The full title of this post should be "Is It Me, My Firm, or the Profession?"
I find myself approaching the age of 30 and dealing with questions about the state of things in my life and the profession that can't be answered (or asked without risk) of the people around me---
--so I ask the anonymous architectural community from behind my own veil.
Is It Me?
I have been working at the level of PA/PM Jr. for nearly two years, with those duties in CA work going back to my second year out of school at the firm I've been with since graduating. To be brutally frank, I'm struggling with the workload and expectations within the past year, to the point of regular tears and panic attacks (although usually only in the realm beyond 60 or 70 hours on my timesheet). I have always been an anxiety-prone person, but the sudden onset of severe symptoms caught me off guard and made me think that something must be wrong with me. Especially when I have older coworkers in their early 50s talking about how they work 80 hour weeks end on end, months at a time, to keep up with some of our big projects. It simultaneously scared me to learn that I wasn't physically/mentally/emotionally capable of that, and to learn that amount of hours might be a requirement of my future. And I definitely don't want to appear weak - I graduated in 2011 and it was only by sheer luck of my future wife's family acquaintances through their church that I connected to the firm I am at, doing the Historic Preservation work that I had always wanted to do above all else - so I really don't want to lose this job. People older than me were still getting laid off in 2012 during the double-dip part of the recession, and from what people said about them afterward, I know why it was them and not me.
So I started going to therapy, at my wife's insistence, about a month ago. On top of that, during some out of state fieldwork, I had a long talk with my closest PM over dinner about feeling overwhelmed (but not about the therapy, because he has pretty conservative views about mental illness). Almost immediately he and our closest principal started arranging everything so I could focus on only the two highest-priority projects with the tightest schedules. All well and good, but I still have two projects in CA that need regular attention.
My therapist has concluded that I don't have any chronic generalized anxiety issues cropping up, just poor stress management skills. OK, so that is one thing that needs fixed, but I still find myself running up against being asked to achieve the impossible on a regular basis, so my disgruntled mind has turned to the two other questions, "Is it my firm," and "is it the profession?"
Is It My Firm?
Two new interns were hired within the past year, and while they are hard workers, the workload and project schedules we have been consistently dealing with haven't allowed much time for mentoring-level training. So they aren't progressing anywhere as fast as I did in my understanding of how to do the job, and are slowing up my progress on meeting deadlines or expanding my hours to redline after hours or just do things the right way myself. On top of that, it has been put on me and my PM to "keep them busy," which at times is hard because they work fast and turn over work they haven't thoroughly understood back to me before I can get the next set of details or redlines done. All that has shattered the promise my principal made to me that things would get better when they got me some help.
They also hired a PA-level woman my same age away from another firm in town within the past year, which I thought would also help. She almost immediately became pregnant, and found the time to get licensed in the interim as well. (Am I licensed yet? With what extra time?) So while she has been on maternity leave, no only am I the only competent younger person left standing, I am expected to "keep 'em busy." Just this morning my PM and me got our hands slapped for letting the younglings twiddle their thumbs while we were away on out-of-state fieldwork again for a week. The only way I could have kept them busy was to work all day the Saturday between a busy week finishing one set of drawings and prepping for the fieldwork, and flying out on the Sunday morning. My wife would have been happy about that!
But I'm trapped into staying put, because preservation is the only piece of the architectural pie that jives with my environmental belief system, and few other firms specialize in it the way we do. And if they do, things have gotten so competitive at the national level over the past 5 years, they wouldn't dare hire someone from one of their enemies.
Is It The Profession?
But all that frustration, is it really just my firm that has that kind of problem? The constant "there's just too much to do and you have to work 24/7 to keep up" feeling? I doubt it. I wonder if the problem is really that there are actually things in the world more important to me than rotting piles of stone and wood timbers - the love of my life, the human one, for instance. The amount of bellyaching from my PM about the young woman with the new kid not being very effective with her cushy "work from home three days out of five until the baby's grown up" contract led me to tell him that it didn't seem to me the profession in it's post-2008 state is very compatible with child-raising, in any capacity. Being beaten into using only certain digital tools for projects (like Revit instead of AutoCAD for a relatively simple roof replacement) doesn't help either, or that the younglings just hired both don't understand the fundamentals of how buildings go together or how to make a Revit drawing look as good as the PMs and PICs want, and there's not enough time to teach them "the way."
Everything starts to add up, between the inability to properly train new hires, to the complaints of PMs (to the point of confessing to me in private of not wanting their license anymore), to the ridiculous level the CYA/Laywer-Lite attitude every email and drawing note has to be tackled with, that the profession had it's self destruct button pushed at some point prior to 2008, and the process is a very slow and painful death. Everyone in leadership from the AIA down to the principals at firms seems to be both desperate and clueless as to how to save the sinking ship, other than start turning employees into sleepless robots with magical powers to bend time and space to do everything "perfectly" and "under budget" with a good "multiplier." All while emphasizing values of "play" and "work/life balance." It is bad enough that PMs are actually not logging time to projects to keep the multipliers up. And that's not just at my firm.
I would walk away from the profession, wondering just how much orgasmic enjoyment would be required out of seeing a finished project to stay and keep going. But then that raises the specter of looking at the past decade of my life as a mistake, the prime of my life a wasted enterprise. And walk away to what? Possibly finding no greater job satisfaction anywhere else? Or finding an equivalent-paying job for that matter? Or a another job period?
Catch-22 was one of my favorite books, and a heartbreaking one, but I never thought I would be accidentally living it by pursuing something I had wanted to be since I was in elementary school. At the end of the day, all I can think is that the profession either needs to get a grip and become a livable career like any other, or slap on some more dire warning labels. Driving off prospective students wouldn't be bad for business, because if profitability is already so low that everyone has to kill themselves to eat, there are obviously too many architects in the world competing for a shrinking pie as it is.
there are many firms where employees work that much either by choice or more often by circumstance. your firm seems like the latter, which means it's either poorly run, or doesn't make enough money to support sufficient staffing. leave first, figure out the next step later. you won't be able to make a good decision in your current state.
"What am I gonna do about it" is the conundrum of the hour. I need more data to formulate a path forward, hence the three questions. I'm looking for comparative experience. If other young professionals don't have to seek therapy, then the problem lies with me and I need to explore that route further. If other firms don't operate at this level, then I need to seek a solution to jumping ship. If the profession at large really suffers from these structural problems, then the best strategic decision is to leave and find something else to earn my bread with. I ask the three questions because my own experience is too limited a sample size to make judgements from, and talking to coworkers is dangerous.
I thought that intent was clear in my initial post, my apologies for any confusion.
I'm with midlander: Your firm sounds incredibly dysfunctional. A certain amount of overtime is normal in this business, but anybody who routinely feels compelled to put in 60-70 hours per week is being exploited. Find greener pastures.
buy your self a tombstone and put it in your house where you can see it when you leave and when you get back home to remind you what is really important.
Similar boat, but only a few weeks at a time with 60-70 hrs. Rest are around 45. There's a management issue in your office. I pulled some really long hours end of July/Early August and got a ton of thanks and told to take time off to recoup. I still shouldn't be doing more than 50 hrs any given week, but your hours are unsustainable.
And don't let the stigma of going to a therapist get to you. It's preventative maintenance for your brain. My therapist is great.
It's your firm, but it is also the profession. Not all firms are like this but many will be. At the end of the day though, it is your choice to stay back - the only person who is going to make you go home at 5.30 is you. Check out this great article on the profession and its problems.
If everyone is working over 50 hours every week, the firm needs to hire more people. Some here are going to say I'm wrong and that number is a little low. But, there is absolutely no reason why excessive overtime should be an every-week thing.
Technically, I have 50 hours invested in my work week, most of the time. But that is counting my hour commute each way. There is no way in hell I am going to add any more time to that than necessary. I shouldn't be required to. If the workload is so great that it is requiring 10-20 hours per week out of me a few other people, they can hire someone else.
I don't care if people consider overtime an industry standard. If that is our standard, then that is a problem with the industry, and we shouldn't be content with it. We should fix it.
how do you have time to see a therapist if you're working that many hours? are the old people who are working 80 weeks there when you show up, still there when you leave, and there all day while you're working?
my thought is, hand off a couple of the projects to those 50 year olds. if they have 80 hours in a week to burn, then can get another project in. focus your time on what projects you can complete, and prioritize training up the interns. if you don't train up the interns, there won't be anyone to help you on the next project, and you'll just end up dead from too much stress with a project that can't be completed because nobody cared to teach the next generation how to keep things going.
This is a firm issue. Not uncommon but these types of firms have high turn over in good times. Also renovations are a serious time suck compared to new construction. Layer historic on top and there you go. The statements above are correct. Just move on or you'll be 50 the kids grown and you won't know what happened to your life. Architects are brainwashed in school that architecture is life. It's not
^career development is part of a bigger system for growing talent within a firm. telling someone on the second rung of the ladder his job is to deal with the first-rungers on his own is crassly indifferent management. op needs to get out before he comes to see this warped universe as the only possible reality...like one of this forums most prolificly vapid posters... don't be him!
fwiw my boss gets shit from the higher ups when our team works too much overtime. they don't want ppl burning out and quitting. decent firms are like this, and not rare.
If "keep them busy" is the firm's approach to employee time management, that it very telling. Essentially, they are having you generating busy work so that their decision to hire them in the first place is justified.
Yes, you may be making some time management mistakes of your own, and yes, the profession has serious problems, but from what you say it sounds like the firm is the principal culprit.
What about working in an allied part of the preservation side of the industry? That would allow you to maintain your values and commitment, while getting you some distance from your current situation. Construction management, working for a developer, real estate brokerage?
Also, I'm not so sure that another historic preservation firm wouldn't be eager to hire the OP. People move around between competitor firms all the time; why would preservation be any different? Seems like the OP's skills would be in high demand within that specialty.
I never understand these people that think this 80 hour a week bullshit is the norm. Prioritize your personal, mental health, and life - Architecture is just a job, not a lifestyle. You can choose make it a lifestyle when you have your own practice, but you would be an idiot to do it for somebody else.
I hope you are making a shit ton of money for the hours you are pulling!
I've never even heard of anything like this. We've had to work 50 for a couple months in a row if something pretty unusual happens, but its pretty rare and that particular firm offered straight time and flex time.
Are people really working 70-80 hrs? I find that very hard to believe, esp. on a regular basis.
Now is a great time to be looking and no one will look down on you for not being interested in those hours, most interviewers will be curious why you did it for so long!
I've had a couple 80 hr weeks, a couple 70 hr weeks, a few 60 hr, quite a few 50 hr weeks. My typical week is between 40 and 45, but yeah - things are nuts right now in Chicago and everyone wants to get their stuff done before the s**t hits the fan again.
Sounds to me like it's a bit of all three. The firm's management sounds dysfunctional. The profession is inherently stressful, compared to others I'm familiar with at least. And you sound a bit high strung and not trained for management, possibly not even managing yourself if you haven't learned how yet.
Everyone has their own work/life balance. I know from experience that I can do up to about six months of 60-80 hour weeks but then I need a few months of relative quiet to get back to normal. One of my current clients says she can't work more than 20 hours a week.
You have to get to know yourself and how to manage your own work/life balance, and possibly find a job where you have good mentors who can teach you how to manage yourself and others. The skills come naturally to some, are learnable by others, and some folks are just not cut out for anything except taking orders.
It seems like you're trying to do too much work yourself. Stop correcting your intern's work because it's faster. You need to stop micromanaging and have them think and correct their work themselves.
And I agree with others that the main problem is your firm's mismanagement for the amount of hours employees are expected to work.
Just get out. Don't look back. It doesn't have to be this way. There is no such thing as a life or death architecture emergency. Those are the contractor's problem. Why the rush ? All conclusions point to bad management, either not setting realistic deadlines and expectations, or charging too little. How many of those 80hrs a week do they write off ? do you get paid incredibly well?
It's the firm, the industry, and probably a lot of different factors. When I was in commercial architecture, long hours, short deadlines, horrible stress, walking on eggshells around the owner, was all the norm. Ridiculous deadlines is kind of the new normal..2008 and beyond made douchebag, asshole greedy developers and brokers realize that hungry architects will do anything for the gig, they are still taking advantage.
I left the aggressive, souless world of developer driven insanity and found a place in K-12 architecture, not always sexy, but my evenings and weekends are nearly always all mine. Architecture is a harsh mistress.
Aug 30, 16 3:10 pm ·
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And if they do, things have gotten so competitive at the national level over the past 5 years, they wouldn't dare hire someone from one of their enemies.
Actually, sir, they would. Here's why?
Even the enemy (competition) may have good skilled people working for them. Therefore, it is a "business as war" strategy to collect and get the best minds from the competition. The "brain siphoning". The idea is to siphon the knowledge and skill out of the competition. The competition is only as strong as their collective mind and skills.
Why do you think we collected the brilliant scientists from Germany during and after WW II?
Remember this, the competition would hire the best people of their competitors like your firm because it will weaken the competition and strengthen their business. In turn, if they are successful, there would be a shake out and they grow in market share and some of the competition would go out of business and therefore allow for the remaining competition to expand in market place.
ns has a point, but in fact rb is right... op is making a strangely flawed assumption. the first place a firm looks to hire experienced talent is from close competitors, because those employees most likely have the same skills and understanding of clients that the firm needs.
however, some firms get a local reputation for treating people bad, teaching them nothing then burning them out. in that case op needs to show a new employer he has the skills and good judgement to do the job well, and recognized there are other firms which will give him space to grow. need to be careful not come off as someone desperate just to get out. which is why i think he needs to get moving quick, and find some time to clear his head before settling on the next step.
Aug 30, 16 6:54 pm ·
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How would you know Balkarina? You've never worked a day in this industry let alone in any other sector.
Others have spoken about it in this industry. This isn't unique and architecture isn't unique by any measure in this regard. Business is business and it generally makes business sense to hire experienced and skilled people from the competition. If you are experienced in business, I shouldn't have to spell that out for you.
Note: Richard Balkins, RickB-OR, RWCB_PBD, does not hold an NAAB-accredited degree or foreign equivalent. He is not a licensed architect in the United States or abroad. He is not an experienced design professional.
People who work less can work faster and make less mistakes when they don't work all the time. But the spreadsheets (or whatever math people use to run their businesses) don't tell you that.
FWIW, I see this in family and friends across all occupations in the Midwest. (So, I can only speak for the Midwest and those directly around me.) From teachers to builders, from architects to inside salespeople, ministering to marketing ... every imaginable profession seems to be overworked. I suspect it is companies holding off on hiring more people due to uncertainty -- especially in the building industry. I have sons just entering the work force after college and am having to "mother" them more than I have in years. Despite hard work ethics, they are finding it very difficult to deal with the stress of "adult life." From my experience, their young adult lives are way more stressful than mine was at that age. Everything is moving so fast. My advice is to take very good care of yourself. Eat well. Sleep as much as possible. Get out in the fresh air. Exercise EVERY day -- that is the absolutely BEST way to shed stress. Exercise during a difficult divorce kept me alive, and the extra benefit of shedding about 40 lbs! My sons say "yeah, yeah, I know," but you really have to get into a strict routine of caring for yourself. Look closely at your attitude and how you relate to co-workers as well, and how much responsibility you are taking on. Are you a perfectionist? Don't let perfectionism get in the way of progress.
No one can work more than 45-50 hours a week for week after week without climbing the drapes. Seems like you need to have a couple of pitchers of beer with your boss after work on Friday for a few weeks running and discuss things. If he is not the kind of boss to do that, then that is a big part of the problem.
My highest weekly average was 46hr per week a few years' back... and that's a real number, not an assumption since I keep track. I was asked to calm down and now work a steady 40.5hr average week.
I have no answers really, but I can relate to the problem.
I rode out the recession working 60-hour weeks minimum, and often well outside what I felt I was qualified to be doing. I took work home with me, sometimes physically but always mentally. If I had made a mistake or saw a problem coming, it would keep me up at night. Weekends ceased to be any different than the work week. Spending time with friends, hobbies, having any semblance of life other than work all gradually went away, and I didn't even realize it was happening.
The economy improved, I found another gig and when asked, I was honest and told people I was burned out. I was surprised at the number of people I'd worked with, people I had patterned my all-work-all-the-time lifestyle after who told me they wished they had figured out they were pushing too hard before it led to their first divorce, or heart attack, or missing their kids childhood, etc.
Not one person said it had been worth it but yet there they were, still working the hours. And expecting others to do the same. The worst part is I actually miss that job sometimes.
Quitting sends a good message to the firm. Sounds like they would lose business if you left. Before that have a talk with whoever is in charge and let me know you have limited hours and need to keep it close to 40.
Mar 2, 17 10:17 pm ·
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Is It Me?
The full title of this post should be "Is It Me, My Firm, or the Profession?"
I find myself approaching the age of 30 and dealing with questions about the state of things in my life and the profession that can't be answered (or asked without risk) of the people around me---
--so I ask the anonymous architectural community from behind my own veil.
Is It Me?
I have been working at the level of PA/PM Jr. for nearly two years, with those duties in CA work going back to my second year out of school at the firm I've been with since graduating. To be brutally frank, I'm struggling with the workload and expectations within the past year, to the point of regular tears and panic attacks (although usually only in the realm beyond 60 or 70 hours on my timesheet). I have always been an anxiety-prone person, but the sudden onset of severe symptoms caught me off guard and made me think that something must be wrong with me. Especially when I have older coworkers in their early 50s talking about how they work 80 hour weeks end on end, months at a time, to keep up with some of our big projects. It simultaneously scared me to learn that I wasn't physically/mentally/emotionally capable of that, and to learn that amount of hours might be a requirement of my future. And I definitely don't want to appear weak - I graduated in 2011 and it was only by sheer luck of my future wife's family acquaintances through their church that I connected to the firm I am at, doing the Historic Preservation work that I had always wanted to do above all else - so I really don't want to lose this job. People older than me were still getting laid off in 2012 during the double-dip part of the recession, and from what people said about them afterward, I know why it was them and not me.
So I started going to therapy, at my wife's insistence, about a month ago. On top of that, during some out of state fieldwork, I had a long talk with my closest PM over dinner about feeling overwhelmed (but not about the therapy, because he has pretty conservative views about mental illness). Almost immediately he and our closest principal started arranging everything so I could focus on only the two highest-priority projects with the tightest schedules. All well and good, but I still have two projects in CA that need regular attention.
My therapist has concluded that I don't have any chronic generalized anxiety issues cropping up, just poor stress management skills. OK, so that is one thing that needs fixed, but I still find myself running up against being asked to achieve the impossible on a regular basis, so my disgruntled mind has turned to the two other questions, "Is it my firm," and "is it the profession?"
Is It My Firm?
Two new interns were hired within the past year, and while they are hard workers, the workload and project schedules we have been consistently dealing with haven't allowed much time for mentoring-level training. So they aren't progressing anywhere as fast as I did in my understanding of how to do the job, and are slowing up my progress on meeting deadlines or expanding my hours to redline after hours or just do things the right way myself. On top of that, it has been put on me and my PM to "keep them busy," which at times is hard because they work fast and turn over work they haven't thoroughly understood back to me before I can get the next set of details or redlines done. All that has shattered the promise my principal made to me that things would get better when they got me some help.
They also hired a PA-level woman my same age away from another firm in town within the past year, which I thought would also help. She almost immediately became pregnant, and found the time to get licensed in the interim as well. (Am I licensed yet? With what extra time?) So while she has been on maternity leave, no only am I the only competent younger person left standing, I am expected to "keep 'em busy." Just this morning my PM and me got our hands slapped for letting the younglings twiddle their thumbs while we were away on out-of-state fieldwork again for a week. The only way I could have kept them busy was to work all day the Saturday between a busy week finishing one set of drawings and prepping for the fieldwork, and flying out on the Sunday morning. My wife would have been happy about that!
But I'm trapped into staying put, because preservation is the only piece of the architectural pie that jives with my environmental belief system, and few other firms specialize in it the way we do. And if they do, things have gotten so competitive at the national level over the past 5 years, they wouldn't dare hire someone from one of their enemies.
Is It The Profession?
But all that frustration, is it really just my firm that has that kind of problem? The constant "there's just too much to do and you have to work 24/7 to keep up" feeling? I doubt it. I wonder if the problem is really that there are actually things in the world more important to me than rotting piles of stone and wood timbers - the love of my life, the human one, for instance. The amount of bellyaching from my PM about the young woman with the new kid not being very effective with her cushy "work from home three days out of five until the baby's grown up" contract led me to tell him that it didn't seem to me the profession in it's post-2008 state is very compatible with child-raising, in any capacity. Being beaten into using only certain digital tools for projects (like Revit instead of AutoCAD for a relatively simple roof replacement) doesn't help either, or that the younglings just hired both don't understand the fundamentals of how buildings go together or how to make a Revit drawing look as good as the PMs and PICs want, and there's not enough time to teach them "the way."
Everything starts to add up, between the inability to properly train new hires, to the complaints of PMs (to the point of confessing to me in private of not wanting their license anymore), to the ridiculous level the CYA/Laywer-Lite attitude every email and drawing note has to be tackled with, that the profession had it's self destruct button pushed at some point prior to 2008, and the process is a very slow and painful death. Everyone in leadership from the AIA down to the principals at firms seems to be both desperate and clueless as to how to save the sinking ship, other than start turning employees into sleepless robots with magical powers to bend time and space to do everything "perfectly" and "under budget" with a good "multiplier." All while emphasizing values of "play" and "work/life balance." It is bad enough that PMs are actually not logging time to projects to keep the multipliers up. And that's not just at my firm.
I would walk away from the profession, wondering just how much orgasmic enjoyment would be required out of seeing a finished project to stay and keep going. But then that raises the specter of looking at the past decade of my life as a mistake, the prime of my life a wasted enterprise. And walk away to what? Possibly finding no greater job satisfaction anywhere else? Or finding an equivalent-paying job for that matter? Or a another job period?
Catch-22 was one of my favorite books, and a heartbreaking one, but I never thought I would be accidentally living it by pursuing something I had wanted to be since I was in elementary school. At the end of the day, all I can think is that the profession either needs to get a grip and become a livable career like any other, or slap on some more dire warning labels. Driving off prospective students wouldn't be bad for business, because if profitability is already so low that everyone has to kill themselves to eat, there are obviously too many architects in the world competing for a shrinking pie as it is.
all i read was... whhaaaa!
the solution to all of this is.. what are you gonna do about it?
long question, short answer: it's your firm.
there are many firms where employees work that much either by choice or more often by circumstance. your firm seems like the latter, which means it's either poorly run, or doesn't make enough money to support sufficient staffing. leave first, figure out the next step later. you won't be able to make a good decision in your current state.
"What am I gonna do about it" is the conundrum of the hour. I need more data to formulate a path forward, hence the three questions. I'm looking for comparative experience. If other young professionals don't have to seek therapy, then the problem lies with me and I need to explore that route further. If other firms don't operate at this level, then I need to seek a solution to jumping ship. If the profession at large really suffers from these structural problems, then the best strategic decision is to leave and find something else to earn my bread with. I ask the three questions because my own experience is too limited a sample size to make judgements from, and talking to coworkers is dangerous.
I thought that intent was clear in my initial post, my apologies for any confusion.
I'm with midlander: Your firm sounds incredibly dysfunctional. A certain amount of overtime is normal in this business, but anybody who routinely feels compelled to put in 60-70 hours per week is being exploited. Find greener pastures.
buy your self a tombstone and put it in your house where you can see it when you leave and when you get back home to remind you what is really important.
And don't let the stigma of going to a therapist get to you. It's preventative maintenance for your brain. My therapist is great.
It's your firm, but it is also the profession. Not all firms are like this but many will be. At the end of the day though, it is your choice to stay back - the only person who is going to make you go home at 5.30 is you. Check out this great article on the profession and its problems.
http://archiparlour.org/worklifework-balance/
Therapy is good. Shit, I married a therapist. If I hadn't, I'd likely be dead by now.
If everyone is working over 50 hours every week, the firm needs to hire more people. Some here are going to say I'm wrong and that number is a little low. But, there is absolutely no reason why excessive overtime should be an every-week thing.
Technically, I have 50 hours invested in my work week, most of the time. But that is counting my hour commute each way. There is no way in hell I am going to add any more time to that than necessary. I shouldn't be required to. If the workload is so great that it is requiring 10-20 hours per week out of me a few other people, they can hire someone else.
I don't care if people consider overtime an industry standard. If that is our standard, then that is a problem with the industry, and we shouldn't be content with it. We should fix it.
how do you have time to see a therapist if you're working that many hours? are the old people who are working 80 weeks there when you show up, still there when you leave, and there all day while you're working?
my thought is, hand off a couple of the projects to those 50 year olds. if they have 80 hours in a week to burn, then can get another project in. focus your time on what projects you can complete, and prioritize training up the interns. if you don't train up the interns, there won't be anyone to help you on the next project, and you'll just end up dead from too much stress with a project that can't be completed because nobody cared to teach the next generation how to keep things going.
^career development is part of a bigger system for growing talent within a firm. telling someone on the second rung of the ladder his job is to deal with the first-rungers on his own is crassly indifferent management. op needs to get out before he comes to see this warped universe as the only possible reality...like one of this forums most prolificly vapid posters... don't be him!
fwiw my boss gets shit from the higher ups when our team works too much overtime. they don't want ppl burning out and quitting. decent firms are like this, and not rare.
Sounds like you are caught in a vicious cycle.
If "keep them busy" is the firm's approach to employee time management, that it very telling. Essentially, they are having you generating busy work so that their decision to hire them in the first place is justified.
Yes, you may be making some time management mistakes of your own, and yes, the profession has serious problems, but from what you say it sounds like the firm is the principal culprit.
What about working in an allied part of the preservation side of the industry? That would allow you to maintain your values and commitment, while getting you some distance from your current situation. Construction management, working for a developer, real estate brokerage?
Also, I'm not so sure that another historic preservation firm wouldn't be eager to hire the OP. People move around between competitor firms all the time; why would preservation be any different? Seems like the OP's skills would be in high demand within that specialty.
And I definitely don't want to appear weak
to this point, what makes a person strong?
I never understand these people that think this 80 hour a week bullshit is the norm. Prioritize your personal, mental health, and life - Architecture is just a job, not a lifestyle. You can choose make it a lifestyle when you have your own practice, but you would be an idiot to do it for somebody else.
I hope you are making a shit ton of money for the hours you are pulling!
I've never even heard of anything like this. We've had to work 50 for a couple months in a row if something pretty unusual happens, but its pretty rare and that particular firm offered straight time and flex time.
Are people really working 70-80 hrs? I find that very hard to believe, esp. on a regular basis.
Now is a great time to be looking and no one will look down on you for not being interested in those hours, most interviewers will be curious why you did it for so long!
I've had a couple 80 hr weeks, a couple 70 hr weeks, a few 60 hr, quite a few 50 hr weeks. My typical week is between 40 and 45, but yeah - things are nuts right now in Chicago and everyone wants to get their stuff done before the s**t hits the fan again.
Sounds to me like it's a bit of all three. The firm's management sounds dysfunctional. The profession is inherently stressful, compared to others I'm familiar with at least. And you sound a bit high strung and not trained for management, possibly not even managing yourself if you haven't learned how yet.
Everyone has their own work/life balance. I know from experience that I can do up to about six months of 60-80 hour weeks but then I need a few months of relative quiet to get back to normal. One of my current clients says she can't work more than 20 hours a week.
You have to get to know yourself and how to manage your own work/life balance, and possibly find a job where you have good mentors who can teach you how to manage yourself and others. The skills come naturally to some, are learnable by others, and some folks are just not cut out for anything except taking orders.
Sometimes people are just bad at math & they only think they work 80 hour weeks.
true and maybe this is not unintentionally :)
It seems like you're trying to do too much work yourself. Stop correcting your intern's work because it's faster. You need to stop micromanaging and have them think and correct their work themselves.
And I agree with others that the main problem is your firm's mismanagement for the amount of hours employees are expected to work.
Just get out. Don't look back. It doesn't have to be this way. There is no such thing as a life or death architecture emergency. Those are the contractor's problem. Why the rush ? All conclusions point to bad management, either not setting realistic deadlines and expectations, or charging too little. How many of those 80hrs a week do they write off ? do you get paid incredibly well?
It's the firm, the industry, and probably a lot of different factors. When I was in commercial architecture, long hours, short deadlines, horrible stress, walking on eggshells around the owner, was all the norm. Ridiculous deadlines is kind of the new normal..2008 and beyond made douchebag, asshole greedy developers and brokers realize that hungry architects will do anything for the gig, they are still taking advantage.
I left the aggressive, souless world of developer driven insanity and found a place in K-12 architecture, not always sexy, but my evenings and weekends are nearly always all mine. Architecture is a harsh mistress.
And if they do, things have gotten so competitive at the national level over the past 5 years, they wouldn't dare hire someone from one of their enemies.
Actually, sir, they would. Here's why?
Even the enemy (competition) may have good skilled people working for them. Therefore, it is a "business as war" strategy to collect and get the best minds from the competition. The "brain siphoning". The idea is to siphon the knowledge and skill out of the competition. The competition is only as strong as their collective mind and skills.
Why do you think we collected the brilliant scientists from Germany during and after WW II?
Remember this, the competition would hire the best people of their competitors like your firm because it will weaken the competition and strengthen their business. In turn, if they are successful, there would be a shake out and they grow in market share and some of the competition would go out of business and therefore allow for the remaining competition to expand in market place.
This is common place in many business sectors.
How would you know Balkarina? You've never worked a day in this industry let alone in any other sector.
ns has a point, but in fact rb is right... op is making a strangely flawed assumption. the first place a firm looks to hire experienced talent is from close competitors, because those employees most likely have the same skills and understanding of clients that the firm needs.
however, some firms get a local reputation for treating people bad, teaching them nothing then burning them out. in that case op needs to show a new employer he has the skills and good judgement to do the job well, and recognized there are other firms which will give him space to grow. need to be careful not come off as someone desperate just to get out. which is why i think he needs to get moving quick, and find some time to clear his head before settling on the next step.
How would you know Balkarina? You've never worked a day in this industry let alone in any other sector.
Others have spoken about it in this industry. This isn't unique and architecture isn't unique by any measure in this regard. Business is business and it generally makes business sense to hire experienced and skilled people from the competition. If you are experienced in business, I shouldn't have to spell that out for you.
Note: Richard Balkins, RickB-OR, RWCB_PBD, does not hold an NAAB-accredited degree or foreign equivalent. He is not a licensed architect in the United States or abroad. He is not an experienced design professional.
People who work less can work faster and make less mistakes when they don't work all the time. But the spreadsheets (or whatever math people use to run their businesses) don't tell you that.
the spreadsheets and the maths and the science are all there tintt
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-than-50-hours-makes-you-less-productive.html
What do the spreadsheets for 15 hour weeks say?
quit, kinda simple....duh?
FWIW, I see this in family and friends across all occupations in the Midwest. (So, I can only speak for the Midwest and those directly around me.) From teachers to builders, from architects to inside salespeople, ministering to marketing ... every imaginable profession seems to be overworked. I suspect it is companies holding off on hiring more people due to uncertainty -- especially in the building industry. I have sons just entering the work force after college and am having to "mother" them more than I have in years. Despite hard work ethics, they are finding it very difficult to deal with the stress of "adult life." From my experience, their young adult lives are way more stressful than mine was at that age. Everything is moving so fast. My advice is to take very good care of yourself. Eat well. Sleep as much as possible. Get out in the fresh air. Exercise EVERY day -- that is the absolutely BEST way to shed stress. Exercise during a difficult divorce kept me alive, and the extra benefit of shedding about 40 lbs! My sons say "yeah, yeah, I know," but you really have to get into a strict routine of caring for yourself. Look closely at your attitude and how you relate to co-workers as well, and how much responsibility you are taking on. Are you a perfectionist? Don't let perfectionism get in the way of progress.
find out if it is worth the effort. as much as we tend to like our job, we should also > keep it in its place <
its the new normal - post 08' - oh I forgot to mention, we are due for a recession in about 18 months
No one can work more than 45-50 hours a week for week after week without climbing the drapes. Seems like you need to have a couple of pitchers of beer with your boss after work on Friday for a few weeks running and discuss things. If he is not the kind of boss to do that, then that is a big part of the problem.
My highest weekly average was 46hr per week a few years' back... and that's a real number, not an assumption since I keep track. I was asked to calm down and now work a steady 40.5hr average week.
I have no answers really, but I can relate to the problem.
I rode out the recession working 60-hour weeks minimum, and often well outside what I felt I was qualified to be doing. I took work home with me, sometimes physically but always mentally. If I had made a mistake or saw a problem coming, it would keep me up at night. Weekends ceased to be any different than the work week. Spending time with friends, hobbies, having any semblance of life other than work all gradually went away, and I didn't even realize it was happening.
The economy improved, I found another gig and when asked, I was honest and told people I was burned out. I was surprised at the number of people I'd worked with, people I had patterned my all-work-all-the-time lifestyle after who told me they wished they had figured out they were pushing too hard before it led to their first divorce, or heart attack, or missing their kids childhood, etc.
Not one person said it had been worth it but yet there they were, still working the hours. And expecting others to do the same. The worst part is I actually miss that job sometimes.
I'm already working 50+ hours/week - so is my team -
would rather be run down and tired, than broke from getting layed off - because we were perceived as "C" players
"better to burn out than fade away"
If you're working 50+ under fear of being layed off, then you're already the "C" team.
Its your firm. Its like the dysfunctional firm I work at now, with no reason to be pushing 55-60 hour weeks every week. But thats the expectation.
Not saying this book is amazing, but some of the ideas are good.
4-hour workweek - synopsis
Full version audioboook
Actually, don't even read the book, just read the title and write your own book.
Quitting sends a good message to the firm. Sounds like they would lose business if you left. Before that have a talk with whoever is in charge and let me know you have limited hours and need to keep it close to 40.
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