I have 1 year's experience at a respectable design firm in a capital city. After 1 year I needed to move to my fiance's home city because he found a job there. My firm did not have an office there so I had to find a new job.
When I was looking for work, I met a principal of a large firm who was impressed by my portfolio and invited me to an interview. I felt very comfortable in the interview, we discussed the role and salary. The offer came shortly later and I took it as it was a large, well-known company with strong business in the area and offered a good salary.
After starting the job, I have realised that not everything is in line with my expectations. The team I am in does repeat copy-paste jobs and I am tasked with doing production for these jobs. At the interview the principal had promised broad experience in several projects, including projects on site, participation in meetings etc.
Also, the work I see around me lacks rigour and quality and I tend to spot a lot of mistakes that people do not care to rectify.
Coworkers spend most of the day chatting, there is unprofessional behaviour, inappropriate jokes and passive aggressive characters.
There are generally low standards.
I looked into coworkers' Linkedin profiles and some previously worked in poor quality firms, others are 35 year old interns, others have served here long without any progression etc. Some asked where I worked before and were surprised I chose to take a job at this firm.
I keep thinking that I ended up at a bad firm and the principal oversold the role and the firm at the interview to get me to take the job. However, when I researched the firm prior to accepting the offer I didn't find anything negative.
I don't think this is the appropriate environment for me to develop as a professional. Leaving after 4 months on the job could look bad in my resume but it might look equally bad to stay. I am afraid that if I leave early the principal who hired me could get upset and this is a very well connected person in the area where I am making my new break.
What is more, I am still new to the area and don't have a network here.
I would suck it up and keep working, but then again, I need to make money to survive. I would have to have an offer lined up to leave. I would look for a job before resigning.
The current work climate allows you to consider your options. Quality firms are looking for quality staff. You need to be proud of what you do and where you work.
I see no shame in discussing this as the subject comes up at a future interview. Indicate why you felt the need to leave and insist that any future employer be up to your standards. I would rather hire an employee who felt they weren't being challenged and bailed--rather than someone who told me they worked at their last gig for 10 years and then suddenly needed a change of pace. Those are typically the folks that didn't grow and the firm changed around them. Chances are, there are others around town that have reached the same conclusion. By staying, you may be then associated with that same reputation. (This is why I chose to leave my last firm earlier this spring).
Trust your gut. Just like a first date, that first few minutes of conversation will tell you everything you need to know. It's up to you whether you stick around for more.
Oct 2, 18 5:26 pm ·
·
alle
Thanks for the reply. The
issue with looking for work now is that I am a recent graduate and companies usually recruit people at my level in the summer. I have identified other firms in this city which could be better places but most will have vacancies next summer. There are no vacancies atm so I could be stuck here for about a year before I can make a move.
There may be a push to recruit recent graduates during the summer after they've graduated, but you have a year of experience that they don't. No firm is going to tell a well-qualified candidate they would normally hire to wait until the next summer. If they have work, they'll put you to work.
Line up a job or two ( or just be confident you can get one) and talk to the guy who hired you about your concerns. If you are going to leave, you may as well see if there is any chance to change your situation while staying there.
If something isn't working though, its best to leave sooner.
Are you in the US? care to be a little more specific about the location you are in? The types of work your firms does is very common and unless it is a city the size of Peoria you would probably not be at risk of outing yourself.
What do you define as a poor quality firm? Is it a firm that has not been published in Architectural Record? Also remember there was a recession and a lot of folks progression to licence and promotion within their work history has been stymied by lack of work or lack of opportunities to work in different firms or better firms. You could look at the years 2008-2010-2011 as an anomaly where a lot of decent architects interns and other allied professionals were not able to work where their talents were best used if at all.
Maybe you would be more fulfilled if you can get your licence and try to start your own design focused firm, especially if your partner's job can allow you to have a few years of little to no income.
Hope you find what you are looking for.
Peter N
Oct 2, 18 5:54 pm ·
·
alle
Hi Peter, thanks for the reply. I don't want to give out too much info. I understand there was a recession which was tough on many people but there is an unusually high concentration of people like that at my firm and compared to my previous company standards are much lower. I don't criticize others for their choices but I know what my standards are and can't see how I can make use of my full potential here. I feel trapped.
I think you should search for viable firms that you would like to work at and apply to them without quitting. Scheduling the interviews may be tough while working full time. In your interviews they will obviously ask you why you are looking for another firm after such a short time. But if you answer them honestly just like how you explained why on here I think they will respect, honor and appreciative that.
The more you switch firms in your first few years, the more you'll be paid. Fuck this geezers saying "stick it out". That advise is fit for someone working in 1995.
Some of the things you're not seeing yet are things that may just need more time. For instance, they promised you broad experience but you've only been there 4 months. Often employers like to rotate younger staff through the phases/tasks on the same projects, so if you're in CD production right now then you may need to wait for those projects to get into CA before you get some field experience on them.
But, overall your remarks about your coworkers and the firm aren't at all good, and if you're never going to be happy working there then by all means put out feelers at other local firms. Some types of firms tend to staff up in winter and spring - for example if they're doing a lot of schools or university projects then the majority of construction is in the summer so the production happens during the school year.
If you get some interviews fairly quickly you can probably get away with not listing your current job at all, if you're that concerned with the short term and/or that firm's reputation. If you're asked at all about those few months you only need to say that you recently relocated to this city with your fiance. Nobody's going to question a job gap of a few months under that circumstance.
Oct 2, 18 7:17 pm ·
·
alle
The rotating can happen indeed, but noone knows when. I would consider staying with the firm in order to work on some larger projects which are on site, as I lack this experience and want to develop it. What I observed though is that they did not hire anyone else at my level recently. If for example I am switched from my current team and production role to a CA job, who is really going to replace me? The firm constantly bids on these small repeat projects so there is continuous need for someone to fill this role. What I want to make sure is that at least I get out of the copy-paste repeat-job team. Once that's accomplished things might go better.
Going by the -our spelling, prob not from the US. If you are, using -our spelling means you definitely never should leave BosWash, LA, SanFran or Seattle ever, for our sake.
Cheers
Oct 2, 18 7:36 pm ·
·
alle
Have you thought that there people who might live in the US but are not native speakers?
I had a very similar experience to yours. I decided to ride it out as I had already jumped a few times and felt I needed some longevity. All my misgivings that I felt within the first 90 days which sounded very similar to what you stated amplified over the next year and a half. My career was completely stagnating, I was learning nothing as no one there really had much to teach, nothing I worked on was going to get me any good experience to show a different firm and all my professional achievements had been at previous jobs and were slowly becoming irrevellent. I ended up contacting new jobs and using nothing from that firm to apply and jumping ship after 1.5 years which still falls in the job hopping category. Moral of that story trust your gut and move on, had I stayed longer it would have been harder and harder to apply to diferent jobs.
Oct 2, 18 10:14 pm ·
·
alle
Hi, thanks for the reply. I have worked here for 4 months but it already feels like years. If I stay at this firm until next summer, what kind of work can I present in my portfolio in relation to my time here? Were you not asked about what projects you worked in that 1.5 year? How did the interview evolve around that? Another concern I have is that the low quality environment around me could affect me on a personal level, demotivate me and slowly bring me down. If this year has to go like that at work, I will take on a part-time course so that I can demonstrate some self-development in future interviews. How come you also found yourself in a similar situation? Did you also move to a new city for work?
Oct 3, 18 6:12 pm ·
·
archi_dude
I didn’t lie. I was honest that I thought it was a good firm, Glassdoor, the projects I was promised in the interview all seemed good. It’s a fine line of not bad mouthing your employee while trying to maturely convey why it really is a terrible fit. And don’t under estimate what a bad environment can do to your emotional state. I was literally contemplating living in a car and just saying f-it for awhile and being a ski bum. Terrible idea now that I’m in a good place but seemed like a rational thought
while I was at the old place.
I think you should leave, if you can find a better alternative. If you can manage to do that before you've been there 6 months or so then I'd agree that you could just leave the whole job off your resume if you wanted to. If you stay long enough to work on a full set or two of CDs then you'll have that for your portfolio (I don't mean that you'd put the CDs in your portfolio - but if you have a nice fat, complete, half-size CD set that's a thing to bring with you on interviews along with your portfolio.) Frankly that's something most firms will be interested in seeing for someone at your level, as much or more so snazzy conceptual design. Regardless of the dullness of the project design-wise, your ability to discuss what you worked on, how you contributed to coordination of the set, coordinated with consultants, etc. is very important when you're looking for your next jobs beyond very entry level.
Does your current firm do year-end reviews, and/or do you have some sort of 6-month probationary review? If so you should bring up your eagerness to get some field experience and specifically ask what the timeline for that looks like and on which projects it can happen. If there's no regularly-scheduled upcoming review, then around the 6-month point ask to schedule a meeting to discuss your progress. A lot of times when firms say there are great opportunities for staff to work on all aspects of projects, they're thinking much longer-term - like five years or so - so they may have no idea that you're antsy and bored with what you're currently doing and expected to be shifted to other things in just a few months.
If you do look elsewhere you should stop thinking of yourself as an entry-level intern that a firm would only want to hire in the summer. At this point you're a professional looking for a full time job, and lots of firms are desperately busy and actively searching for people. The season is irrelevant.
Or embrace the the issues and chart a course to solving them. This is the quickest way to a leadership position. Speak up, voice your concerns, point out the problems that are not being fixed, do the work you are tasked to do better and lead by example. Be the change you want to see, and take pride in your small tasks. Being able to show that you created change within an organization like that is a skill very few people have and will make you wildly more valuable than being a cog in the system at a renowned firm. You have independent thought. Use it to your advantage and don't expect good work to just be given to you. This is a challenge to overcome, and you will grow the most professionally by rising to the challenge, sitting with the discomfort and finding solutions to it than running away. These are big challenges, maybe you are not up to it?
When you took this job, were there other firms making you an offer, or firms you were interested in working for? If you had someone make you an offer earlier, let them know you aren't fitting into the firm you landed at and ask if their offer is still on the table. If they were willing to hire you once, they are probably willing to hire you again.
If you had reached out to other firms, get back in touch with them and simply follow up on your previous efforts. Sometimes firms' hiring timelines get dragged out, or they are waiting for a new project to get signed before pulling the trigger and making an offer. In those cases, a few months really isn't that long ago. You may be able to find something without having to start all over again. When I took my current job about 5 years ago, I had one firm contact me about 6 months after I initially reached out to them wanting to set up an interview with me.
How do I get out of this place?
Hi all,
I have 1 year's experience at a respectable design firm in a capital city. After 1 year I needed to move to my fiance's home city because he found a job there. My firm did not have an office there so I had to find a new job.
When I was looking for work, I met a principal of a large firm who was impressed by my portfolio and invited me to an interview. I felt very comfortable in the interview, we discussed the role and salary. The offer came shortly later and I took it as it was a large, well-known company with strong business in the area and offered a good salary.
After starting the job, I have realised that not everything is in line with my expectations. The team I am in does repeat copy-paste jobs and I am tasked with doing production for these jobs. At the interview the principal had promised broad experience in several projects, including projects on site, participation in meetings etc.
Also, the work I see around me lacks rigour and quality and I tend to spot a lot of mistakes that people do not care to rectify.
Coworkers spend most of the day chatting, there is unprofessional behaviour, inappropriate jokes and passive aggressive characters.
There are generally low standards.
I looked into coworkers' Linkedin profiles and some previously worked in poor quality firms, others are 35 year old interns, others have served here long without any progression etc. Some asked where I worked before and were surprised I chose to take a job at this firm.
I keep thinking that I ended up at a bad firm and the principal oversold the role and the firm at the interview to get me to take the job. However, when I researched the firm prior to accepting the offer I didn't find anything negative.
I don't think this is the appropriate environment for me to develop as a professional. Leaving after 4 months on the job could look bad in my resume but it might look equally bad to stay. I am afraid that if I leave early the principal who hired me could get upset and this is a very well connected person in the area where I am making my new break.
What is more, I am still new to the area and don't have a network here.
What would you do in my case?
I would suck it up and keep working, but then again, I need to make money to survive. I would have to have an offer lined up to leave. I would look for a job before resigning.
The current work climate allows you to consider your options. Quality firms are looking for quality staff. You need to be proud of what you do and where you work.
I see no shame in discussing this as the subject comes up at a future interview. Indicate why you felt the need to leave and insist that any future employer be up to your standards. I would rather hire an employee who felt they weren't being challenged and bailed--rather than someone who told me they worked at their last gig for 10 years and then suddenly needed a change of pace. Those are typically the folks that didn't grow and the firm changed around them. Chances are, there are others around town that have reached the same conclusion. By staying, you may be then associated with that same reputation. (This is why I chose to leave my last firm earlier this spring).
Trust your gut. Just like a first date, that first few minutes of conversation will tell you everything you need to know. It's up to you whether you stick around for more.
Thanks for the reply. The issue with looking for work now is that I am a recent graduate and companies usually recruit people at my level in the summer. I have identified other firms in this city which could be better places but most will have vacancies next summer. There are no vacancies atm so I could be stuck here for about a year before I can make a move.
There may be a push to recruit recent graduates during the summer after they've graduated, but you have a year of experience that they don't. No firm is going to tell a well-qualified candidate they would normally hire to wait until the next summer. If they have work, they'll put you to work.
Line up a job or two ( or just be confident you can get one) and talk to the guy who hired you about your concerns. If you are going to leave, you may as well see if there is any chance to change your situation while staying there.
If something isn't working though, its best to leave sooner.
Are you in the US? care to be a little more specific about the location you are in? The types of work your firms does is very common and unless it is a city the size of Peoria you would probably not be at risk of outing yourself.
What do you define as a poor quality firm? Is it a firm that has not been published in Architectural Record? Also remember there was a recession and a lot of folks progression to licence and promotion within their work history has been stymied by lack of work or lack of opportunities to work in different firms or better firms. You could look at the years 2008-2010-2011 as an anomaly where a lot of decent architects interns and other allied professionals were not able to work where their talents were best used if at all.
Maybe you would be more fulfilled if you can get your licence and try to start your own design focused firm, especially if your partner's job can allow you to have a few years of little to no income.
Hope you find what you are looking for.
Peter N
Hi Peter, thanks for the reply. I don't want to give out too much info. I understand there was a recession which was tough on many people but there is an unusually high concentration of people like that at my firm and compared to my previous company standards are much lower. I don't criticize others for their choices but I know what my standards are and can't see how I can make use of my full potential here. I feel trapped.
I think you should search for viable firms that you would like to work at and apply to them without quitting. Scheduling the interviews may be tough while working full time. In your interviews they will obviously ask you why you are looking for another firm after such a short time. But if you answer them honestly just like how you explained why on here I think they will respect, honor and appreciative that.
switch firms.
The more you switch firms in your first few years, the more you'll be paid. Fuck this geezers saying "stick it out". That advise is fit for someone working in 1995.
Some of the things you're not seeing yet are things that may just need more time. For instance, they promised you broad experience but you've only been there 4 months. Often employers like to rotate younger staff through the phases/tasks on the same projects, so if you're in CD production right now then you may need to wait for those projects to get into CA before you get some field experience on them.
But, overall your remarks about your coworkers and the firm aren't at all good, and if you're never going to be happy working there then by all means put out feelers at other local firms. Some types of firms tend to staff up in winter and spring - for example if they're doing a lot of schools or university projects then the majority of construction is in the summer so the production happens during the school year.
If you get some interviews fairly quickly you can probably get away with not listing your current job at all, if you're that concerned with the short term and/or that firm's reputation. If you're asked at all about those few months you only need to say that you recently relocated to this city with your fiance. Nobody's going to question a job gap of a few months under that circumstance.
The rotating can happen indeed, but noone knows when. I would consider staying with the firm in order to work on some larger projects which are on site, as I lack this experience and want to develop it. What I observed though is that they did not hire anyone else at my level recently. If for example I am switched from my current team and production role to a CA job, who is really going to replace me? The firm constantly bids on these small repeat projects so there is continuous need for someone to fill this role. What I want to make sure is that at least I get out of the copy-paste repeat-job team. Once that's accomplished things might go better.
Going by the -our spelling, prob not from the US. If you are, using -our spelling means you definitely never should leave BosWash, LA, SanFran or Seattle ever, for our sake.
Cheers
Have you thought that there people who might live in the US but are not native speakers?
I had a very similar experience to yours. I decided to ride it out as I had already jumped a few times and felt I needed some longevity. All my misgivings that I felt within the first 90 days which sounded very similar to what you stated amplified over the next year and a half. My career was completely stagnating, I was learning nothing as no one there really had much to teach, nothing I worked on was going to get me any good experience to show a different firm and all my professional achievements had been at previous jobs and were slowly becoming irrevellent. I ended up contacting new jobs and using nothing from that firm to apply and jumping ship after 1.5 years which still falls in the job hopping category. Moral of that story trust your gut and move on, had I stayed longer it would have been harder and harder to apply to diferent jobs.
Hi, thanks for the reply. I have worked here for 4 months but it already feels like years. If I stay at this firm until next summer, what kind of work can I present in my portfolio in relation to my time here? Were you not asked about what projects you worked in that 1.5 year? How did the interview evolve around that? Another concern I have is that the low quality environment around me could affect me on a personal level, demotivate me and slowly bring me down. If this year has to go like that at work, I will take on a part-time course so that I can demonstrate some self-development in future interviews. How come you also found yourself in a similar situation? Did you also move to a new city for work?
I didn’t lie. I was honest that I thought it was a good firm, Glassdoor, the projects I was promised in the interview all seemed good. It’s a fine line of not bad mouthing your employee while trying to maturely convey why it really is a terrible fit. And don’t under estimate what a bad environment can do to your emotional state. I was literally contemplating living in a car and just saying f-it for awhile and being a ski bum. Terrible idea now that I’m in a good place but seemed like a rational thought
while I was at the old place.
Leave now before you get infected.
Keep moving on, no such thing as loyalty or sticking it out. Do it before you're comfortable and for inside.
I think you should leave, if you can find a better alternative. If you can manage to do that before you've been there 6 months or so then I'd agree that you could just leave the whole job off your resume if you wanted to. If you stay long enough to work on a full set or two of CDs then you'll have that for your portfolio (I don't mean that you'd put the CDs in your portfolio - but if you have a nice fat, complete, half-size CD set that's a thing to bring with you on interviews along with your portfolio.) Frankly that's something most firms will be interested in seeing for someone at your level, as much or more so snazzy conceptual design. Regardless of the dullness of the project design-wise, your ability to discuss what you worked on, how you contributed to coordination of the set, coordinated with consultants, etc. is very important when you're looking for your next jobs beyond very entry level.
Does your current firm do year-end reviews, and/or do you have some sort of 6-month probationary review? If so you should bring up your eagerness to get some field experience and specifically ask what the timeline for that looks like and on which projects it can happen. If there's no regularly-scheduled upcoming review, then around the 6-month point ask to schedule a meeting to discuss your progress. A lot of times when firms say there are great opportunities for staff to work on all aspects of projects, they're thinking much longer-term - like five years or so - so they may have no idea that you're antsy and bored with what you're currently doing and expected to be shifted to other things in just a few months.
If you do look elsewhere you should stop thinking of yourself as an entry-level intern that a firm would only want to hire in the summer. At this point you're a professional looking for a full time job, and lots of firms are desperately busy and actively searching for people. The season is irrelevant.
Or embrace the the issues and chart a course to solving them. This is the quickest way to a leadership position. Speak up, voice your concerns, point out the problems that are not being fixed, do the work you are tasked to do better and lead by example. Be the change you want to see, and take pride in your small tasks. Being able to show that you created change within an organization like that is a skill very few people have and will make you wildly more valuable than being a cog in the system at a renowned firm. You have independent thought. Use it to your advantage and don't expect good work to just be given to you. This is a challenge to overcome, and you will grow the most professionally by rising to the challenge, sitting with the discomfort and finding solutions to it than running away. These are big challenges, maybe you are not up to it?
Lots of good advice so far.
When you took this job, were there other firms making you an offer, or firms you were interested in working for? If you had someone make you an offer earlier, let them know you aren't fitting into the firm you landed at and ask if their offer is still on the table. If they were willing to hire you once, they are probably willing to hire you again.
If you had reached out to other firms, get back in touch with them and simply follow up on your previous efforts. Sometimes firms' hiring timelines get dragged out, or they are waiting for a new project to get signed before pulling the trigger and making an offer. In those cases, a few months really isn't that long ago. You may be able to find something without having to start all over again. When I took my current job about 5 years ago, I had one firm contact me about 6 months after I initially reached out to them wanting to set up an interview with me.
move on - why waste time with obstacles
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