the skills needed to approach a project in a non-linear/fluid fashion. this is something that only really became apparent to me after i got to the point where i didn't feel handcuffed by all the procedure. architectural education is a long process, and just like your brain surgeon, you have to keep informed and abreast of the profession, learning new skills and techniques. thus the reason for the whole IDP thing.

as far as the actual subject of this thread, i do believe that 3 months is typically understood as a reasonable time in which to evaluate your performance. you can always negotiate a salary review before you start. but in case you didn't, three months plus will do. whether or not you ask for a raise at that point is up to you and the circumstances. waiting three months and then asking for a raise after the office loses a project or is going through lean times will not go over well. it will actually detract from you in the future. also, just because you have a review of your performance does not entitle you to a raise. you can ask for it provided the review goes well. again something the individual needs to gauge.

at my first job, i waited until the year end review. this resulted in my getting a huge raise (25%, okay a quarter of not much is still not much but it definitely looked enormous to me) as well as an extremely generous bonus in appreciation of my hard work.

what can you prove in 3 months though?

isn't there a difference between 'intern' and 'graduate architect'?

i mean, i've 'interned' for 3 years, but have almost 6 years of experience. there was no learning curve. i stepped into projects off the bat, at a high billable rate, and my employer made money off of me. if this is your case, a 6 month review after you've been 'interning' is warrented.

if you've just graduated (graduate architect), with no experience and have just begun the internship, then you might not be that valuab;e after 6 months. unless they only have you pumping 3d renderings, whicn is often the case these days.

even if you have projects or think they should be impressed with your speed, design skills, detailing, or what have you, you may still not be making the money for the company that will warrant you a raise. i have projects, but it takes me a lot longer to do them and i probably run down a lot of dead end corridors if you know what I mean before I find the solution. i also have to bug someone every few hours with a question.

as an experineced "intern" i really dont' know if i am valuable or a pain in the ass. i don't know if i am a sucker and making the company lots of bootie, or causing headaches. ha ha. i try not to think about it cause I get upset when I do. i believe in karma, you hafta believe in karma as an intern.

graspin- i don't knw what you mean by 3 years "interning" and having 6 years experience. why these #'s different? what are you counting as experience?

BTW just for the sound of the words i'd much rather be called 'graduate architect' than 'intern' especially now that Paris and nicole are going to be 'interns' soon on primetime TV. wince, damn those bimbos

i guess it doesn't hurt to ask though.

Shoot for the moon Kid.

Don't listen to these Bastards tell you
I don't have any money.

Remember Architects Are Rich.

tyvek:
i am yet to see an employer loose money from an intern architect or anyone working for them! They would not be hiring if they did! May be you are not making as much money as you would like from recent gards, but you are still making money-be honest!
The reason the profession has money is the recent grads-they work for little money, long hours and in return they work for salary, small benefits....

STARK3D:
you are absolutely right, architects are rich- BUT they do not want to pay beacause when they were young they worked for no money too!

Believe me, I thought the same way you did when I was an intern. This whole discussion reminds me of the process of growing up. As an 18 year old you scoff at how much the 16 year olds think that they know, but that they have no clue. Then you turn 21 you realize that you did not know as much as you thought you did when you were 18. And so on. . .and so on. . .and so on.

When I was an employee (less than 5 years ago) I thought the same way. . . The employers complaining about not making money, but they must be lying because I can calculate the fees that are being generated and I know the approx salaries of the people on the project, subtract a little overhead and the principal must be raking it in. Now as an employer I realize that is not the case (for me at least). The learning curve on recent graduates is huge. The amount that I have to train a recent grad, including bringing them to jobsites to teach them about construction, answer questions about what to draw, marking up their drawings because they are incorrect, etc. are all things that I cannot bill a client for. And yes, I literally lose money with recent grads.

So why hire them? Because it is an investment that hopefully will pay off down the road. Because, unless they are not that bright, each answer that I give them makes it so they don't have to ask me the next 100 times they draw a flashing detail. Because I can teach them to work the way that I want them to work and not have them work the way some other office had them work. And because I enjoy running a "teaching office" most of the time because it is fulfilling (I suspect in the same way that being a professor is fulfilling). But, from a purely business sense, I would hire someone with 2 to 3 years experience in the type of work that I do over a "recent grad" any day.

tyvek - amen brother, amen....

tyvek:
How big is your office and how old is it? How many principals do you ha ve? ALso, another question for you: how much do you get involved in teaching your recent grad employees? What do you consider training?

Does every arch business owner on this discussion feel this way?

Tyvek - many good comments but I disagree that you in fact lose money on an intern earning mid 30's w/benefits. If you are losing money on an intern you should re-evaluate how you do your billing. Even on a 7% fee we still manage to earn a profit off a first year intern.

I'm not a business owner and not at the partner level but I do see the budgets for each job. Even the summer intern earning $15/hr was profitable to us. The people coming out of college for the most part know AutoCad and don't need training with computers. Get them going on some simple office standards and they are faster at pumping cad than someone 15years their senior. Sure, at first there are lots and lots of redlines but that's the learning curve situation.

From my experience I'd much rather see an Intern Architect than a CAD monkey from a tech school. Both know the computer but someone with that arch degree actually cares more about learning and is easier to teach them. We have turned away from hiring CDT's out of technical colleges for that very reason.

so tyvek...where's your office? Hiring? i'm sure there are many recent grads that would love to have a 'teaching' principal such as yourself, and won't forget your consideration.

Well, I would like to maintain a little anonymity, but I will try to answer some things to the best of my ability.

My firm is in Connecticut and I do a majority of my work in Fairfield County (CT) with some work in NY (both Westchester County and NYC) and the odd project farther away (we have one in Pennsylvania right now). There are two partners, One employee at the project architect level, and two interns-level employees (and a bookeeper). Because we are a small office we try not to have tiers or "seniority" amoung those that work with us, but that's how I would describe their abilities. And yes, we are looking for someone, but think that we have found that person. We are very picky when we hire and we are trying to grow our business slowly and when we find the right person we don't let them get away. Our office officially started about 5 years ago.

A: true, most interns are very proficient in CAD (whichever program is used), but that is not the problem. For us, almost everything is custom and there are no "standard" details. So there really is not the opportunity to "pump out cad". The steepest part of the learning curve, in my opinion, is not the ability to draw lines quickly or beautifully, but to realize what those lines mean in the field and what information they convey.

And I don't think that I need to look at our billing, thank you very much. Our fees are more than double 7%. And when thinking about whether or not an employee is "profitable", you have to factor in the fact that every hour that I have to explain something or redline something is a double whammy of unbillable hours (theirs and mine). I'm really not that concerned with it, because it is a temporary situation and part of this business. I know that when I was an intern I was making 30K w/ benifits and my rent was about half my paycheck. I now know that I probably was not profitable in the beginning for the firm (I more than made up for it in years 3-5), but what is the alternative to the situation? Its just the way it is.

most firms have a review once a year. if they thought you deserved a raise in the meantime one would have prolly shown up on your check. . here's a relatively painless way to add significant skills to pay your bills. become a certified plan official. study and pass the ibc tests and you increase your value cuz face it kids, nobody likes to read the codebook. good luck

Wow...