yes. Have you considered video game software development or providing graphics for it. As for physical condition, what kind of physical condition barring you from driving a car to an office or riding a bus to an office for a desk job working in front of a computer?

hat's probably too personal to ask. Since I am not asking this as part of interviewing you, it doesn't technically violate employment laws. You raised the physical condition as an issue. They also invented motor chairs as well. I known people who are paralyzed from the waist down and therefore wheelchair bound that can make it to an office and work in an office. 

Computer programming / software development / video game development can be largely desk based aside from going out and taking photos and using photogrammetry based process for 3d modeling buildings, trees, rocks, people, etc. all from collection of photos and even video data.... that can then be used in a video game. 

While you may be able to do video game work from home just as one can do as a residential / home designer. You may need to work with other people and being a recluse is not an option for a working person or a business man, usually. 

I'll be honest with you, if your office is not separate from your the residential dwelling space where a client can meet you at your 'office' without going through the home itself, it will come off unprofessional. Building design is a professional service and operates on a consultant / service based model where you are the professional consultant providing professional services to a client (not customer as the terms has different connotations). 

While software development can either be a consultant/service model business or a commodity provider model, software development tends to be a commodity provider as you are developing a product from which you sell the product. 

There are already a saturation of building designers and the market isn't growing or expanding in nature and there isn't really venture capital backing that finances a building designer or architect. There is venture capital and crowdfunding opportunities for software development. There is a lot more capital but there are a lot of software developers. You need enter a special niche that is growing and not overly saturated.

While, you may need to learn programming or other skills, if you haven't learned it. It can be a hell of a learning curve to produce quality work that your targetted customer base would pay for.

N.S.

I personally don't give a s---. I am not sure it was really a rant of the sort.

LOL!

I was simply suggesting, why not look to some other career. 

Here is a rant: (It is my opinion and if you don't care, just move on with a quick scroll of the mouse wheel)

I'll be flat out and blunt. Licensed Architects do not like, respect or otherwise ANYONE who engages in the professional field of designing buildings without being licensed. Architects hate/dislikes & disrespects unlicensed design professionals independently practicing because they feel that these unlicensed people are taking and stealing projects that their firms/businesses could be having had these unlicensed designers not exist. They believe ALL buildings shall be designed ONLY by licensed architects because they went through the process to be licensed that everyone else should. That is the same petty as b.s. that has been going on since architectural licensing laws were enacted.

If you are unlicensed and seek to be an unlicensed design professional, forget talking to architects. They won't respect you unless you are extremely exception and better than most of the top 10 architects in the world and even then you may only get minor respect. You just won't find respect EVER because what you do as a business represents what they don't want to exist and had been spending a 100 years to completely outlaw you or your business. Because they pursued licensure, they want everyone they compete with to have an architect license. They don't want to compete with those without a license. They think unlicensed designers can drastically undercut them because they aren't paying for an architecture license. While that is partially true only in that it is only a minor expense. Architects in many locales in the U.S. for example are not required to have a Professional Liability Insurance (PLO) with E&O coverage (Errors & Omission). I am not sure that architects in Canada are required to have PLO. If they are like the U.S., these expenses are minor. It is also false to say that an unlicensed person can not obtain insurance. It is more likely, they would have a higher interest rate. Some have argued that clients require it. That is a half truth. Some clients may require it. In that case, it wouldn't matter if you are licensed or not, they would require it if they feel they want the design professionals they contract to have insurance. For the most part, the clients that requires this are governmental, institutional public projects, and some larger commercial clients and large multi-family residential (condos, apartments, etc.). Very seldom would a client wanting a home designed would require the design professional to carry PLO insurance. In residential work, you'll often find architects that focuses their practice in custom home design and similar residential projects do not have PLO insurance.

Architectural license and renewal are small costs if you manage to be busy and have a paying client. It won't even reflect a 5% increase in cost. The biggest difference in price isn't because there is necessarily a drastic difference in cost of being a license and maintaining a license. The biggest difference comes in to areas: A) Whether or not you carry the cost of PLO insurance (I'm using it loosely to include E&O and other insurance coverages relating to carrying out the business and professional practice) and B) How many dollars an hour that you are willing to accept in terms of your direct labor.

Are you willing to live on $15/hr or $30 an hour or $50/hr or $75/hr. or $100+/hr and a bill hourly rate of 1x to 5x or more multiplier. Usually we would see the multiplier being between $2x and 5x. Now, the billed rate or fee maybe represented in different formats such as percentage of construction cost, $/sq.ft., etc. When a fixed fee is used, it is often calculated using an Assumed Billed hourly rate over an estimated number of labor hours or it is more sophisticatedly calculated using an assumed direct labor hourly rate x estimated number of hours plus estimated other costs over the project timeline projection added up and then add a percentage for float and then some amount or percentage amount added for a planned profit margin (estimated contribution margin). 

How well you do depends on how well you estimate and how well you negotiate with the client. Some people are satisfied with less income while other people are not.

The politics between unlicensed designers and licensed architects is nothing new and is convoluted and emotional based with a lot of opinions but very little real facts and even then when facts are known, licensed architects have been known to cherry pick the facts and represent that fact for their own agendas. 

Licensed architects will often despise unlicensed designers who haven't gone to University and loaded themselves with $100K in debt because they had loaded themselves with such a debt. They have difficulty competing and lowering their price because they have these student loans payments and other expenditures that chosen to spend their money. Instead of lowering price and compete to race to the sewer of a rat race, they could try looking to provide a more compelling package and offer something more that makes you stand out with a better product. The key is you need to sell the proposition to directly address the client's needs. 

While, locally, where I am, we just aren't going to make money or be able to bill it to the client for preparing an as-built set of drawings by just using tape measurements because they can just get the college students from the local community college to do it for free. You can't compete with free by producing the same level of deliverables. You need something that is substantially more impressive and comprehensive and otherwise stands out as a better and more compelling deliverables in order to compel the client to pay anything and you need to be able to perform it in about the same number of hours or days. If it takes a class of 10-15 students 20 hours of so to measure a similar building and then 2 weeks to prepare the As-Built in CAD, then you have 2 to 2-1/2 to maybe 3 weeks to do a better quality deliverables of As-Built building surveys even if you are a solo-practitioner. 

This means you have to do it better than an entire class, on your own, and in about the same time frame. This means you have to use different methods to do it and have a better quality deliverables.

That's a tall order to do. Clients will use anything they can to beat you down. This is why this field and business really does suck horrible in some ways. If you are unlicensed, you just are not going to find respect from the licensed architecture profession. It is the way it is. 

Now this is a rant. Here ends this RANT !

.

archiwutm8,

Exactly.  You said it, exactly.

Kanuski,

If you really want to do it, just do it.  I would suggest partnering or working with another designer who is known to do higher quality work. Otherwise, work with you as a mentor of sorts to look at and give suggestions on how to improve design. You'll be new to it.  You'll need to have CAD/Drafting skills, writing skills, presentation skills and interpersonal communication skills.

Kanuski, if you are going to get into the stock house plans market, it is going to be tough. People need to know you exist. Just doing house plans on a stock plan without anyone knowing isn't going to do much in realm of getting any attention and even then some of publishers just aren't going to accept whatever is submitted. 

One of the big boy publishers would require you to be either licensed as an architect/engineer or is AIBD/NCBDC certified professional building designer or other equivalent building designer certification or licensure. Then you need to look at national to international market in order to potentially get enough buyers for each plan to basically pay for itself. 

Stock House Plans does not yield the same amount per customer as a custom home design for each client. The prior is based on a commodity goods model much like publishing of books, music CDs, software/video games, etc. You need a larger market than a local rural town to sustain it as a model. While, you may apply this model in serving or working with a housing land developer developing tracts of homes. That is the best way to make your ROI from designs within a local context.  However, you will need to visit the tract or have some good data / info about the site, the terrain and so forth to make appropriate plans for the site. In that case, it is slight customized to each site from sets of base designs that you would have to make. You have to have something for them to see before they consider you. They still are not going to pay you a lot because they aren't full blown custom design. They have to meet basic real estate formula for housing. This means pretty much a no to 'idiosyncratic' designs or anything too personal or 'artistic' because they are trying to target a wide market of purchasers of the homes they are building and they seek to make that return on their investment as quickly as they can.

Anything that slows the sales in a design is a no no.

Custom home design, requires going out of the office to the site where the proposed project is located. While clients may meet you at your home, you need to set up an office space that is professional looking that can be accessed independent of your home space that is clean and organized as much as an office would be. It should be such that it is respectful and dignified. 

That is what clients would expect. Otherwise, you visit the client either at their home or some agreed upon place to meet and discuss the project. This means you can not just be in your house all the time. Otherwise, you would need a business partner that will be going out and be the public face of the business. 

Clients likes to be talking to the persons that are going to be involved or otherwise will be a key responsible party of the project. That person would need to be actively involved in the project. 

Custom Residential projects can often involve emotions and personal discussion. To some extent, stuff that you would have an ethical obligation to not speak publicly. Often, people don't feel comfortable working with people that they can not put a face to. There is a bit of interpersonal communication.

Non Sequitur,

To be blunt, I had a prospect client that the college basically took. The obvious reason would be that the college students doing the work as part of their academic course work is free. It doesn't take much to connect the dots. If you have competition that does a service with a deliverable, you can not get a client to pay you to do the same service with the same deliverable. If the deliverable outcome are equal, there's nothing to the client that will benefit them to pay more. In other words, the client isn't going to pay for something if they can get the same thing for free.I would have to pay the client to commission me. Which, by the way, would be commercial suicide. You would be more quickly go out of business.  Generally, businesses don't survive by giving away money without a return on investment. Building Design and Architecture businesses as with any consultant / service business, do not typically have access to venture capital and things like that nor typically have the revenue potential to do such kind of gimmicks. You didn't suggest it but to be blunt it is literally what would have to be done to deliver the same service to a client as a competitor is providing for free. 

The only logical solution to compete is to deliver a service with a higher quality deliverable. Something more.... something noticeably of higher quality.... for which the client can decide whether to pay for it versus the freebie service. 

The other argument maybe why even bother with such a business in the area. While my circumstances have some elements that is quasi-unique in that those unique aspects of competitors are not found everywhere but the bottom line nature of competition that will provide free services is not entirely unique and is such that one can face similar dilemmas in other places.

There is an argument, why bother even being in such a business. 

People suggest, get a job. The only problem with it is all the employers are all crammed in the big cities. I don't want to live in the big cities. I don't like big cities. I lived in the big city before. When I was last living in the big city ( Los Angeles metropolitan area ), it's kind of like every block you go, you have gangs of ever racial ethnicity other than white trying to kill or punk you because you are white. You are targetted because you are the ethnic minority in the area and your ethnicity is despised by the others. Rascism isn't over. 

L.A. has largely turned into this crazy f---ing place. Do you really think I want to live in that kind of place.  The low pay as intern isn't worth it to risk my life with every f---ing gang punk trying to kill you or punk you for whatever. 

Why pursue my own business in this small town community, there isn't employers in architecture offices outside the Portland area. They are all crowded themselves on to the I-5. Which, by the way, in my opinion, is among the dumbest things architects have done if they want to be relevant to the first time or second time or whatever residential client. They don't want to deal with people they can not meet or is able to meet within 5 to 10 minutes. The service isn't just designing and preparing plans, drawings and specifications. It's also inter-personal client relation service that you are providing. Being there in person is important. That's why contractors are taking up a lot of the work, as well as the college (in my case). 

We need a real architecture firm, here. The few architects we have are sole-practitioners. They rarely have employees or hire. When they do hire, the job is short term and lasts as long as the work load is peaked but when it invariably cycles down, that employee's time is done. As they say, it's seasonal but it isn't even really that. It's only when there is an exceptional amount of work influx but the usual norm doesn't have it.

Most architects are focusing on commercial, civic, educational, healthcare and large Multi-family residential. If that is the nature of your business, an SFR client isn't really going to want you. Your work doesn't communicate to addressing their needs and interests in designing a home or an addition, or renovation, etc. Communicating with these clients are different than communicating with a committee or those town hall meetings. It's more individually personal. 

I do not show their projects online. Alot of them are modest. Most work isn't going to be show case pieces. My job isn't to elevate the art of architecture. My job is to create design solutions to the client's project needs and client's desires and their budget constraints. It is not my job to do so. It is not your job either unless it is spelled out in the contract. This isn't to say you shouldn't do a good job but you can't compare modest projects with a multi-million dollar custom mansion. If that is what the client wants or is willing to pay for, then yes but first and foremost, my job is to serve the client not the architectural profession's ideals.

Non Sequitur,

I'm not interested in living in the big city. I already stated why so I am not repeating it here. Look at my previous response.

In small communities, often, you don't find architectural employers because the firms are all huddled up in a big city that is hours drive away from the small communities. That's a fact, pal. It isn't like Astoria is the only community that's ~100 miles or more away from a big city. 

Clients for SFR projects wants to work with design professionals that are local for purpose of timely access to the design professional. 

There are competition in this business including colleges and their students doing freebie work that all lowers the price ceiling that we can charge. You can't charge for providing a service and deliverables that the competitions are doing for free unless the package of the service and the deliverables are of a level above that of the deliverables provided by freebie.

You might argue, why not go the minimum route required. Then you have nothing to leverage getting paid. You just guarantee yourself that you won't get paid because the client you if you charge or if select you if you do it for nothing. What kind of crap is that? Reality. The only way to get anything is to provide a service or deliverables that the competition does not provide of a higher quality. Yeah, there is risks that the client not want to pay for it because it isn't the minimum required for permits but no one can do this for a living as a business doing this for free or at insanely low prices that you work for less money for your time than if you worked for minimum wage in China. 

This is the nature of the business. That is just some basic reality I was saying to Kanuski. 

The biggest problem is supply & demand. If there was even ONE real architectural firm to set up in the Astoria area that employs (not just architecture school graduates), I would close up the building design business to work for that firm in a hear beat especially for a decent pay.

N S, 

I don't think it is that unique. While I do understand the local community college as a competitor is somewhat unique but it isn't completely unique. 

I have looked at who the architects and firms live in rural communities outside and away from the I-5 corridor. (as geographically, that's the main interstate highway corridor in Oregon and Washington aside from the coastal highway. While in California, most of the big cities were built on the coast, and you have smaller towns and ocassional medium size cities along the I-5 throughout the San Joaquin valley until the I-5 converges with the PCH in Los Angeles. While I-5 and the Highway 101/PCH/Highway 1 converges with the I-5 in Seattle area, you have these two highways system. The coast and the valley. Oregon and Washington never really developed along the coast. Well, Washington maybe more complicated when discussing the Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia as a coastal community but its more geographically distinctive as the puget sound community versus pacific coastal community. 

Astoria while not directly on the actual pacific coast is still relatively close to the coast enough to be considered a coastal community. 

Along this coast of Oregon, they are smaller towns. Portland was a train hub community aside from the fact it was also connecting to the Columbia river and also the Willamette river. So it was a geographical hub point.

Largely, architecture firms are crowded up in the big cities versus being as distributed throughout the state as firms. I looked at google map and correlate to the licensing board roster of licensees and firms. I looked at where they are, who they are, what they do and so forth. 

As far as being able to get paid and to bill the client for time spent measuring and otherwise services the competitors are charging little to nothing for, people aren't willing to spend more money to get the same thing that they can get for nothing or free. CONSUMERISM is a part of the way EVERYONE does things including you and me.

Ask yourself, would you spend $1 for plain coffee or would you spend $5 for plain coffee. Same volume and same plain kind of coffee?

Why would that be unique to Astoria community? Why would that principle not be part of basic thinking with residential clients. 

The clients I work with aren't selecting me just because they want me or my design style. People are commissioning on part price and what you are going to provide. If you paid attention, I am talking about the market for exempt buildings whether its exempt in U.S. or exempt under the provincial/territorial laws of a Canadian province/territory, it is still fundamentally the same principle. He is talking about HOME DESIGN.

The clients that are willing to be more selective to pick and choose the design professional that does the designs he or she wants isn't going to be Kanuski's client any time soon. They don't balk at paying the fees of a licensed architect as they have the money. Architect is a more familiar word to people than 'building designers' in terms of vocabulary familiarity. For a person who designs buildings, 'building designer' isn't the first word(s) that comes to a person's mind for a title for such a person. "Architect" is because that is because that is the word they are taught in Elementary School when learning their vocabulary. While this is not relating to the original post directly in any way, it is related to the premise of how the market is.

While you are suggesting a path or pursuit of licensure. You are a licensed architect. You don't really work in the exempt market sector let alone probably haven't done so since the 1970s or something decades ago. Even then, it was probably a moonlighting gimmick that you were doing just to get a few extra bucks in your pocket. When you talk about residential, you are more likely talking about highrise condos and apartments. That's a different kind of client than what Kanuski would be in market to. We are talking about different clients. You are basically talking about a B2B service. That is business to business. Your client is a business. My clients are not always businesses. My clients are often individuals. This would be a similar market that Kanuski would be entering into if he were to pursue building design.

I don't think you understand that. I do know there are variations but the large dominant trends are what I am talking about. The non-business clients are often not sophisticated or think in that business mode. When my client is a logger and his wife, are they going to be the same as a restaurant business owner? No. If they are small businesses or average income families or individuals, how much is it going to cost, matters a lot because they don't have the deep pocket of cash to whimsically spend. When you said 'slum lords and other scum', you just point to a B2B scenario.

Another person said: 

They (you) cater to first time residential clients who don't know better and think they are saving money not realizing they are actually getting screwed by a contractor or a "building designer" and not receiving the protection of their interests they could get with a licensed professional. Or the unlicensed drafters (building designers) are working with shady low end house flippers and crook contractors and are perpetuating their practices.

NONE of my clients had been low end house flippers or crook contractors. First, I don't work for contractors. While I have entertained and responded to calls from contractors, I have never ended up engaging in that business model. As for low end flippers, I am assuming Starchitect was referring to real estate 'flipper' developers. I never been in a direct contract to work for a developer. My business model has been to serve the people who buys the property to occupy. That is, my clients had been the end user. While, they may later sell the property at possibly a higher amount than they paid for it plus what they spent to renovate it. My clients has been typically those who intend to live and occupy or operate their business. 

While each of us will find ourselves with a range of client types. Who you end up working with depends on each and every single one of us individually. The reality is each of us varies. Working for a land developers are opportunities for cash flow. While I have not personally engaged my business into the stock plan business as of yet, I also have not got into working for land developers. This comes in part with hesitation and ethos conflict on my part but it doesn't mean I don't have an idea on how it works and from others who have spoken in depth on this subject not only here but elsewhere.

I was explaining to Kanuski that he would have to basically get out of the house and get around from time to time in these different paths. It isn't a profession that you simply stay at home and operate. While there is some part of it that is done that can be done at home (where the office is located... as an office), a part of it requires going out of the home/office. This is how the profession works. 

In response to you involved other tangential dialogue. Let me point it out like this, you narrow view as with every single person's individual perspective view is no way a reasonable representation of the world. Do you realize no one person's view is a reaonable representation. Do you understand that my point of view isn't solely based on my own experience but also based on already conveyed perspectives and I largely compiled those point of views as well. Am I going to source them all for you... no. It would be more a pain in the butt to do that. It would be too extensive of volume to cite precisely and I am not doing direct quotes but memory recollection of points made and compiling them into points that I was presenting. 

Some of that source data is lost from the internet so I can't really recover that data very well at this point. Forums that now cease to exist, lost data that for a variety of ways are lost because they were not able to be cached and archived. 

With that in mind, those points given were given but not recoverable as the data is deleted and chances of recovery are very slim unless the data centers are able to recover from backup but those backups are routinely erased at some point because they can't store thorough backup for every day or month of every year of every website/forum/etc. that is hosted at some point as it would exceed storage capacity. They only have so much hard drives and back up tapes and so forth.

I see faults in my assumptions as I see faults in everyone's assumptions. The definition of assumptions implies there are faults. It is an opinion. From my point of view, the world doesn't always completely or exactly follow my opinion but no single post can ever express the world. If everyone has to experience every outcome before we can speak, then we might as well shut this forum down because no one can speak until they experienced it all and mastered it all. If anyone here has experienced every kind of client and project and become an expert, then they can talk, then everyone must shut the f--- up. That must include you as well and everyone on this forum. Is that a standard you want. If so, I guess no one may talk on this forum anymore.

If you are going to hold me to this bullshit standard, so shall you be held to the same standard. 

I will not abide by any standard by any of you that you aren't held to equally. Is that understood?

no_form wrote:

Rick Balkins, esq (civil law, licensing law, constitutional), PBD, surveyor, drone captain, software engineer, and now Aryan brotherhood associate. 

I don't know if you can get a job now if you're going to go around talking like a white supremacist.

Get a job!

What the f--- are you talking about by 'white supremacist' or 'Aryan brotherhood associate' ?

My point wasn't that gangs are only unique to these ethnic groups. Where I lived in Los Angeles, a white person is the ethnic minority and in big cities full of gangs all hot and hostile against white people especially after the Rodney King beating, the trial, the  L.A. riot that occured and then the O.J. Simpson trial that was going on at the time I left L.A.

In Portland, the gangs will probably be white but some hispanic, asian and other ethnic groups exists. Do you really think I want to live in a community full of gang violence?

Do you think I would want to ride a bike in a city that people would steal your bike? 

Down in L.A. where I lived, it was more dangerous for me because these ethnic groups tends to look at white people with disdain in our American culture and the gang groups among them are the kind that will commit violence. I would be a hot target because I was white. In Portland, being attacked by a white gang would be less likely have racial/ethnic driven behind the targetting if the targetted person is white because the parties are of the same general racial background to a point. It isn't a perfect hard line rule in reality but more so in the U.S. than in Europe with more complex ethnic/culture in Europe. That's besides the point. The argument I said would be more or less true if a black man is attacked by a black gang and so on and so on. 

NONETHELESS, it isn't necessarily just the concern of being attacked by gangs of other ethnicity but being attacked by gangs in general that you find in big cities because there are much more people and statistically more gangs within any geographical area. 

Add to that, I don't have the desire to live in the kind of environment where we have all this crap of punks that I would have to literally fight them to protect myself. Something I haven't had to do in quite a few years. So, why would I want to live in that environment where I have to be at all times have to be worrying what next punk that I have to be confronted with as I go from one place to the next.