A bit of a rant/advice seeking here, but recently I worked on a project with a large team and while my direct supervisor is a very competent and efficient person, the senior above him I think is pretty darn useless. Since the team is pretty big and each sub team has their own responsibilities in taking care their part of the project and is also led by a project architect, the senior project architect is generally speaking responsible for trying to keep the firm out of trouble/lawsuits
Here is the problem I have: him being the senior project architect in charge, he isn't the one to come up with solutions when there is an urgent issue or when there is a technical detail that is specific to the project is needed. Like I mentioned above there are project architects that are leading each sub team and THEY are the ones that come up with the solution. The senior project architect basically just gives a yes or no to the solution and juniors like to draws them up in revit. The only notable contribution from the senior project architect(who is in a leadership position) is in my opinion having his stamp on the drawings. I don't know how to sum this up but here is my thought:
Was the senior project architect responsible for bringing in this project to the firm? No. He is a just a technical person, there are other design architects who is probably more concerned with bringing in projects to the firm.
Was the senior project architect responsible for drafting up any contracts between the client and us or between us and the consultants? No, we have a project manager for that.
Was the senior project architect responsible for designing the project? No, we have a design team for that who is led by a senior designer with the senior architect not providing any input whatsoever. Needless to say he also isn't the one presenting to the clients our design.
Was the senior project architect responsible for coordinating with the engineers/consultants? No, each sub team has a project architect who does that.
Was the senior project architect responsible for drawing a single damn line in Revit? No, he doesn't have revit installed on his computer and he is given a computer that probably isn't even powerful enough to run single instance of revit. On top of that there are sub teams that develop construction documents for their respective parts of the project and the senior project architect will just look at it and point out problems without giving any directions.
Was the senior project architect responsible for writing a single letter on the specifications? No, we have a spec writer for that, and of course he doesn't review the specs since the project architects for each sub team does that.
Was the senior project architect responsible for reviewing RFI/Submittals? No, each sub team will review the RFI/Submittals regarding their part of the project.
The list can go on but I won't bore you guys with the details. I don't understand why he gets paid more than me while I produce more for the client that he does. The client pay the firm for a building in the end and he doens't contribute at all to the process of architecture and construction. How do you guys deal with this person?
TL;DR: Senior project architect doesn't do what an architect is supposed to do. He did not bring the project in, did not design the project, did not write any contracts, did not coordinate with consultants, did not draw a single line in construction document, did not write a single letter in spec, did not review a single RFI/Submittal. Basically he is just someone who puts a stamp on the drawing and has the ability to fire people. and yet he gets paid the big bucks, how are you guys dealing working for these people and knowing that you contribute more to the clients objective more than this person?
and this person got there by doing all of the above, most likely. Now they have grunts to do this stuff for them so they have more time on the golf course. What’s the problem?
Maybe if you work hard enough this senior architect could afford to buy himself / herself another car, or a cottage on the lake. And then if you work hard for another year he / she could buy a boat.
Yes and no, he has some liability but ultimately if anything goes wrong with the project the firm itself is getting sued. He may need to answer for the fault from the firm leadership but he isn't going to lose his car and house. The firm has lawyers ready to fight any lawsuit that comes anyways. In fact while typing this I don't know if he has any liability at all except firm leadership yelling at him and his year end bonus getting reduced...
Sep 11, 23 7:32 pm ·
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b3tadine[sutures]
You don't know how liability works, or billable hours either.
Ask your direct supervisor, he will have better insight into the project hierarchy.
“senior project architect is generally speaking responsible for trying to keep the firm out of trouble/lawsuits”…. Are you getting sued or losing money? If not, it sounds like he's doing his job haha
A word of advice. Knowing how to deal with people is a very important part of the profession, be it contractors, owners, AHJs, or other people you work with. The way you’ve written this makes me think you have some room to grow in this area. And remember, for as much value as you might think you have, you are easily replaceable.
People are touching on the liabilities and decision-making aspect of the profession, and that’s important. But giving you the benefit of the doubt for a second, if they legitimately aren’t doing their job out of laziness or something, it also doesn’t give the person the right to just not do work, unless they are an owner which presumably they are not.
With that in mind, You need to think of it in a business context. If this person isn’t actually doing their job, they should really just be fired. I think that’s a much more honest and healthy perspective to have on it rather than comparing compensation.
Inversely, sometimes you’ll see people intentionally miss-staffed on projects where they really don’t have that much they can do or where they fit well, just so the bosses can keep them on staff for the next thing where they will be needed…it happens.
uhhhh... Am I your boss? I could be from your description.
Let's think of it another way. Would you expect the CEO of Costco to be stocking shelves? Obviously not, and for obvious reasons.
Presumably, both of your salaries are based on your relative liabilities within the office; he's taking the risk, and I hate to say it, but you're replaceable. My old boss told me that - to my face - before I wrote him a cheque and asked him never to set foot in the office again without a personal invitation. Business is like that sometimes, sorry nobody warned you.
The good news is, there's a path forward for you to be better compensated and take on more responsibility (the other side of the compensation coin, don't forget). But honestly if this is your attitude about your teammates, then you're in for a very rough career. Everything we do involves teams of people, that's never going to change so you might want to chill and let people do the jobs they were assigned. Just my two cents.
To your costco CEO analogy, Are you the owner of your firm? If so are you the one that goes out and meets with clients and bring in projects to your firm and keep your employees fed? Are you the one that decides the firm's 5-10 year future direction according to market conditions? If yes then hey I have nothing against that and you are doing your job as an owner/leader. But I am talking about a person with a senior title, not the direct owner or partner. He doesn't bring in any project or revenue for the firm nor does he contribute to the firm's design philosophy or enhance the firm culture in any way. He is strictly a senior technical architect.
Sep 11, 23 8:16 pm ·
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bowling_ball
The answer is yes, yes, and yes, that's exactly my role. The point is that there's business decisions that are currently above your paygrade. I can't say for sure if things are working in your office efficiently, but neither can you.
Thank you for your advice. I do admit that I have room to improve in the people's department but it's just that I have seen enough bullshit which led me to make this post. Let me elaborate on what I said about his responsibility regarding keeping the firm out of trouble. His supposed responsibility is to review our deliverables (mainly CD and Spec since he doesn't care about design) and makes sure they are going out on time and of the highest quality. The problem is as a whole team we have an excellent attitude in terms of meeting deadlines and producing high quality drawings and he knows that, and we have proven that to him. Do we need him to review our deliverables, to be honest not really because the project architects that leads each sub team already reviewed it and make sure that it meets code and properly detailed, etc. He rarely catches any mistakes thus I have very high regards for my direct supervisor and others that are of the same rank as him. For what it's worth my direct supervisor does not need to open Revit but he leads all the coordination meetings and reviews the CDs that his team draws and redlines them along with other tasks. I don't know...I dare to say its just frustrating to see this senior person has absolutely minimum contribution to the project. Like imagine a cup of water going through 8 filtration process and the senior is like the 9th layer of filtration...by the time it gets to the 9th layer its basically drinkable
Sep 11, 23 7:45 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
To be fair, you've shown more effort in this discussion than some "intermediate" architects I work with.
I am just trying to understand what I am not seeing. I am very tempted to ask one of the colleagues who has a better professional relationship with him just what the hell does he do, but you know...office politics right? But people who respond to my post just seems to want to flame me because this is a negative post. I mean if this senior person is the one who solves majority of the problems in the project using his years of experience and expertise then I have nothing to say, I will have nothing but the utmost admiration for him. But as I stated above he is not that person....
Sep 11, 23 8:11 pm ·
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Non Sequitur
There will always be office politics to navigate but there is also quite a bit of shit happening behind the scenes. I may be very active on a handful of projects but I am also present in the background on a handful of others... sometimes just because of the client or in case or emergency. Others might find this annoying that I chime in from a top-down position but there are loads of staff management things that the regular grunts don't get exposed to. At the end of the day, this wanker is responsible to ensure you're paid and that the clients are happy.
TA, I think NS said it better than when I tried. It's good that you're looking to improve things, but something also tells me that you don't actually have enough experience to understand the things that you're not seeing, and how they contribute to the office at large. That's okay. At one point we probably all thought we knew how to do things better than our bosses (and sometimes that's true). Trust me, when you're on the other side of the curtain, that's where the sausage is made.
It sounds like the OP works in a pretty large firm. Every USA firm of that size I've ever seen has a layer or two in the hierarchy where people don't have to do much work if they don't want to. Getting frustrated/pissed off about it is pretty futile.
Sounds like he proved his value to the decision-makers at the firm and handles the part, "you're paid and that the clients are happy," well. If he was to do all that stuff you wrote, he wouldn't have time to do what he is paid in "big bucks". You might want to teach yourself more about behind-the-scenes corporate management to understand the big picture and feel more content with what you are doing at this phase of your career.
Could be the PAs are doing such a good job because this guy trained them up to do a good job, and maybe is even continuing to train them. That would be good leadership that you might not see.
Reading everything, I’m going to posit that your view of “senior guy doesn’t do anything” really means “senior guy doing his job very well” for all the reasons others have said.
Yup, I've been in firms where the bosses truly didn't do anything, (like openly reading the newspaper at their desk all day) and the places had terrible quality control and production issues. Somebody at or near the top is making an effort somewhere at the OP's workplace to make things go right.
how many projects and staff does he oversee? and how big is your firm?
there are useless middlemen in bigger companies, but honestly nothing about this sounds like one of them - you haven't said he's out of the office at conferences every week or something like that.
if the team is as good as you say he deserves some credit for that; hiring well and keeping everyone working together smoothly is extremely difficult.
maybe you could ask him in a positive sense what his job is responsible for and how he does it - you might learn something and develop a better working relationship. assume positive intent unless he is actively demonstrating otherwise.
How many disastrous mistakes would he have to catch in a year to pay for his salary? I'm guessing 2-3 big ones would probably cover it, or a bunch of little ones. It's hard to catch everything on drawings, no matter how good you are.
OP: Adding on to others, helpful to read through your national association's Handbook of Practice - if a fellow Canadian, CHOP. Americans have one here.
Sounds like you might misunderstand value a bit. I often find that recent graduates over-emphasize the value of "design" and "grunt work." All the things professors teach... which is mostly crap. His value is likely in the things you do not see. I've led larger teams in corporate structures, and I would often never open drawings or do any of the grunt work. I was nearly always on the phone or in meetings keeping clients happy, jobs moving along, and getting the bills paid. That's an important role. It's often worth more money than a replaceable grunt.
But maybe he is just sitting around most of the time. That could also be frustrating for you to see. Just remember, he isn't likely your competition. One day people like that will be though. So just learn what you can. If he's also making substantially more money than you and doing far less work, maybe he's winning?
Also, if he's stamping, that's legitimate financial risk. "oh the firm will shield him." No, sorry that isn't how risk works. Not in most states.
Going through the point-by-point list that was posted about what a senior staff does not do, i could probably apply that to anyone in a senior 'job runner' position. And yet the senior architect who is overseeing my current project is quite literally one of the best pure architect's i've ever worked for. Someone who remains above the fray and can delegate tasks / lead a team towards delivering exactly what the client is asking for is a remarkable task. Just because you lack the experience to recognize everything that's going on around doesn't mean it's not happening. Honestly the way this is written is borderline arrogant. I'd probably not want you on my project team in a similar context.
A major project divided up among several teams is a coordination nightmare (trust me, the multiple PAs aren't sharing information - they wish they could but they're too busy). The difference between a well-executed overall project and a clusterfuck is having a very knowledgeable and talented person whose ONLY job is making sure everyone is "pulling in the same direction."
Work Dilemma
Hi all,
A bit of a rant/advice seeking here, but recently I worked on a project with a large team and while my direct supervisor is a very competent and efficient person, the senior above him I think is pretty darn useless. Since the team is pretty big and each sub team has their own responsibilities in taking care their part of the project and is also led by a project architect, the senior project architect is generally speaking responsible for trying to keep the firm out of trouble/lawsuits
Here is the problem I have: him being the senior project architect in charge, he isn't the one to come up with solutions when there is an urgent issue or when there is a technical detail that is specific to the project is needed. Like I mentioned above there are project architects that are leading each sub team and THEY are the ones that come up with the solution. The senior project architect basically just gives a yes or no to the solution and juniors like to draws them up in revit. The only notable contribution from the senior project architect(who is in a leadership position) is in my opinion having his stamp on the drawings. I don't know how to sum this up but here is my thought:
Was the senior project architect responsible for bringing in this project to the firm? No. He is a just a technical person, there are other design architects who is probably more concerned with bringing in projects to the firm.
Was the senior project architect responsible for drafting up any contracts between the client and us or between us and the consultants? No, we have a project manager for that.
Was the senior project architect responsible for designing the project? No, we have a design team for that who is led by a senior designer with the senior architect not providing any input whatsoever. Needless to say he also isn't the one presenting to the clients our design.
Was the senior project architect responsible for coordinating with the engineers/consultants? No, each sub team has a project architect who does that.
Was the senior project architect responsible for drawing a single damn line in Revit? No, he doesn't have revit installed on his computer and he is given a computer that probably isn't even powerful enough to run single instance of revit. On top of that there are sub teams that develop construction documents for their respective parts of the project and the senior project architect will just look at it and point out problems without giving any directions.
Was the senior project architect responsible for writing a single letter on the specifications? No, we have a spec writer for that, and of course he doesn't review the specs since the project architects for each sub team does that.
Was the senior project architect responsible for reviewing RFI/Submittals? No, each sub team will review the RFI/Submittals regarding their part of the project.
The list can go on but I won't bore you guys with the details. I don't understand why he gets paid more than me while I produce more for the client that he does. The client pay the firm for a building in the end and he doens't contribute at all to the process of architecture and construction. How do you guys deal with this person?
TL;DR: Senior project architect doesn't do what an architect is supposed to do. He did not bring the project in, did not design the project, did not write any contracts, did not coordinate with consultants, did not draw a single line in construction document, did not write a single letter in spec, did not review a single RFI/Submittal. Basically he is just someone who puts a stamp on the drawing and has the ability to fire people. and yet he gets paid the big bucks, how are you guys dealing working for these people and knowing that you contribute more to the clients objective more than this person?
and this person got there by doing all of the above, most likely. Now they have grunts to do this stuff for them so they have more time on the golf course. What’s the problem?
Maybe if you work hard enough this senior architect could afford to buy himself / herself another car, or a cottage on the lake. And then if you work hard for another year he / she could buy a boat.
if they're stamping the drawing, they're shouldering all of the risk for your work
Yes and no, he has some liability but ultimately if anything goes wrong with the project the firm itself is getting sued. He may need to answer for the fault from the firm leadership but he isn't going to lose his car and house. The firm has lawyers ready to fight any lawsuit that comes anyways. In fact while typing this I don't know if he has any liability at all except firm leadership yelling at him and his year end bonus getting reduced...
You don't know how liability works, or billable hours either.
Then how about you explain to me how liability works for juniors like me vs a senior who works for a firm instead of being the owner himself?
I bill out at $200 hr.
Ask your direct supervisor, he will have better insight into the project hierarchy.
“senior project architect is generally speaking responsible for trying to keep the firm out of trouble/lawsuits”…. Are you getting sued or losing money? If not, it sounds like he's doing his job haha
A word of advice. Knowing how to deal with people is a very important part of the profession, be it contractors, owners, AHJs, or other people you work with. The way you’ve written this makes me think you have some room to grow in this area. And remember, for as much value as you might think you have, you are easily replaceable.
To tack a little more on here.
People are touching on the liabilities and decision-making aspect of the profession, and that’s important. But giving you the benefit of the doubt for a second, if they legitimately aren’t doing their job out of laziness or something, it also doesn’t give the person the right to just not do work, unless they are an owner which presumably they are not.
With that in mind, You need to think of it in a business context. If this person isn’t actually doing their job, they should really just be fired. I think that’s a much more honest and healthy perspective to have on it rather than comparing compensation.
Inversely, sometimes you’ll see people intentionally miss-staffed on projects where they really don’t have that much they can do or where they fit well, just so the bosses can keep them on staff for the next thing where they will be needed…it happens.
uhhhh... Am I your boss? I could be from your description.
Let's think of it another way. Would you expect the CEO of Costco to be stocking shelves? Obviously not, and for obvious reasons.
Presumably, both of your salaries are based on your relative liabilities within the office; he's taking the risk, and I hate to say it, but you're replaceable. My old boss told me that - to my face - before I wrote him a cheque and asked him never to set foot in the office again without a personal invitation. Business is like that sometimes, sorry nobody warned you.
The good news is, there's a path forward for you to be better compensated and take on more responsibility (the other side of the compensation coin, don't forget). But honestly if this is your attitude about your teammates, then you're in for a very rough career. Everything we do involves teams of people, that's never going to change so you might want to chill and let people do the jobs they were assigned. Just my two cents.
To your costco CEO analogy, Are you the owner of your firm? If so are you the one that goes out and meets with clients and bring in projects to your firm and keep your employees fed? Are you the one that decides the firm's 5-10 year future direction according to market conditions? If yes then hey I have nothing against that and you are doing your job as an owner/leader. But I am talking about a person with a senior title, not the direct owner or partner. He doesn't bring in any project or revenue for the firm nor does he contribute to the firm's design philosophy or enhance the firm culture in any way. He is strictly a senior technical architect.
The answer is yes, yes, and yes, that's exactly my role. The point is that there's business decisions that are currently above your paygrade. I can't say for sure if things are working in your office efficiently, but neither can you.
bowling-ball I don’t understand why you wrote your old boss a check? Sounds like a good story.
I'd also like to hear this one. Story time b_b?
+1 b_b ... give us a story!
Thank you for your advice. I do admit that I have room to improve in the people's department but it's just that I have seen enough bullshit which led me to make this post. Let me elaborate on what I said about his responsibility regarding keeping the firm out of trouble. His supposed responsibility is to review our deliverables (mainly CD and Spec since he doesn't care about design) and makes sure they are going out on time and of the highest quality. The problem is as a whole team we have an excellent attitude in terms of meeting deadlines and producing high quality drawings and he knows that, and we have proven that to him. Do we need him to review our deliverables, to be honest not really because the project architects that leads each sub team already reviewed it and make sure that it meets code and properly detailed, etc. He rarely catches any mistakes thus I have very high regards for my direct supervisor and others that are of the same rank as him. For what it's worth my direct supervisor does not need to open Revit but he leads all the coordination meetings and reviews the CDs that his team draws and redlines them along with other tasks. I don't know...I dare to say its just frustrating to see this senior person has absolutely minimum contribution to the project. Like imagine a cup of water going through 8 filtration process and the senior is like the 9th layer of filtration...by the time it gets to the 9th layer its basically drinkable
To be fair, you've shown more effort in this discussion than some "intermediate" architects I work with.
I am just trying to understand what I am not seeing. I am very tempted to ask one of the colleagues who has a better professional relationship with him just what the hell does he do, but you know...office politics right? But people who respond to my post just seems to want to flame me because this is a negative post. I mean if this senior person is the one who solves majority of the problems in the project using his years of experience and expertise then I have nothing to say, I will have nothing but the utmost admiration for him. But as I stated above he is not that person....
There will always be office politics to navigate but there is also quite a bit of shit happening behind the scenes. I may be very active on a handful of projects but I am also present in the background on a handful of others... sometimes just because of the client or in case or emergency. Others might find this annoying that I chime in from a top-down position but there are loads of staff management things that the regular grunts don't get exposed to. At the end of the day, this wanker is responsible to ensure you're paid and that the clients are happy.
TA, I think NS said it better than when I tried. It's good that you're looking to improve things, but something also tells me that you don't actually have enough experience to understand the things that you're not seeing, and how they contribute to the office at large. That's okay. At one point we probably all thought we knew how to do things better than our bosses (and sometimes that's true). Trust me, when you're on the other side of the curtain, that's where the sausage is made.
It sounds like the OP works in a pretty large firm. Every USA firm of that size I've ever seen has a layer or two in the hierarchy where people don't have to do much work if they don't want to. Getting frustrated/pissed off about it is pretty futile.
Sounds like he proved his value to the decision-makers at the firm and handles the part, "you're paid and that the clients are happy," well.
If he was to do all that stuff you wrote, he wouldn't have time to do what he is paid in "big bucks".
You might want to teach yourself more about behind-the-scenes corporate management to understand the big picture and feel more content with what you are doing at this phase of your career.
Could be the PAs are doing such a good job because this guy trained them up to do a good job, and maybe is even continuing to train them. That would be good leadership that you might not see.
was waiting for this comment
Reading everything, I’m going to posit that your view of “senior guy doesn’t do anything” really means “senior guy doing his job very well” for all the reasons others have said.
Yup, I've been in firms where the bosses truly didn't do anything, (like openly reading the newspaper at their desk all day) and the places had terrible quality control and production issues. Somebody at or near the top is making an effort somewhere at the OP's workplace to make things go right.
Work smart not hard… seems to work
bobsled coach?
I don't know. Cinnabon has really gone downhill lately.
how many projects and staff does he oversee? and how big is your firm?
there are useless middlemen in bigger companies, but honestly nothing about this sounds like one of them - you haven't said he's out of the office at conferences every week or something like that.
if the team is as good as you say he deserves some credit for that; hiring well and keeping everyone working together smoothly is extremely difficult.
maybe you could ask him in a positive sense what his job is responsible for and how he does it - you might learn something and develop a better working relationship. assume positive intent unless he is actively demonstrating otherwise.
How many disastrous mistakes would he have to catch in a year to pay for his salary? I'm guessing 2-3 big ones would probably cover it, or a bunch of little ones. It's hard to catch everything on drawings, no matter how good you are.
OP: Adding on to others, helpful to read through your national association's Handbook of Practice - if a fellow Canadian, CHOP. Americans have one here.
Sounds like you might misunderstand value a bit. I often find that recent graduates over-emphasize the value of "design" and "grunt work." All the things professors teach... which is mostly crap. His value is likely in the things you do not see. I've led larger teams in corporate structures, and I would often never open drawings or do any of the grunt work. I was nearly always on the phone or in meetings keeping clients happy, jobs moving along, and getting the bills paid. That's an important role. It's often worth more money than a replaceable grunt.
But maybe he is just sitting around most of the time. That could also be frustrating for you to see. Just remember, he isn't likely your competition. One day people like that will be though. So just learn what you can. If he's also making substantially more money than you and doing far less work, maybe he's winning?
Also, if he's stamping, that's legitimate financial risk. "oh the firm will shield him." No, sorry that isn't how risk works. Not in most states.
This post comes off as extremely naive.
Going through the point-by-point list that was posted about what a senior staff does not do, i could probably apply that to anyone in a senior 'job runner' position. And yet the senior architect who is overseeing my current project is quite literally one of the best pure architect's i've ever worked for. Someone who remains above the fray and can delegate tasks / lead a team towards delivering exactly what the client is asking for is a remarkable task. Just because you lack the experience to recognize everything that's going on around doesn't mean it's not happening. Honestly the way this is written is borderline arrogant. I'd probably not want you on my project team in a similar context.
Dude also probably assumes they are a 9 out of 10 stars in revit too... while only really being a 4 on their best days.
A major project divided up among several teams is a coordination nightmare (trust me, the multiple PAs aren't sharing information - they wish they could but they're too busy). The difference between a well-executed overall project and a clusterfuck is having a very knowledgeable and talented person whose ONLY job is making sure everyone is "pulling in the same direction."
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