Architects: the new endangered species part two or :
I was hoping that Architects: the new endangered species would go in this tangent but it didn't so I am starting this thread.
It is just me or are the ranks of the qualified dwindling to nothing?
You would be amazed in the lack of response that we have for a 6-10 year experience person. I can find interns without experience in droves, I can find people with 10 years plus experience asking for $75,000 that can not use a computer, draw sections, or coordinate a set of drawings, and lets not even talk about the non US trained people with out immigration papers who would be more than happy to come to work for us if we completed all of their immigration paperwork.
I have talked to a number of engineers who make the same comment about the lack of competent Architect Level I (AIA Job Definition) people.
dsc, what have these $75/10k people been doing for ten years? I would more-or-less fall into their category, except that I do know how to do all the things you mentioned. My weakness is in CA, as I happened to work on a series of projects that came right through CD's and then sadly fall through. Just bad luck on my part, but it does make for a bit of a hole in my experience.
So I wonder if people are overly-specialized, and then when they try to move to a new position they want to gain new experience rather than keep doing what they already have been doing? Is that what you're seeing in your applications?
I do think there is some truth to people getting just beyond their internship, maybe not quite getting the license, and leaving architecture to pursue other work. I know a couple of those people myself. And I am certain if I had spent 6 years building mocdels for a starchitect I would have wanted to get the hell out of the architecture world - so maybe that's what you're seeing.
Is this because the numbers are dwindling, or that folks in this experience range(of which i am one) are getting registered, having families, buying houses etc, and not looking to make a change? If the numbers are dwindling, I can certainly understand why. I won't go into details as I believe that they are well documented on this site (ie the time it takes to learn anything and the lack of renumeration equivalent with other professions.)
There are a lot of people who received field grade commissions to PA during the boom of the late nineties but never got the overall experience. Read: have completed one 10M educational project from start to finish only coordinating the project and not truly designing and/or understanding it.
I keep seeing a lot of people take the head hunter route but still not have a decent skill set. Read: flunking cad tests. (our test is not too hard. Entry level: scale in a home plan, no layers, just be accurate, and PA scale in a section and be able to talk about it.)
Not sounding brutal, but poaching is becoming commonplace. The conduit to the candidates is hard. The PA’s with families are my target candidate because of the desire to stay local.
With as many people on the forum complaining about their jobs. Why don’t they do something about it?
dsc, can you explain what you mean by "...only coordinating the project and not truly designing and/or understanding it?
Also, if I was in a firm (I'm not) and was a target for poaching, most likely the only thing that would make me leave would be a significant bump in salary - is that why these people w/o your desired experience are asking too much?
what i'm seeing: people with the skill set you're looking for are too often ending up pigeonholed in their offices as the IT go-to person or the rendering person, etc. since the older people in the office are unable or unwilling to learn the computer programs, a bifurcation happens within the firm and the younger computer-savvy kids are not allowed to get the beginning-to-end holistic understanding of a project like i/my age group did.
these people are dissatisfied (as i would be) and fishing around for other options, including leaving the profession or moving to different markets where they hope to become more well-rounded.
i.e., they're as frustrated as you are. and if you snag one, follow-through with giving them experience in different arenas of the work.
What I mean was the candidate with 6 years experience who’s job it was to schedule and attend all of the meetings with the consultants and not do any actual work. She was aghast that we did any MEP or S work in house. Or a similar candidate with 10 years experience who could not draw a section in cad. A 2x6 8’-1†wall was drawn 1’-0†wide and 10’-0†tall with a note: “shown for illustrative purposes only, coordinate with structuralâ€. He was scaling in a ¾†section.
As for poaching, we offer a closer commute. Our office is 15 min from some of the nicer areas in the north suburbs. Average commute time in our office is about 30 min. As for too much salary, the candidates well know what the AIA salary range is . We are about 5% above that range. (it was well worth the $270 and solved a lot of confusion from the intern staff). However, if they were half as good as they are advertising I have no problem paying the salary.
firms that are willing to spread the proverbial knowledge are few and far between. lb, i'm surprised that you admit you're light in CA. i think you've had many valuable comments on the subject.
i fall into this catagory, can do all the things you state plus the pm stuff also (billing, scheduling, work plans, etc.). as for the candidate who can't scale a section, don't hire them. i would rather work my ass off instead of working next to incompetent people. it'll cost more in the long run.
dsc_arch, i wouldn't be that surprised at the candidate's surprise of your firm doing MEP and S work inhouse. my experience in small, predominantly type v residential offices is that most of that was done inhouse. when i've mentioned that in larger firms, my cowrkers look at me funny.
in my office, i see people pigeon holed into CA with this skill set. it's hard to move onto design and follow a project through to delivery. my biggest frustration with the profession (other than the pay, of course) is the time it takes to get experience. a project from beginning to end could last several years. getting CA experience on a complicated, large project might be frustrating for some because of how long it takes.
The CA experience has been a godsend. We offer more CM then traditional CA (our developer / builder’s teach us a lot). We got to that point by starting small and working up from there. We devlop one or two projects a year for ourselves or for our clients.
In our office we have a saying. If your contractor said that it can’t be built, we’ll build it. (of course these have to be from our plans) I have seen a lot of non- buildable homes and office buildings that have come to us after they have fired their first architect. (yes, we get a letter from the previous architect before beginning work)
Having construction experience is something that we look for in our candidates too.
This could be added to the to the dwindling ranks of the qualified.
Thanks Devil Dog, I have lots of small-scale CA experience but nothing above a half a million construction cost (houses, small remodels). Those $10mil project DSC mentions are not something I've done CA for, though I've done everything else on them. What I have done is CA for small public works projects which involve separate prime contractors: in other words, CA with three times the usual paperwork and bureaucracy. So fun.
I agree, dsc, someone who can manage a multi-million construction project WELL is a godsend. It is so easy to eat up budget in CA, seems that is where a lot of projects become money losers. It seems to me a potential employee with time spent swinging a hammer AND multi-million CA experience would be rare.
Oh and I agree also Devil Dog, I've never had xperience with MEP/S inhouse. Always either consultants or design-build with the vendor. Also, your last paragraph is why "young" architects are up to 40 years old: it takes a lot of years to get a lot of experience.
Steven, your perceived phenomenon is also accurate, I think. I feel lucky to have never been pigeonholed as I have seen so many be.
young architect is relative as it all boils down to years of experience. with folks moving to architectural masters(misnomer)degrees without experience in the field at later ages. if you get your first degree at age 50, you are a young architect but you already have the wrinkles.
I'm not at all surprised that the engineering firms you know have trouble finding qualified Architect 1's (AIA definition.) The AIA's definition for that category is a licensed or unlicensed person with 3 to 5 years of experience. The problem is that, because of the current average 7.5 years from graduation to licensure, many people in that 3 to 5 year category are still plugging away at getting their IDP units marked off, have limited experience in many areas of practice, and are in a catch-22 because in order to become "experienced" they need exposure to those areas, but firms (and their insurance companies especially) frequently reserve construction admin duties,consultant coord., contract issues, bidding, etc. to licensed staff only.
In short the majority of the Architect 1 category aren't particularly experienced yet. (I know there are many exceptions to this.)
On your issue of the person with 6 to 10 years of experience: the AIA has had some charts in their salary surveys in some years (don't know if they have this in the current version) that show that once you get up into the more senior positions there aren't really a lot of people making the average salary. Instead the average for most regions seems to be the mid-point between 2 tiers of salaries - which probably represent in part a split between experience levels, as well as a split between types of firms - with few people actually making a number at or near the average.
The result of this for you is that 5% above the AIA average would be below what the more experienced "upper tier" of this category would probably be expecting or making already, while the lower tier of the category are probably the people you're seeing who are less qualified than what you're looking for. In other words if you want to be competetive in attracting top candidates you should probably look at the 75th percentile for the category, not 5% more than the 50th.
Also: I have about 10 years of experience, so maybe I'm overqualified as a candidate for your job, but even if I did meet your experience profile I know that I would flunk your CAD test. Why? Because even though over the years I've been everything from a firm's "CAD manager" to the 3D model guru to teacher of an architecture school class focused on 2D and 3D computer drawings, I haven't worked in a firm that uses AutoCAD in almost 10 years. When I was looking for a job (at about the 7-years-of-experience level) I almost always skipped the ads that said "AutoCAD required" and I told firms that had CAD tests that I would fail so no point in bothering with the test. Some of those firms offered jobs anyway, but I was put off by the idea that at that level of experience the firm was so with my CAD skills. I do understand why firms feel the need for these tests - but they tend to give the impression that the firm is looking for CAD production people, which is exactly what people in your target experience level are often trying to break OUT of!
Personally if I was in your difficult hiring situation I'd probably back off on the CAD test, and even offer to send an otherwise-qualified candidate to a CAD course as a "perk" of the new job.
Anyway, the numbers of people coming out of architecture school are about the same as they were 15 years ago (though they dipped in the middle of that period for awhile.) But the number of people ultimately getting registered has dwindled significantly - by as much as 35% by some reports - and the amount of time this takes has stretched out quite a lot, so a perosn with 6 years experience today is often not as broadly experienced as the person with 6 years experience 15 years ago.
I have spent the last seven months doing CA on a project and, except for an occasional ASK, have hardly gone near Autocad. And I don't miss it.
Also, as far as cad tests go, my last firm, which did structural and mep in house, didn't use paperspace. So, at my new firm everything is quite different. Although we do none of the MEP and S in house.
One difficulty in getting varied experience is that unless one does a task quite often the knowledge can be lost. If, for example, one had some exposure doing mechanical load calcs five years ago but have done none since, well what was learned won't be retained.
And it is true that getting the exposure in all the IDP categories, if done legitimately, (ie actually writes specs or just retyping them and using spell check) can seem to take forever.
Also, as far as licensing goes, in my firm there are several guys who flat out have no interest in getting registered. They just view their job as a job and nothing more. Another guy just got his license. I don't know if he is going to start his own office or not. As far as liability goes only one principal stamps the drawings.
In our small firm everyone wares many hats. I have been teaming up our most experienced person with an intern. But I can not afford to have the sr person drafting because it is just not as productive.
However, my partner and I were raised on the computer and draft faster than the interns and it is still cost effective for us to draw. Probably I am looking for my clone. Better yet my partner’s lone. She is better than I am.
Godsend…
What I meant was exposure to one project, or two or three or ten, was helpful to see how it is done on large scale and than figure out a way to do it better. I can not stand bureaucracy and shy away from public work. Most of our work is under $3 Mil and most under ½ Mil. These projects for me are more rewarding than my experience on large schools.
The experience I am talking about is interns who formally swung hammers during summers worked as a carpenter, drywall, mason and the like. The details and general understanding on how a building goes together helps them move into project management sooner.
we had recently advertised a junior position/fresh grad, paying $22 an hour (which is way more than when i started). We got about 30 resumes, each one worse than the other. I also had the 'misfortune' of interviewing with 4-5 of them, what a real waste of time. We ended up not hiring.
Is it too much nowadays to ask for someone who can do CAD, a little bit 3d and some photoshop/illustrator and have a barely decent design sense?
I can still get these in droves. They are quite happy in our market starting at $14 (with time and ½) and working up towards $17.00 (also with time and one half). We train them from scratch (if they are fresh out of school) and hope that they are productive in three months to six months. We have developed an in house training program that in run by our job captains.
If they elect to move on, (and my we hate to see them go) typically for the reason to be closer to friends or family, they are getting jobs running small projects and moving up the ladder quite nicely. This training program exposes the intern to all IDP fundamentals.
By the time their three years are up, with some add’l coaching are ready for the Exam. We have one intern who is reviewing and commenting, as an exercise, small project contracts, as well as the AIA B144 Cma.
The person I am looking for is a solid project architect. Confidant in their abilities, able to draft their own projects if need be, mark up and train jr staff.
: i sympathize ... we're looking for the same person (in plural) ... everybody's looking for that same person ... they're scarce and they're hard to move when you find them.
in today's economy, that person is likely to be a) a principal in his/her own recently-started firm; or b) so entrenched in his/her existing position that there's little reason to make a move.
when the business cycle shifts, those people will be more readily available (when we don't need them so desparately) ... but, for now, our choices are to pay either unstainable wages to attract such experience, or find a way to do without.
increasingly, our firm is finding the second option to be the more desirable option.
As part of the the lost generation of architecture grads from the early to mid 90's who got sucked into the dot com boom or lost in the last recession- there is a missing group of architects with 8-14 years experience.
Well - I'm back with a vengence, and clawing my way through IDP and into project leadership... But how do I sell myself on my resume?
Do I claim 5 years experience (marking my return to architecture)?
3.5 years if I add up the hours spent as a part-time intern through grad school?
Or discribe the 12 years since undergrad with all the time spent designing scenery and project managing in the art departments of hollywood?
Dsc- your practices location in a suburb may be percieved as an asset by you and a liability to your job applicants. I prefer downtown offices with lots of nearby amenities and activities. Most of the firms located in the exurbs and suburbs of the world tend to be rather banal and lacking passion - just look at lots of websites and it becomes clear.
The best recruiting tool for fresh young talent is either getting your projects published or through teaching. Get involved with the local architecture school - then you can cherrypick the best students...
Good luck with the hiring. My own experience with head-hunters is that they over promise to both parties and then fail to deliver. Targeting your local AIA chapter or other group through networking will work much better.
Well, I've got 8 yrs of well rounded experience, CAD champ. I'm even looking for a job and I love Chicago. I'd love to get back to sailing in Waukegan.
I'm looking for a increase in pay and responsibility.
But I looked at your website, and I'm sorry, with all respect, but I'd need quite a bit of design responsibility AND pay to work for you. I'm going to guess that you will want to continue to do the design, and stick me with the junk tasks - and not pay so well. I'm not going to sacrifice my time to work on low quality design projects.
So, hence why people like me are not applying. We'd rather get out of architecture if we have to sell our souls. At least then, we'd get something for them.
your practice's location in a suburb may be perceived as an asset by you and a liability to your job applicants.
yep.
oh, and, treekiller: you should definitely include your scene/arts dept experience. project management is project management, whether in an architect's office or no. not that there wouldn't be a learning curve, but there's a learning curve office to office anyway.
my experience with head-hunters is that they keep trying to seduce me into "design-oriented" jobs at engineering firms...
: our firm delights in receiving resumes from people like you ... what you may lack in direct design-firm experience is probably offset by maturity, knowledge of the workaday world, etc. describe your work experience honestly and objectively and a firm like ours is very likely to be very interested. candidates like you usually have a very clear idea of why they're coming back and what they want to do ... that's very appealing in most instances.
that's not to say there might not be some compensation challenges - someone with 12 years of work experience in another industry tends to have higher economic needs and expectations than the typical 3-5 year architectural grad. but, if there's a willingness on both parties to discuss the matter openly and engage in a little give-and-take, that hurdle usually can be overcome
It's interesting, isn't it, gruen, what different people focus on when looking for a new job? In my professional life right now I value flexibility above all else: that's largely why I'm self-employed (with a partner), as I've taken a dramatic pay cut to be so. What matters to me currently is I can take an afternoon off to go to swim lessons with my son, or be home unexpectedly when he's sick, or I can disappear for 3 unpaid weeks to teach at a summer program, etc.
A traditional 40 hour/week job right now would have to pay me a LOT to be worth it, frankly. If my business should disappear, I'll be looking for any job to keep a roof over my family's heads, of course, but would put higher value on flexibility and a family-friendly office, if I could find one. I'm less interested in what type of projects I'd be working on, and feel like I could view any type of work as an educational experience, at least for a time.
It has to be a mix for me - money is important, because I need a certain amount to live - and cities are getting exponentially more expensive each year.
I believe architecture should pay us enough to allow us to invest in architecture in our own living environment, but I find that for myself, and many of my friends, we can't even afford housing, much less ownership.
Responsibility and respect are also very important - so many firms want us to simply run the computer for them, and keep the heck away from design.
Likewise, the issue you raise - the ability to have a LIFE is important too. Firms that require 50-80 hours a week, with or without extra pay, need to have their heads examined.
I also want to work for a firm where I can respect the design - even if I'm not the one making the decisions.
Location is critical. Chicago is great, but I bet the northern suburbs are a bit dull - and if one can't make enough to live in the city you are working in - they why why why? Firms should have a committment to the community they are in, and that should extend to their employees too.
Right now, that's what I'm looking for - I'm not a prima donna, but if I can't find the mix, I'll start my own firm too.
If you are doing 80-90 projects a year with 8 people, you should up your fee, and reduce your workload. You are selling too cheap. You don't want MORE WORK, you want MORE MONEY for LESS TIME. Sweatshop.
Our entire staff values flexibility over everything and most of us (except for me strangely) work 40 hours or less per week. I delight in picking up my kids from school early on a Friday and take them to school often. My partner works 30 hours give or take and family is first.
For where we are in life (small kids) the suburbs are key. For other staff proximity to good fishing, camping and hunting, for others the city is just too big. There is a place for everyone. The key is matching them up.
Quizzical writes <we're looking for the same person (in plural) ... everybody's looking for that same person ... they're scarce and they're hard to move when you find them.
in today's economy, that person is likely to be a) a principal in his/her own recently-started firm; or b) so entrenched in his/her existing position that there's little reason to make a move.
when the business cycle shifts, those people will be more readily available (when we don't need them so desparately) ... but, for now, our choices are to pay either unstainable wages to attract such experience, or find a way to do without.
increasingly, our firm is finding the second option to be the more desirable option>
We are growing our batch in house but have two to four years to wait.
The market will cool. The start up firm may fail, or be acquired.
If principal A draws something up and gives it to you to work out, how is that not designing? You are in fact designing the project. Everything is design. From the sheet layout to the building itself. Unless you are just taking old cd's and changing the address(which i have done) and a dimension or two, you are definitely designing and should see yourself that way.
We give broad strokes and let the interns flush out the entire idea. We hold weekly pinups and everyone presents. -- Even the intern with three weeks experience.
It can be done and it is fun.
The big problem is the sr pa’s don’t get time to design other than the broad strokes. They lament.
However, realistically, on a small project their time is better served marking up and coaching.
First, I'm enjoying this discussion and am curious about how well it is chugging along when it's a Sunday afternoon and most of us hopefully are not working (I am, of course, for a deadline tomorrow).
dsc, my old firm took the approach that quizzical describes: when there were few mid-level people, the youngsters were just handed more responsibility and learned via baptism by fire. I learned a lot in my first five years at that firm! Through the process they groomed us into the mid-level PMs that they wanted. It was a great firm, but yes, there were a few years in there that I was working long, long hours and often felt over my head in terms of responsibility. When you're shortly out of school, though, that schedule is OK, even appealing.
My fear is that the market IS cooling, and if my firm fails, I'll be hard-pressed to find a job because instead a 22-yo computer whiz will be hired for $14/hour.
Well, I don't know if you're a sweatshop or not. But I do know that small projects are often as hard as large ones - which is why you have to charge more for them. So, within that, you are on the right track. Maybe if you had fewer projects, that paid more, you wouldn't need the new employee(?)
Oh and yes, I also agree with vado's definition of design. I even enjoy "designing" directly on-site the way the ducts run to minimize soffits. It's all problem-solving and very satisfying.
Ironically, I feel that my qualifications/skills are not in demand - it seems that I don't have enough experience to be a PM (Most want 10+ yrs) and maybe too much to be a team member of various flavors.
Well, we'll see how my job search goes. If no leads in a couple of months, I'll retrench.
I am enjoying this conversation so much that I havent even posted an image or mentioned any rock and roll lyrics. LB I know you like to visualize out in the field. I fear the market may also be cooling, at least I know of some projects that have suddenly died in our office. residential and commercial. the resume is definitely updated.
I'm another 10+ years of experience person who might shy away from your firm if I saw an emphasis on Autocad. I can run rings around interns in any speed and accuracy competition on 5 different cad applications, but sorry Autocad just hasn't been one that any of my past jobs used. I would really hope that at this point firms would be more interested in the rest of my credentials and experience, as all cad applications are learnable, especially if you are well-versed in many.
I've been looking at job posts lately, just starting to see what's out there, considering a move back to a larger firm after having been second in right hand man/sr. associate in a small one for several years. But to be frank I've grown accustomed to certain conditions of my current situation and think if I do move on I will be very picky - not just about the type of firm and the work they do, but about a lot of terms. Right now I have a highly flexible schedule, basically naming my own hours. I teach part-time and the firm is completely flexible about that schedule. I have some outside projects, and the firm knows about that and has no problem with it. The office is super casual which I enjoy, there aren't many long hours, I only work 3 or 4 weekends per year (this being one of them, unfortunately) and I haven't done an all-nighter in at least 5 years. All of this is a big contrast from my intern days with a certain starchitect and with other larger firms.
My salary is a little lower than what the surveys show as average, and I have a good profit sharing deal, and the scheduling flexibility and other things listed above have been more important to me anyway. It would probably take a much higher number to finally get me to make a break with my present situation.
I have construction experience. I have marketing experience. I have thorough experience with all phases of projects ranging from detailing tiny residential additions to designing and project managing large institutional projects. My cad skills are excellent, all except in autocad.
So I guess my point is that a lot of good candidates at that level are spoiled. Sure, the market may cool and some of use might not even be employed anymore. But for the time being our current firms don't want to lose us, so they're pretty good to us. Other firms would have to come up with even better reasons for us to leave.
dsc_arch so far other than high wages your posts haven't given any idea as to what you offer employees that is special and enough to prompt a good candidate. Can you tell us why, other than competetive wages and suburban location (which is both a pro and con) what you're telling candidates about why they should choose you?
Aluminte, I hear you: I had great perks at my old job and only the prospect of my own business lured me away from that. It's a drastically different experience, and has good and bad points.
As for his(?) firm character, dsc did write this: Our entire staff values flexibility over everything and most of us (except for me strangely) work 40 hours or less per week. I delight in picking up my kids from school early on a Friday and take them to school often. My partner works 30 hours give or take and family is first.
which to me is extremely attractive in a firm. Also, the presence of a female partner (as posted previously) is a positive sign for me, sexist as that may sound.
how much a ethical company would pay me? i am willing to relocate and have tons of experience in all phases of architecture. do not turn me down without seeing my cad and cat skills please...
Wonderful issues. I guess since we are a regional firm, a lot of our work in known in the community. As for the salaries, they are honestly what we are paying people. It does come down to marketing and making us attractive to prospects. Since, all of our work is word of mouth and most of our staff have come from direct referrals, we are a bit lacking in the marketing arena.
All candidates get two to three interviews, a review from the staff with out the partners present. The CAD is important because we are still small. I would view the Architect Level I (ALI) a recently minted architect and the cad skills should be natural. And by skills I mean leveraging information. I know this is really a whole other thing entirely. We find that the people who have had two semesters of calculus understand how to leverage information more intuitively than those who have not.
Yes, we spoil our PA’s. We ougt to since they are responsible for working with us to determine the hours and the fee, making sure that the meet our horly estimate and the client’s budget. They should be giving markups to the ALI and more jr staff. The problem is that we don’t have enough competent ALI. The 10+ years should also be doing account management. We have some clients with (10) projects alone.
We are looking to grow because our clients have grown with us. I have been moved to an office – they voted, I moved. I used to be in the CAD pit with everyone else, I am now more the CEO than the principal in charge. Design for me is now with big fat markers and lots of follow-up with our JC’s.
somebody (maybe formerlyunkown) mentioned above that there are approximately the same number of arch school graduates today as there was fifteen years. now i don't recall where i read this, but somewhere there is a study regarding gender and architecture and it pointed out that although there are now considerably more young women studying architecture, fewer of them are sticking with it professionally. i don't mean to add a sexist dimension to this discussion, but could this discrepancy account for the lack of experienced architects of a particular age bracket? i don't know...just a thought.
fresh-out-of-school kids want a job and don't yet know who they're going to be as architects. they will be molded by their first experiences and it will affect their future choices. they may be easy to find/hire because they think they need to be hungry for a job.
older interns/architects may not have found the niche they wanted over the course of their recent decade and settle in mid/late career for a 'job' job.
your target audience - the somewhat experienced interns/architects that could be pms - may still have some idealism left, know where they'd like to be, and haven't given up trying for that, despite hardships that they might have to deal with for having made this decision.
separate from money, responsibility and the appearance of a democratic work environment, are you offering an environment in which they can make architecture about which they can feel good? not talking stellar stuff here, just responsible, sustainable work that serves a larger public good than just your client's bottom-line?
that is what i wanted to hear steven, ty. just gaging.
i can't live with this 18-25K a year bs anymore, even though i get to do nice projects that satisfies me and my puppies and the super happy clients, this vicious circle of being broke pisses off tina.
it is sunday and i let the crew into the job site this morning in beverly hills hair salon at 7 am for the first day of start construction. i stayed with them all morning using a grinder and crow bar etc., to figure out how we are going to rip some plaster work in order to do my genius design concept. after that, i came back to the office to clean the floors and the bathroom and shot that video.
i am pretty much unemployable by a regular office even though i have lots of exp and cali arch license.
i can't stand to work for, anymore, the people w/ big fat pens and boss labels. but there is something about this profession that we all have to pay our dues and make it happen, if we want to comply with that mysterious desire to build, and build more along with design, and design more.
i am a one person office and love to remain that way for the rest of my professional life. that is my choice. if i ever hire somebody, i would hire somebody who comes to work and doesn't ask me too much what they should do about the project they are working on, because they are good enough to see which parts of the project need their immediate attention and who needs to be called and engaged in order to get things going, because when i was an employee thats how i worked after my inter years.
i would pay them enough cash to do that. but, i am so afraid if i hire somebody and i don't have any work for them after a short while.
oh yeah, in the video, i was portraying an ideal employee in todays high turn out market where mark up is the name of the game.
However, the larger public good other than just your client's bottom-line is a tough thing. Because if it is over budget and never gets built then it serves no one.
A realistic understanding of what “the good†is a whole other thing.
You should always strive for the good. Furthermore, the good could be as simple as a job well done. Sometimes the good is pushing for a 90% efficient furnace and a 1-0†overhang on a basic raised ranch home (you’d be amazed what that does to the energy calc’s).
I feel that if you don’t then you have given up. We always bring it to the table.
mr. dsc_arch,
i believe all furnaces should be +90% efficient and buildings should be energy efficient.
a good furnace is not something should be 'pushed' for but simply executed.
i also find the equation of public good with being over budget a little misguided.
however, i do appreciate all your good intentions and efforts.
There is a Sci-fi master piece by Stanley Kubrick "2001:A Space Odyssey" that featured the idea of perfection through a computer the "HAL 9000" series computer. Within the fiction of the film the computer delivered absolute perfection and servitude. Your claim to the perfect architect can exist only within yourself (ego). No matter how many years of experience or level of academic achievement there will always be some extraordinary flaw. Some may be the best buddy and good with concepts, however they may dislike drafting or technical activities. Remember we are trained to think as Architects which differs to IT technitians*. We may aim and believe in absolute perfection and "coolness" but humans are humane, what makes us "special" is how we systematically handle error. If your architect does not like computers or making models of your own Ideas deal with it!!!
its kind of the state of things these days. employment conditions are task oriented for architects, that i have not seen any job ad that doesn't stress the acad, 3d, photoshop, whiz etc. as job requirement. sad because those are means to do architects' work. like asking a cook if they know how to chop an onion. what is even more sad, is they want you to chop that onion to make sure you are not slow on chopping it. and on that route, architecture becomes how well and how fast one uses the autocad. a mechanical skill that you can easily learn in technical school in one or two semester.
most of the practice is not focused on real architecture but inadequetly advocated as mostly a service industry, client satisfaction, their bottom line etc.
these are important, but end result is putting the profession in such a place also taking away its idealistic tools from it. sort of disarming ourselves against our colonizers if one looks at it this way.
call me unrealistic, dreaming or whatever but i am vehemently against killing architecture's non consumeristic aspect. look where we are with it. our buildings are mostly shaped by financial gains. our architectural institutions ,aia comes to mind, advocates client service more than anything else. we are declared black sheep if we critisize this and deemed useless idealists, paper architects. and those idealists are the ones who ignites public excitement. so the profession in a way punishes the idealist and the dreamer by cutting them off, unless they are super stars, and rewards the ever so profiteer satisfying conservative majority.
i want to see people hiring architects not cad operators and blueprint generators. i want to see a culture who rewards the black sheep a little, rewards the daring, the progressive. i want to see a profession not always based on profit calculations and proper ways to run the expanding business and networking endlessly for more mundane street developments and public/commercial buildings and homes but a profession which tells the public where it's at. creatively, culturally and idealistically. i want the ideailst to get a job, appreciated and given opportunuty to develop.
enough is enough, these conservative dudes has got our art from our hands and trying to make us cad operators. we worth more than that folks. it is our ideals which will make this survive and progress not some kind of a cushy job to fix the facades of cheap buildings from chippendale to mid tudor or to some other bumfuck clients-like-it trash bin that uses too many nails for the extra italian effect.
i am not a kid iam fifty years old and i am screaming for progress...
Architects: the new endangered species part two or: are the ranks of the qualified dwindling to nothing
Architects: the new endangered species part two or :
I was hoping that Architects: the new endangered species would go in this tangent but it didn't so I am starting this thread.
It is just me or are the ranks of the qualified dwindling to nothing?
You would be amazed in the lack of response that we have for a 6-10 year experience person. I can find interns without experience in droves, I can find people with 10 years plus experience asking for $75,000 that can not use a computer, draw sections, or coordinate a set of drawings, and lets not even talk about the non US trained people with out immigration papers who would be more than happy to come to work for us if we completed all of their immigration paperwork.
I have talked to a number of engineers who make the same comment about the lack of competent Architect Level I (AIA Job Definition) people.
Am i crazy or what?
dsc, what have these $75/10k people been doing for ten years? I would more-or-less fall into their category, except that I do know how to do all the things you mentioned. My weakness is in CA, as I happened to work on a series of projects that came right through CD's and then sadly fall through. Just bad luck on my part, but it does make for a bit of a hole in my experience.
So I wonder if people are overly-specialized, and then when they try to move to a new position they want to gain new experience rather than keep doing what they already have been doing? Is that what you're seeing in your applications?
I do think there is some truth to people getting just beyond their internship, maybe not quite getting the license, and leaving architecture to pursue other work. I know a couple of those people myself. And I am certain if I had spent 6 years building mocdels for a starchitect I would have wanted to get the hell out of the architecture world - so maybe that's what you're seeing.
Sorry to ramble I'm unfocusd this morning.
Is this because the numbers are dwindling, or that folks in this experience range(of which i am one) are getting registered, having families, buying houses etc, and not looking to make a change? If the numbers are dwindling, I can certainly understand why. I won't go into details as I believe that they are well documented on this site (ie the time it takes to learn anything and the lack of renumeration equivalent with other professions.)
Thanks to both Liberty bell and Vadro Retro,
There are a lot of people who received field grade commissions to PA during the boom of the late nineties but never got the overall experience. Read: have completed one 10M educational project from start to finish only coordinating the project and not truly designing and/or understanding it.
I keep seeing a lot of people take the head hunter route but still not have a decent skill set. Read: flunking cad tests. (our test is not too hard. Entry level: scale in a home plan, no layers, just be accurate, and PA scale in a section and be able to talk about it.)
Not sounding brutal, but poaching is becoming commonplace. The conduit to the candidates is hard. The PA’s with families are my target candidate because of the desire to stay local.
With as many people on the forum complaining about their jobs. Why don’t they do something about it?
See “Anyone in Chicago love their jobâ€
dsc, can you explain what you mean by "...only coordinating the project and not truly designing and/or understanding it?
Also, if I was in a firm (I'm not) and was a target for poaching, most likely the only thing that would make me leave would be a significant bump in salary - is that why these people w/o your desired experience are asking too much?
This is an interesting discussion.
what i'm seeing: people with the skill set you're looking for are too often ending up pigeonholed in their offices as the IT go-to person or the rendering person, etc. since the older people in the office are unable or unwilling to learn the computer programs, a bifurcation happens within the firm and the younger computer-savvy kids are not allowed to get the beginning-to-end holistic understanding of a project like i/my age group did.
these people are dissatisfied (as i would be) and fishing around for other options, including leaving the profession or moving to different markets where they hope to become more well-rounded.
i.e., they're as frustrated as you are. and if you snag one, follow-through with giving them experience in different arenas of the work.
What I mean was the candidate with 6 years experience who’s job it was to schedule and attend all of the meetings with the consultants and not do any actual work. She was aghast that we did any MEP or S work in house. Or a similar candidate with 10 years experience who could not draw a section in cad. A 2x6 8’-1†wall was drawn 1’-0†wide and 10’-0†tall with a note: “shown for illustrative purposes only, coordinate with structuralâ€. He was scaling in a ¾†section.
As for poaching, we offer a closer commute. Our office is 15 min from some of the nicer areas in the north suburbs. Average commute time in our office is about 30 min. As for too much salary, the candidates well know what the AIA salary range is . We are about 5% above that range. (it was well worth the $270 and solved a lot of confusion from the intern staff). However, if they were half as good as they are advertising I have no problem paying the salary.
firms that are willing to spread the proverbial knowledge are few and far between. lb, i'm surprised that you admit you're light in CA. i think you've had many valuable comments on the subject.
i fall into this catagory, can do all the things you state plus the pm stuff also (billing, scheduling, work plans, etc.). as for the candidate who can't scale a section, don't hire them. i would rather work my ass off instead of working next to incompetent people. it'll cost more in the long run.
dsc_arch, i wouldn't be that surprised at the candidate's surprise of your firm doing MEP and S work inhouse. my experience in small, predominantly type v residential offices is that most of that was done inhouse. when i've mentioned that in larger firms, my cowrkers look at me funny.
in my office, i see people pigeon holed into CA with this skill set. it's hard to move onto design and follow a project through to delivery. my biggest frustration with the profession (other than the pay, of course) is the time it takes to get experience. a project from beginning to end could last several years. getting CA experience on a complicated, large project might be frustrating for some because of how long it takes.
LibertyBell,
The CA experience has been a godsend. We offer more CM then traditional CA (our developer / builder’s teach us a lot). We got to that point by starting small and working up from there. We devlop one or two projects a year for ourselves or for our clients.
In our office we have a saying. If your contractor said that it can’t be built, we’ll build it. (of course these have to be from our plans) I have seen a lot of non- buildable homes and office buildings that have come to us after they have fired their first architect. (yes, we get a letter from the previous architect before beginning work)
Having construction experience is something that we look for in our candidates too.
This could be added to the to the dwindling ranks of the qualified.
Thanks Devil Dog, I have lots of small-scale CA experience but nothing above a half a million construction cost (houses, small remodels). Those $10mil project DSC mentions are not something I've done CA for, though I've done everything else on them. What I have done is CA for small public works projects which involve separate prime contractors: in other words, CA with three times the usual paperwork and bureaucracy. So fun.
I agree, dsc, someone who can manage a multi-million construction project WELL is a godsend. It is so easy to eat up budget in CA, seems that is where a lot of projects become money losers. It seems to me a potential employee with time spent swinging a hammer AND multi-million CA experience would be rare.
hey i think i could pass that test! woohoo...is it graded on a curve?
Oh and I agree also Devil Dog, I've never had xperience with MEP/S inhouse. Always either consultants or design-build with the vendor. Also, your last paragraph is why "young" architects are up to 40 years old: it takes a lot of years to get a lot of experience.
Steven, your perceived phenomenon is also accurate, I think. I feel lucky to have never been pigeonholed as I have seen so many be.
young architect is relative as it all boils down to years of experience. with folks moving to architectural masters(misnomer)degrees without experience in the field at later ages. if you get your first degree at age 50, you are a young architect but you already have the wrinkles.
It seems there are a number of issues here.
I'm not at all surprised that the engineering firms you know have trouble finding qualified Architect 1's (AIA definition.) The AIA's definition for that category is a licensed or unlicensed person with 3 to 5 years of experience. The problem is that, because of the current average 7.5 years from graduation to licensure, many people in that 3 to 5 year category are still plugging away at getting their IDP units marked off, have limited experience in many areas of practice, and are in a catch-22 because in order to become "experienced" they need exposure to those areas, but firms (and their insurance companies especially) frequently reserve construction admin duties,consultant coord., contract issues, bidding, etc. to licensed staff only.
In short the majority of the Architect 1 category aren't particularly experienced yet. (I know there are many exceptions to this.)
On your issue of the person with 6 to 10 years of experience: the AIA has had some charts in their salary surveys in some years (don't know if they have this in the current version) that show that once you get up into the more senior positions there aren't really a lot of people making the average salary. Instead the average for most regions seems to be the mid-point between 2 tiers of salaries - which probably represent in part a split between experience levels, as well as a split between types of firms - with few people actually making a number at or near the average.
The result of this for you is that 5% above the AIA average would be below what the more experienced "upper tier" of this category would probably be expecting or making already, while the lower tier of the category are probably the people you're seeing who are less qualified than what you're looking for. In other words if you want to be competetive in attracting top candidates you should probably look at the 75th percentile for the category, not 5% more than the 50th.
Also: I have about 10 years of experience, so maybe I'm overqualified as a candidate for your job, but even if I did meet your experience profile I know that I would flunk your CAD test. Why? Because even though over the years I've been everything from a firm's "CAD manager" to the 3D model guru to teacher of an architecture school class focused on 2D and 3D computer drawings, I haven't worked in a firm that uses AutoCAD in almost 10 years. When I was looking for a job (at about the 7-years-of-experience level) I almost always skipped the ads that said "AutoCAD required" and I told firms that had CAD tests that I would fail so no point in bothering with the test. Some of those firms offered jobs anyway, but I was put off by the idea that at that level of experience the firm was so with my CAD skills. I do understand why firms feel the need for these tests - but they tend to give the impression that the firm is looking for CAD production people, which is exactly what people in your target experience level are often trying to break OUT of!
Personally if I was in your difficult hiring situation I'd probably back off on the CAD test, and even offer to send an otherwise-qualified candidate to a CAD course as a "perk" of the new job.
Anyway, the numbers of people coming out of architecture school are about the same as they were 15 years ago (though they dipped in the middle of that period for awhile.) But the number of people ultimately getting registered has dwindled significantly - by as much as 35% by some reports - and the amount of time this takes has stretched out quite a lot, so a perosn with 6 years experience today is often not as broadly experienced as the person with 6 years experience 15 years ago.
Former makes some good points.
I have spent the last seven months doing CA on a project and, except for an occasional ASK, have hardly gone near Autocad. And I don't miss it.
Also, as far as cad tests go, my last firm, which did structural and mep in house, didn't use paperspace. So, at my new firm everything is quite different. Although we do none of the MEP and S in house.
One difficulty in getting varied experience is that unless one does a task quite often the knowledge can be lost. If, for example, one had some exposure doing mechanical load calcs five years ago but have done none since, well what was learned won't be retained.
And it is true that getting the exposure in all the IDP categories, if done legitimately, (ie actually writes specs or just retyping them and using spell check) can seem to take forever.
Also, as far as licensing goes, in my firm there are several guys who flat out have no interest in getting registered. They just view their job as a job and nothing more. Another guy just got his license. I don't know if he is going to start his own office or not. As far as liability goes only one principal stamps the drawings.
Cad testing.
In our small firm everyone wares many hats. I have been teaming up our most experienced person with an intern. But I can not afford to have the sr person drafting because it is just not as productive.
However, my partner and I were raised on the computer and draft faster than the interns and it is still cost effective for us to draw. Probably I am looking for my clone. Better yet my partner’s lone. She is better than I am.
Godsend…
What I meant was exposure to one project, or two or three or ten, was helpful to see how it is done on large scale and than figure out a way to do it better. I can not stand bureaucracy and shy away from public work. Most of our work is under $3 Mil and most under ½ Mil. These projects for me are more rewarding than my experience on large schools.
The experience I am talking about is interns who formally swung hammers during summers worked as a carpenter, drywall, mason and the like. The details and general understanding on how a building goes together helps them move into project management sooner.
The quest for the grail continues...
we had recently advertised a junior position/fresh grad, paying $22 an hour (which is way more than when i started). We got about 30 resumes, each one worse than the other. I also had the 'misfortune' of interviewing with 4-5 of them, what a real waste of time. We ended up not hiring.
Is it too much nowadays to ask for someone who can do CAD, a little bit 3d and some photoshop/illustrator and have a barely decent design sense?
I can still get these in droves. They are quite happy in our market starting at $14 (with time and ½) and working up towards $17.00 (also with time and one half). We train them from scratch (if they are fresh out of school) and hope that they are productive in three months to six months. We have developed an in house training program that in run by our job captains.
If they elect to move on, (and my we hate to see them go) typically for the reason to be closer to friends or family, they are getting jobs running small projects and moving up the ladder quite nicely. This training program exposes the intern to all IDP fundamentals.
By the time their three years are up, with some add’l coaching are ready for the Exam. We have one intern who is reviewing and commenting, as an exercise, small project contracts, as well as the AIA B144 Cma.
The person I am looking for is a solid project architect. Confidant in their abilities, able to draft their own projects if need be, mark up and train jr staff.
: i sympathize ... we're looking for the same person (in plural) ... everybody's looking for that same person ... they're scarce and they're hard to move when you find them.
in today's economy, that person is likely to be a) a principal in his/her own recently-started firm; or b) so entrenched in his/her existing position that there's little reason to make a move.
when the business cycle shifts, those people will be more readily available (when we don't need them so desparately) ... but, for now, our choices are to pay either unstainable wages to attract such experience, or find a way to do without.
increasingly, our firm is finding the second option to be the more desirable option.
As part of the the lost generation of architecture grads from the early to mid 90's who got sucked into the dot com boom or lost in the last recession- there is a missing group of architects with 8-14 years experience.
Well - I'm back with a vengence, and clawing my way through IDP and into project leadership... But how do I sell myself on my resume?
Do I claim 5 years experience (marking my return to architecture)?
3.5 years if I add up the hours spent as a part-time intern through grad school?
Or discribe the 12 years since undergrad with all the time spent designing scenery and project managing in the art departments of hollywood?
Dsc- your practices location in a suburb may be percieved as an asset by you and a liability to your job applicants. I prefer downtown offices with lots of nearby amenities and activities. Most of the firms located in the exurbs and suburbs of the world tend to be rather banal and lacking passion - just look at lots of websites and it becomes clear.
The best recruiting tool for fresh young talent is either getting your projects published or through teaching. Get involved with the local architecture school - then you can cherrypick the best students...
Good luck with the hiring. My own experience with head-hunters is that they over promise to both parties and then fail to deliver. Targeting your local AIA chapter or other group through networking will work much better.
Well, I've got 8 yrs of well rounded experience, CAD champ. I'm even looking for a job and I love Chicago. I'd love to get back to sailing in Waukegan.
I'm looking for a increase in pay and responsibility.
But I looked at your website, and I'm sorry, with all respect, but I'd need quite a bit of design responsibility AND pay to work for you. I'm going to guess that you will want to continue to do the design, and stick me with the junk tasks - and not pay so well. I'm not going to sacrifice my time to work on low quality design projects.
So, hence why people like me are not applying. We'd rather get out of architecture if we have to sell our souls. At least then, we'd get something for them.
yep.
oh, and, treekiller: you should definitely include your scene/arts dept experience. project management is project management, whether in an architect's office or no. not that there wouldn't be a learning curve, but there's a learning curve office to office anyway.
my experience with head-hunters is that they keep trying to seduce me into "design-oriented" jobs at engineering firms...
: our firm delights in receiving resumes from people like you ... what you may lack in direct design-firm experience is probably offset by maturity, knowledge of the workaday world, etc. describe your work experience honestly and objectively and a firm like ours is very likely to be very interested. candidates like you usually have a very clear idea of why they're coming back and what they want to do ... that's very appealing in most instances.
that's not to say there might not be some compensation challenges - someone with 12 years of work experience in another industry tends to have higher economic needs and expectations than the typical 3-5 year architectural grad. but, if there's a willingness on both parties to discuss the matter openly and engage in a little give-and-take, that hurdle usually can be overcome
It's interesting, isn't it, gruen, what different people focus on when looking for a new job? In my professional life right now I value flexibility above all else: that's largely why I'm self-employed (with a partner), as I've taken a dramatic pay cut to be so. What matters to me currently is I can take an afternoon off to go to swim lessons with my son, or be home unexpectedly when he's sick, or I can disappear for 3 unpaid weeks to teach at a summer program, etc.
A traditional 40 hour/week job right now would have to pay me a LOT to be worth it, frankly. If my business should disappear, I'll be looking for any job to keep a roof over my family's heads, of course, but would put higher value on flexibility and a family-friendly office, if I could find one. I'm less interested in what type of projects I'd be working on, and feel like I could view any type of work as an educational experience, at least for a time.
It has to be a mix for me - money is important, because I need a certain amount to live - and cities are getting exponentially more expensive each year.
I believe architecture should pay us enough to allow us to invest in architecture in our own living environment, but I find that for myself, and many of my friends, we can't even afford housing, much less ownership.
Responsibility and respect are also very important - so many firms want us to simply run the computer for them, and keep the heck away from design.
Likewise, the issue you raise - the ability to have a LIFE is important too. Firms that require 50-80 hours a week, with or without extra pay, need to have their heads examined.
I also want to work for a firm where I can respect the design - even if I'm not the one making the decisions.
Location is critical. Chicago is great, but I bet the northern suburbs are a bit dull - and if one can't make enough to live in the city you are working in - they why why why? Firms should have a committment to the community they are in, and that should extend to their employees too.
Right now, that's what I'm looking for - I'm not a prima donna, but if I can't find the mix, I'll start my own firm too.
BTW: I was following the thread over here:
business of arch
If you are doing 80-90 projects a year with 8 people, you should up your fee, and reduce your workload. You are selling too cheap. You don't want MORE WORK, you want MORE MONEY for LESS TIME. Sweatshop.
Thank you Libertybell.
Our entire staff values flexibility over everything and most of us (except for me strangely) work 40 hours or less per week. I delight in picking up my kids from school early on a Friday and take them to school often. My partner works 30 hours give or take and family is first.
For where we are in life (small kids) the suburbs are key. For other staff proximity to good fishing, camping and hunting, for others the city is just too big. There is a place for everyone. The key is matching them up.
We have been increasing our fees.
The Villages have been increasing requirements. We are one of the few firms in the area even taking on small projects.
Again, here everything has to be done by an architect. Including sizing a (2) 2x 12 window header in a window replacement program.
There are a lot of moonlighters and other firms that do not do as professional a service out there.
We charge double the local rate and have a large backlog of work to do.
The key is adding more competent staff at living wages (50K+ for the low end for the 6-8 years position) So no Gruen, we are not a sweatshop.
Back on point.
Quizzical writes <we're looking for the same person (in plural) ... everybody's looking for that same person ... they're scarce and they're hard to move when you find them.
in today's economy, that person is likely to be a) a principal in his/her own recently-started firm; or b) so entrenched in his/her existing position that there's little reason to make a move.
when the business cycle shifts, those people will be more readily available (when we don't need them so desparately) ... but, for now, our choices are to pay either unstainable wages to attract such experience, or find a way to do without.
increasingly, our firm is finding the second option to be the more desirable option>
We are growing our batch in house but have two to four years to wait.
The market will cool. The start up firm may fail, or be acquired.
Any thoughts along these lines…
If principal A draws something up and gives it to you to work out, how is that not designing? You are in fact designing the project. Everything is design. From the sheet layout to the building itself. Unless you are just taking old cd's and changing the address(which i have done) and a dimension or two, you are definitely designing and should see yourself that way.
Absolutely!
We give broad strokes and let the interns flush out the entire idea. We hold weekly pinups and everyone presents. -- Even the intern with three weeks experience.
It can be done and it is fun.
The big problem is the sr pa’s don’t get time to design other than the broad strokes. They lament.
However, realistically, on a small project their time is better served marking up and coaching.
but back on point.
First, I'm enjoying this discussion and am curious about how well it is chugging along when it's a Sunday afternoon and most of us hopefully are not working (I am, of course, for a deadline tomorrow).
dsc, my old firm took the approach that quizzical describes: when there were few mid-level people, the youngsters were just handed more responsibility and learned via baptism by fire. I learned a lot in my first five years at that firm! Through the process they groomed us into the mid-level PMs that they wanted. It was a great firm, but yes, there were a few years in there that I was working long, long hours and often felt over my head in terms of responsibility. When you're shortly out of school, though, that schedule is OK, even appealing.
My fear is that the market IS cooling, and if my firm fails, I'll be hard-pressed to find a job because instead a 22-yo computer whiz will be hired for $14/hour.
Well, I don't know if you're a sweatshop or not. But I do know that small projects are often as hard as large ones - which is why you have to charge more for them. So, within that, you are on the right track. Maybe if you had fewer projects, that paid more, you wouldn't need the new employee(?)
Oh and yes, I also agree with vado's definition of design. I even enjoy "designing" directly on-site the way the ducts run to minimize soffits. It's all problem-solving and very satisfying.
Ironically, I feel that my qualifications/skills are not in demand - it seems that I don't have enough experience to be a PM (Most want 10+ yrs) and maybe too much to be a team member of various flavors.
Well, we'll see how my job search goes. If no leads in a couple of months, I'll retrench.
It's always hard to find good help....
I am enjoying this conversation so much that I havent even posted an image or mentioned any rock and roll lyrics. LB I know you like to visualize out in the field. I fear the market may also be cooling, at least I know of some projects that have suddenly died in our office. residential and commercial. the resume is definitely updated.
I'm another 10+ years of experience person who might shy away from your firm if I saw an emphasis on Autocad. I can run rings around interns in any speed and accuracy competition on 5 different cad applications, but sorry Autocad just hasn't been one that any of my past jobs used. I would really hope that at this point firms would be more interested in the rest of my credentials and experience, as all cad applications are learnable, especially if you are well-versed in many.
I've been looking at job posts lately, just starting to see what's out there, considering a move back to a larger firm after having been second in right hand man/sr. associate in a small one for several years. But to be frank I've grown accustomed to certain conditions of my current situation and think if I do move on I will be very picky - not just about the type of firm and the work they do, but about a lot of terms. Right now I have a highly flexible schedule, basically naming my own hours. I teach part-time and the firm is completely flexible about that schedule. I have some outside projects, and the firm knows about that and has no problem with it. The office is super casual which I enjoy, there aren't many long hours, I only work 3 or 4 weekends per year (this being one of them, unfortunately) and I haven't done an all-nighter in at least 5 years. All of this is a big contrast from my intern days with a certain starchitect and with other larger firms.
My salary is a little lower than what the surveys show as average, and I have a good profit sharing deal, and the scheduling flexibility and other things listed above have been more important to me anyway. It would probably take a much higher number to finally get me to make a break with my present situation.
I have construction experience. I have marketing experience. I have thorough experience with all phases of projects ranging from detailing tiny residential additions to designing and project managing large institutional projects. My cad skills are excellent, all except in autocad.
So I guess my point is that a lot of good candidates at that level are spoiled. Sure, the market may cool and some of use might not even be employed anymore. But for the time being our current firms don't want to lose us, so they're pretty good to us. Other firms would have to come up with even better reasons for us to leave.
dsc_arch so far other than high wages your posts haven't given any idea as to what you offer employees that is special and enough to prompt a good candidate. Can you tell us why, other than competetive wages and suburban location (which is both a pro and con) what you're telling candidates about why they should choose you?
Aluminte, I hear you: I had great perks at my old job and only the prospect of my own business lured me away from that. It's a drastically different experience, and has good and bad points.
As for his(?) firm character, dsc did write this:
Our entire staff values flexibility over everything and most of us (except for me strangely) work 40 hours or less per week. I delight in picking up my kids from school early on a Friday and take them to school often. My partner works 30 hours give or take and family is first.
which to me is extremely attractive in a firm. Also, the presence of a female partner (as posted previously) is a positive sign for me, sexist as that may sound.
(Informative and insightful discussion thread. Thank You)
how much a ethical company would pay me? i am willing to relocate and have tons of experience in all phases of architecture. do not turn me down without seeing my cad and cat skills please...
my motto; speed is the essence
Aluminate…
Wonderful issues. I guess since we are a regional firm, a lot of our work in known in the community. As for the salaries, they are honestly what we are paying people. It does come down to marketing and making us attractive to prospects. Since, all of our work is word of mouth and most of our staff have come from direct referrals, we are a bit lacking in the marketing arena.
All candidates get two to three interviews, a review from the staff with out the partners present. The CAD is important because we are still small. I would view the Architect Level I (ALI) a recently minted architect and the cad skills should be natural. And by skills I mean leveraging information. I know this is really a whole other thing entirely. We find that the people who have had two semesters of calculus understand how to leverage information more intuitively than those who have not.
Yes, we spoil our PA’s. We ougt to since they are responsible for working with us to determine the hours and the fee, making sure that the meet our horly estimate and the client’s budget. They should be giving markups to the ALI and more jr staff. The problem is that we don’t have enough competent ALI. The 10+ years should also be doing account management. We have some clients with (10) projects alone.
We are looking to grow because our clients have grown with us. I have been moved to an office – they voted, I moved. I used to be in the CAD pit with everyone else, I am now more the CEO than the principal in charge. Design for me is now with big fat markers and lots of follow-up with our JC’s.
that was b - u - tiffle, abra. with hands as fast as those, you could probably replace TWO people.
somebody (maybe formerlyunkown) mentioned above that there are approximately the same number of arch school graduates today as there was fifteen years. now i don't recall where i read this, but somewhere there is a study regarding gender and architecture and it pointed out that although there are now considerably more young women studying architecture, fewer of them are sticking with it professionally. i don't mean to add a sexist dimension to this discussion, but could this discrepancy account for the lack of experienced architects of a particular age bracket? i don't know...just a thought.
abra...wtf?
abra are you one of those savants who can crank out on cad but are unable to tie your shoes?
I believe it was in DI.net.
The title was something like: Architects are predominately white male and old. Emphasis on old.
Back to point:
Based on the above thread, develop a charter sketch of an intern fresh out of school, Job Captain / ARI, and an architect 10+ years.
Call these the architects of the early twenty-first century.
maybe the issue is this:
fresh-out-of-school kids want a job and don't yet know who they're going to be as architects. they will be molded by their first experiences and it will affect their future choices. they may be easy to find/hire because they think they need to be hungry for a job.
older interns/architects may not have found the niche they wanted over the course of their recent decade and settle in mid/late career for a 'job' job.
your target audience - the somewhat experienced interns/architects that could be pms - may still have some idealism left, know where they'd like to be, and haven't given up trying for that, despite hardships that they might have to deal with for having made this decision.
separate from money, responsibility and the appearance of a democratic work environment, are you offering an environment in which they can make architecture about which they can feel good? not talking stellar stuff here, just responsible, sustainable work that serves a larger public good than just your client's bottom-line?
^^ a question coming from my own experience.
that is what i wanted to hear steven, ty. just gaging.
i can't live with this 18-25K a year bs anymore, even though i get to do nice projects that satisfies me and my puppies and the super happy clients, this vicious circle of being broke pisses off tina.
it is sunday and i let the crew into the job site this morning in beverly hills hair salon at 7 am for the first day of start construction. i stayed with them all morning using a grinder and crow bar etc., to figure out how we are going to rip some plaster work in order to do my genius design concept. after that, i came back to the office to clean the floors and the bathroom and shot that video.
i am pretty much unemployable by a regular office even though i have lots of exp and cali arch license.
i can't stand to work for, anymore, the people w/ big fat pens and boss labels. but there is something about this profession that we all have to pay our dues and make it happen, if we want to comply with that mysterious desire to build, and build more along with design, and design more.
i am a one person office and love to remain that way for the rest of my professional life. that is my choice. if i ever hire somebody, i would hire somebody who comes to work and doesn't ask me too much what they should do about the project they are working on, because they are good enough to see which parts of the project need their immediate attention and who needs to be called and engaged in order to get things going, because when i was an employee thats how i worked after my inter years.
i would pay them enough cash to do that. but, i am so afraid if i hire somebody and i don't have any work for them after a short while.
oh yeah, in the video, i was portraying an ideal employee in todays high turn out market where mark up is the name of the game.
Yes, and great wrap up. Mr. Ward
However, the larger public good other than just your client's bottom-line is a tough thing. Because if it is over budget and never gets built then it serves no one.
A realistic understanding of what “the good†is a whole other thing.
You should always strive for the good. Furthermore, the good could be as simple as a job well done. Sometimes the good is pushing for a 90% efficient furnace and a 1-0†overhang on a basic raised ranch home (you’d be amazed what that does to the energy calc’s).
I feel that if you don’t then you have given up. We always bring it to the table.
mr. dsc_arch,
i believe all furnaces should be +90% efficient and buildings should be energy efficient.
a good furnace is not something should be 'pushed' for but simply executed.
i also find the equation of public good with being over budget a little misguided.
however, i do appreciate all your good intentions and efforts.
There is a Sci-fi master piece by Stanley Kubrick "2001:A Space Odyssey" that featured the idea of perfection through a computer the "HAL 9000" series computer. Within the fiction of the film the computer delivered absolute perfection and servitude. Your claim to the perfect architect can exist only within yourself (ego). No matter how many years of experience or level of academic achievement there will always be some extraordinary flaw. Some may be the best buddy and good with concepts, however they may dislike drafting or technical activities. Remember we are trained to think as Architects which differs to IT technitians*. We may aim and believe in absolute perfection and "coolness" but humans are humane, what makes us "special" is how we systematically handle error. If your architect does not like computers or making models of your own Ideas deal with it!!!
its kind of the state of things these days. employment conditions are task oriented for architects, that i have not seen any job ad that doesn't stress the acad, 3d, photoshop, whiz etc. as job requirement. sad because those are means to do architects' work. like asking a cook if they know how to chop an onion. what is even more sad, is they want you to chop that onion to make sure you are not slow on chopping it. and on that route, architecture becomes how well and how fast one uses the autocad. a mechanical skill that you can easily learn in technical school in one or two semester.
most of the practice is not focused on real architecture but inadequetly advocated as mostly a service industry, client satisfaction, their bottom line etc.
these are important, but end result is putting the profession in such a place also taking away its idealistic tools from it. sort of disarming ourselves against our colonizers if one looks at it this way.
call me unrealistic, dreaming or whatever but i am vehemently against killing architecture's non consumeristic aspect. look where we are with it. our buildings are mostly shaped by financial gains. our architectural institutions ,aia comes to mind, advocates client service more than anything else. we are declared black sheep if we critisize this and deemed useless idealists, paper architects. and those idealists are the ones who ignites public excitement. so the profession in a way punishes the idealist and the dreamer by cutting them off, unless they are super stars, and rewards the ever so profiteer satisfying conservative majority.
i want to see people hiring architects not cad operators and blueprint generators. i want to see a culture who rewards the black sheep a little, rewards the daring, the progressive. i want to see a profession not always based on profit calculations and proper ways to run the expanding business and networking endlessly for more mundane street developments and public/commercial buildings and homes but a profession which tells the public where it's at. creatively, culturally and idealistically. i want the ideailst to get a job, appreciated and given opportunuty to develop.
enough is enough, these conservative dudes has got our art from our hands and trying to make us cad operators. we worth more than that folks. it is our ideals which will make this survive and progress not some kind of a cushy job to fix the facades of cheap buildings from chippendale to mid tudor or to some other bumfuck clients-like-it trash bin that uses too many nails for the extra italian effect.
i am not a kid iam fifty years old and i am screaming for progress...
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