abracadabra, i mean this from the bottom of my heart...God bless you for writing that-you articulated so many of my issues with architecture so much better and more concisely that I ever could. I am having nearly existential issues about whether to continue to pursue architecture and am questioning my interest in the field because the firms basically seem to be looking for "braceros" and not for architects with a brain and with a POV. I know that you have to slog through the CAD monkey aspect of the job to eventually, just maybe, get to the "good stuff" but I am wondering if even the good stuff is all it's cracked up to be.
: i feel your pain, but let's get some perspective here. the state of our profession is not what it is altogether because most architects want it that way. there are broad economic, legal, societal and cultural forces at work that are difficult for us to influence, much less dominate.
in the middle part of the last century, work was plentiful, schedules were reasonable, fees were high relative to the effort required, building technology was stable and relatively simple, architects rarely spoke to a lawyer unless he was a client, E&O insurance was not yet a major concern, and it was relatively easy to make a good living as an architect. in these conditions, most architects could focus on creative work because their attention was not consumed by all of the other frightful things we must contend with today.
today, in addition to design there are a ton of other things that we must master and manage. it's damn hard to run a profitable practice, find and develop enough qualified help, maintain a steady supply of new work, stay out of court, keep abreast of all the new technologies and products, etc.
while i agree that design must be our salvation, i think you are being unduly harsh in your criticism of practitioners who attempt , in good faith, to contend with these operational issues not faced by earlier generations of architects.
until we learn how to manage our practices efficiently, command higher fees, maintain a steady supply of work over time, the frustrations you describe will remain in place simply because the typical practitioner has no other real option. i'm not suggesting that we are victims here, but this is a complex professional transition that is not yet complete.
babs, I wonder if the scenario you outline above is similar for other professions, for example, doctors and lawyers, against whom we always compare our salaries vis a vis our professional status?
I ask sincerely, I really don't know, except I know my sister the doctor pays a ton of malpractice insurance, much more than doctors did 50 years ago. But have other professions dealt better with the issues you raise? I wonder.
this is such a great thread - such depth and experience being applied to the topics at hand - i love this place and learn so much here - thank you all for sharing so much of what you know - this gives me renewed faith in our profession.
Damn, got here too late for the drinks... but this really is a fabulous discussion anyway, even sober.
I think that that particular level is smaller than other levels. Think about it- there are a ton of recent grads because the people who are going to leave the profession haven't done so yet. There are a ton of people with 10+ years experience, because that also includes people with 20 years or more of experience- people who used to be considered not to be on the same level are now lumped together. The 3-5 years, newly minted architect range is an incredibly small one, and exists right when a lot of people have just left the profession, so you don't get as many of those as recent grads because a lot of people decide to bail within those first three years of work.
I absolutely agree with what many have said with regards to WHY so many people are bailing on this profession. I'm exploring my options so that I can join them right now. There's just not a good outlook. You work your ass off to get good, then all people want you to do is draft. So you draft because that's where the work is, you're not allowed to go to meetings because there are already two licensed people in there, your project manager gets pissy if you try to communicate directly with consultants because they think they're getting squeezed out of the loop. At some point, people forget that you can do something besides draft. They give you instructions so detailed you want to punch them and scream, "I've got a BRAIN! Let me use it, instead of telling me when to wipe my ass just so you can claim credit for thinking of it!" Oh, and then they tell you that they could care less whether you ever get licensed or not, because they don't need you to stamp drawings anyway. And at some point, you look around and realize that you don't want the life that any of the architects in your office have anyway. And you can tell yourself that you'll be different, better somehow, or you can find something else to spend your days doing that doesn't feel like you're fighting everyone all the time.
I don't think it's because of computers, per say. It's not that computers are *that* important. I think it's more the idea of a young worker realizing that the firm they work for would not get by without them because they can do something their boss(es) can't, yet the way they are treated and the way they are paid do not reflect that.
hey LB - going to digress on this thread a bit (great discussion), but I'm feeling the same slowdown and worried about having to get back into an office with young children right when there's a massive slowdown. Everyone is still hiring here, but I feel like the last time everyone was hiring like crazy - right when I got out of school - was just before the tech bust when tons of layoffs happened. We've had lots of meetings lately that haven't gone anywhere - once people find out how much it's going to cost they get cold feet because their house value is now static. anyways, we'll do what we have to do I guess but I'm getting nervous...
i would like to offer a rememdy and suggest that our profession should begin by reforming our internship program and implement mentoring programs nationwide...as I am sure most will agree that the current IDP is a joke. we should rethink the master-apprentice relationship model of the early 20th century and try to adapt it to current practice. all the offices i have worked at lack such a program and i believe that this attributes to the gaps mentioned earlier. i would think a young person with technology abilities and an old person with a lot of experience would have a lot to learn from one another, but it suprises me how dettached these two groups are at all the offices i have worked in (also an american cultural thing)
from my personal experience, i attribute most of my success (and good wage) to the wonderful relationship i have had with my mentor who is about 10 years my senior. part of why many young interns are pigeon holed i think is bc (as i have seen in other threads) many of them expect the office to do a lot for them without having the initiative to seek learning experiences for themselves.
my word of advice is to go into the office tomorrow (monday), identify who in the office you would get along with and learn a lot from, go buy them a drink, get to know them, and establish a good mentor relationship, then both of you sit down with the principal and make it official. if the principal was smart, he/she recognize that teaming the both of you would help retention, produce better efficiency, and create a good work environment.
hear hear, dot. worked the same way for me. in a few different offices, actually. and i hope to serve as a mentor the way my mentors helped me. helps you feel involved, like you're a stakeholder.
Listing the things I find irritating about the profession:
-many years of school and practical training before registration
-low pay
-limited responsibility / respect from bosses
oh yeah and lest I forget:
-proliferation of really cruddy (read: ugly or dull) design
I remember going a few rounds with quizzical awhile back regarding my irritation with the leaders of the profession - I'll say it again, I wish the AIA would take a look at the compensation survey and realize that something is VERY wrong here.
$50k for 8 years experience? Might as well manage a McDonalds.
Let's face it - smart kids are not choosing architecture - why would they? Only reason I did it is because I've got a thick skull, and somehow I thought I could do something more intresting than push paper. Wow, that was wrong.
Here's a suggestion:
1- architecture degree should be 4 years-like engineering
2- you can take the exam at any time after graduation
3- the exam is hard, and many can't do it right away, or fail
4- we pay people commensurate with other professions
5- we give them real responsibility
I'll tell you - if I thought I could find something vaguely intresting outside of architecture I'd do it in a heartbeat - but I've already committed so much to this profession...dang
And yeah, to echo what others have said - I'll start my own firm soon enough, cut out of this cycle.
gruen's suggestions, to me, don't fit with his frustrations.
1 i definitely don't think arch school should be shorter, at least not with the provision of a b.arch. if going on to m.arch. is required for registration, maybe. it's hard enough to fit the education required into 5 yrs.
3 the exam is already hard, but in the wrong way. the people that get weeded out are often those who think the exam is going to be about designing, professional values like ethics and responsibility, etc. when in fact it's merely about answering the question carefully, exactly as it is asked, and having an understanding of lowest-common-denominator satisfaction of life safety requirements. the test needs to be fundamentally different.
5 giving responsibility has to match up with the individual's ability to earn responsibility. giving responsibility to one who hasn't stepped up guarantees the advancement of more mediocre architects who are just pulling the traces and taking home a check.
I don't think school should be as long as it is, either. I know that at 3 years, I had learned just about everything I needed to enter the profession (by current standards). The next 4 years were simply practice. This isn't the same with everyone, of course, but I think 4 intense years is good.
I mean, there's MArch I programs where people get a masters in 3 years, so why wouldn't 4 be enough?
gruen - there are interesting things outside of architecture. I am doing them daily. While I don't do much architecture, when I do it's my way and my designs.
If there's one thing that I really cherish about the architecture education (beyond designing) is the ability to solve problems creatively. Look at your career as a problem, then find a creative solution.
I received an MArch 3 years ago and have been steadily chipping away at IDP. My first summer internship out of undergrad was in 2000 with a firm that did extremely well landing mission critical projects with .com companies. I was not involved in any of those projects, but they spread the wealth throughout the firm. As a summer intern I was making $17/hour plus time and a half. They provided free lunches for us every Friday, lots of training days which basically involved jobsite visits, and even an all expenses paid trip to Boston for a "summit" with their other interns from around the country. The whole experience gave me a completely unrealistic picture of what working at an architecture firm would be like, but I still think it's what working at an architecture firm should be like.
Now that I'm getting close to finishing IDP, I'm pretty certain that upon receiving my license I'll bolt from the profession and look for work either in construction management or development. My reasons for doing this are basically along the same lines as rationalist noted above plus the fact that I'm really a hands-on type of person and despise being behind a desk for 40+ hours a week.
Unlike many others who will leave the profession, getting the license IS important to me in that it will allow me to moonlight legitimately and perhaps start my own architectural firm after paying off some debts and setting aside some money. I've decided this is the better path to being able to design and build what I want than putting in 6-10 years with an arch firm in the hopes of being thrown a bone or two.
I empathize with you and the desire to go out on your own and break the cycle. That is one of the reasons why I went out on my own as young as I did. However, going out on your own is not hard. Being a one man (or girl) is easy. You can afford to be uber creative and live your passion. However what happens when you get sick, or on vacation. Who does the work then?
Surviving growth and success is incredibly hard. I think we are doing incredibly decent work given the client demands, the budgets, and the local architecture review boards.
Read the “e-myth revisited†before you venture out on your own. It really puts running a business into perspective. This also relates beck to some of what others are saying too. The impending economic slowdown will offer more consolidation as well as an impetus to do more marketing.
My job now is securing the project pipeline as well as developing and recruiting talent. (not to mention taking our the trash, chasing money, ect.) I think that there really is large difference between the 1-3 person firm and the 10-15. The hard decisions are much harder.
Arghhh, the local architecture review boards, planning departments, etc. can all go to hell as far as I'm concerned. When did this stop being a free country? Why should anybody be able to tell me what I can or cannot do with a piece of land that I have purchased? I understand legitimate planning stuff, as much as I may not like it, but I draw the line when a planning board tries to get us to put cornices on a distinctly contemporary building, or requires 50% of your exterior to be wood siding or fake stone. It's bloody ridiculous, and to me it's a big part of why so much crappy work has been produced. These people who look at the project for a few hours total think they know better than people who are immersed in it for months on end how it should look, and that's just outright wrong. Who CARES if they'd LIKE to see some more wood siding on the front? Thanks for your opinion, it has nothing to do with our building...
I just lost my job at a firm (strangely enough I hated the firm and their work and just needed a job, but next time, I will be more careful) and hearing all this talk about an impending economic slowdown is scaring me, except for the fact that I am not sure that I want to go back into the field anyway. Whenever resumes come into the office, the recruiter would just circle the name of the school (if it was Ivy League, it made the firm look good) and check to see whether AutoCAD was listed as a skill. That's all they would look for-that's all they wanted from you. There were a lot of young junior architects there, but I can only think of one that was applying for IDP points and looking to be a project manager eventually and seeking mentorship. And they started him at a $27K salary-in *New York City*. There were a lot of foreigners there that were locked into the office because the firm sponsored the visa and couldn't go anywhere else and had no ambition to get licensed themselves. There was very little communication between principals and anyone below that-except at monthly meetings where he would ask 'are there any questions' and then silence-and when he fires you. I got the impression that when the principal died, the firm would die off with him-he wasn't looking to the future and he wasn't keeping up and he didn't care about anything except the contract work, keeping the checks rolling in, and getting workers for the lowest possible price. I am starting to worry that this is the norm and if it really is, I don't want to bone up on even more computer skills, and get back into the game and put up with that, especially since the vast majority of design pumped out by firms is so god-awful (and I am not saying everyone should be a starchitect and I know that crappy clients usually lead to crappy work) that I think a little retrenchment of the field might not be such a bad thing.
Also, someone was asking the difference between lawyers, doctors and architects. it seems like everyone in my immediate and extended family is a a lawyer so I can tell some differences in that-they can take the bar right out of school, there is no internship, apprenticeship as it is defined in architecture. Everyone knows the flexibility of a law degree, whereas the flexibility of an architecture degree (which is incredible) is not stressed enough to kids in school and to potential employers. There is a fixed payment structure and rules about firm competition that prevent low balling payment which drives fees down and results in the atrocious compensation which has been discussed in this thread. They have the American Bar Association, we have the AIA. Nuff' said. I also think that architecture leaves fewer opportunities to affect the community positively in a structured way-we need clients with a lot of money to execute our work and those are often developers who just want to throw up another banal luxury tower, high end whatever, boutique, or corporate thing-and we don't have the pro-bono set up that lawyers have. I know a lot of younger architects that are troubled by that. I think architecture is just a loose profession and in some ways that's good, but it also works to our detriment in some ways.
There is a fixed payment structure and rules about firm competition that prevent low balling payment which drives fees down and results in the atrocious compensation which has been discussed in this thread.
oldirty, how is this different from price fixing, which rumor has it the architecture field was prevented from doing back in the 1970's or something (I don't know the whole story, have just heard of it here on archinect)?
Sorry, on a tight schedule today so no time for a more informative post but I'm still enjoying this discussion I had to pop in for a quick read.
Not price fixing per se, just there seems to not be the situation you find in architecture, where the client is (maybe understandably) mortified by the how much everything is going to cost, seeks to cut corners, the architect always seems to be the one that feels it, and then to keep work, the architect agrees to a smaller and smaller cut, which affects firm salaries across the board at all firms-the client knows that they can leave and get what they want from another architect for a lower price, so the architect goes lower so as not to lose the work. I think lawyers (and I am sorry for doing the lawyer/architect comparison-it's done to death on this forum) just seem to have an agreement that this service will cost this much. Period. You can comparison shop for a lawyer that you click with and that you think does a good job, and of course big pockets will get you a blue chip firm, but in general you pay a certain amount for a certain service and it does not really vary at whatever firm level you seek. Whereas in architecture, we are having to work so hard to stay afloat that we will put up with anything to get work, even if it damages the profession as a whole. Just my opinion, though.
"Being a one man (or girl) is easy. You can afford to be uber creative and live your passion. However what happens when you get sick, or on vacation. Who does the work then?"
this is not true at all. altough it is not a common thing. i dare you to become one person office mister.
try to find, attract clients who still can sign you up for important projects based on your design merit and tract record, deliver them on time, on budget, work with them in a dignified way so the design is usefull to both parties, orginize army of people to take on the work, pay your bills, fees,dues, be an active member of architectural community, do the trash answer the phone, return calls, show up on time, develope a system of documentation and detailing methods so projects don't become bottomless pits and gets lost in socket details, live your passion (why the hell not) and survive as an architect in a city where there is an architects' office on every corner.
vacation what vacation. oh its easy. just plan ahead and say when you'll be back.
i dare you sir. please...
it is not what you think it is. call it whatever but not easy boss.
6-10 years experience...hmmm. seems like that time when people (like myself) are just getting the hang of this architecture thing, and we either are happy where we are or we are striking out on our own. i don't know how the chicago job market is, but in austin it's hard to find ANYBODY just because right now the labor market is a seller's market. (your impending economic slowdown won't hit us for another 9-12 months or more.)
and man, is it hard to attract the cream of the crop when you're in the suburbs doing bread-n-butter work. i feel for ya. quality of life issues like access to child care don't matter to those of us single folks who went to the big city (in my case, yes, chicago) to do exciting work and live the urban lifestyle.
My take on all of this is a little more simple I suppose... People with 10 years experience are few and far between because the market in 1996 was absolutely horrible. I started undergrad in 1992 and nobody that was graduating could find jobs in architecture. So many architecture graduates from 1996 - 1998 or so simply went into other avenues other than architecture practice at that time which I think explains the lack of people in the 10 year experience range. For me, to understand the current state of experienced architects, one must look back at the economic conditions for architecture 10 years ago.
I will say that what I did notice around 2004 is that people in the 5-6 year experience range (including myself) were given leadership roles and were running jobs all by themselves. So now you have people that on paper may only have 6-8 years of experience, but more than likely have been placed into roles beyond their years.
i agree it's hard to find people above 6 years of experience and many firms are giving 2-3,000 bonuses for bringing in people with experience that stay 3 months. Good thing is, salaries are going up because nobody wants to lose the experienced people they have.
we should kill all the lawyers. But do you ever hear ranting about architects by the public?
Curtclay was right- we lost a generation of architects to the dot com boom and recession. Then IDP got instituted... so now we're loosing the fresh meat before they get registered.
Concurrent testing (like CA) is one small fix to the broken system.
Also, one thing about your post re: going into business for yourself sticks out at me. I went from billing out at $75 in a firm to billing out at $150/hour, supposedly all take-home by me now that I'm self-employed. But instead I'm bringing home significantly less money: that jump in hourly rate did not, for me, translate to a bump in take-home pay.
Running a business is hardand expensive and though busy I'm not getting rich, in fact I'm hardly making ends meet. Now if I had a spouse who made a reasonable salary and most importantly could provide our family with health insurance through his employer, we'd be in very good shape. Instead insurance of all types is taking a huge chunk of our income.
I'm all for price fixing in the architecture market. Bring it on, I say!!
curtclay, thats my point too. suhail studio is another example.
being one person for me doesn't mean i only do one project at a time.
i felt the need of countering dsc_arch's dismissive statement of portraying one or two people offices in a less than serious way.
i don't have any objections of his dreams of becoming bigger office employing or hoping to employ more people thus increasing his income and establishing his business as he sees fit. i just don't buy his attidute of everything else is easy or less than standart in rather stereotyping way.
i put a lot of thought streamlining my operation so i can do it that way. he or anybody else have no position to undermine that. we are not all the same and that should be good for improvements and lessons learned. i choosed to be a fish in an ocean where hundreds of architects, my collegues, do little more than avarage work, challenging themselves and increasing the bar for our profession overall in certain ways.
he can call that 'uberdesign' or whatever. it is our reality in these shores. that is all.
i have to stand up for the one- and two-person firms out there, too. it's hella easier to have multiple employees, especially if (by your own admission, dsc_arch) they are all working under 40 hours a week. 40 hours a week is probably what guys like orhan and libertybell consider "vacation." and because of our screwed-up social system (see my response to "denmark is the happiest place on earth" thread) guys like orhan and liberty bell are barely able to keep their heads above water.
whereas, dsc_arch, if you have time to take your kids to school, you're not exactly overworked. b/c you have a firm to answer the phone when you're taking the kids to school.
...and that's why orhan is a star architect...cause he's walking the walk. word.
and liberty bell's right, starting a business is hard with a capital h. most fail within the first five years. and even those who succeed, well, it's amazing the kind of shit that they'll have to go through.
I did not mean to be dismissive of one to three person firms. I mentioned the book the “e-myth revisited†because it illustrates what can happen to a one person firm.
Also it wonderfully describes putting together systems and procedures. However, what i ment to stress was that if you become sick, there is no backup, no net.
For me this was too entirely risky to have my family depend on me as the sole means of income.
I now have a staff, including me and my wife partner, of eight people. My bookkeeper and my PA’s take home is a lot more than mine / ours. There are many months out of the year where we are investing in the company to keep it afloat.
It is not a grass is greener issue.
It is decision issue of what you want out of life.
Also it is a personal choice, not right or wrong. There are many times where my partner and I want to go back to three people. However, we know that there will be one to answer the phone and we would give up the flexibility we enjoy.
By working small projects we have multiple streams of income. We have to collect over $35,000 per month before we pay ourselves. That is a big nut. Yet we have committed to training our jr staff to fill-in in that lost generation.
Bless the small firm, it pushes the envelope.
But another question:
Is the small firm self-serving?
abracadabra writes:
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 doesn’t this add to the problem of training of mid level people? In abracadabra’s scenario this person would be like Athena fully formed.
Do small firms have the resources to train and develop talent?
thanks, but I don't think IDP is really the problem.. IDP seems to be a timeconsuming paper pushing exercise that from my experience most people fudge in order to get the required hours, and most employers sign the forms without actually reviewing them.
As an intern, I used it to my advantage. when I wanted to do CA I went to my boss and said, "yo, IDP says you gotta give me this much CA experience, so hook it up!" IDP can become a good tool for interns to lean on to get experience and for that I think its great.
I think most people find the whole IDP process / task too daunting to be bothered with so they don't even bother... I think if its important to people, they'll do it... its kinda like why i didn't apply to Harvard. to me, it wasn't worth it, but IDP was worth it to me because I really wanted to get my license.
dsc_arch, i respect your goals and achievements and wish you attain everything you are setting out for and looks like you have already achieved a lot. i am impressed that you bring in min. 35k every mounth and get paid less than some of your employees. i am sure its only temporary, i hope.
my practice isn't really good for an intern nor i can afford one.
if i had the need for an employee it would be an experienced person like i described and you quoted. it would be more like an associate who would share the credits and definitely be a self propelling kind of a person. sure, i understand that architect would require a proportionate compensation for his or her contribution to business.
better yet, if i ever change my mind about current structure, i would really go for a firm that everybody owns a part of it. that is what i really like to do or be a part of. i think that will be the future of our profession. if you look at it some successfull and creative firms have that structure. i was always impressed by charles moore's structure of his firms where he was always surrounded by co owners of his offices. i really think making people a part owner of the practice is a way to go.
In theory, IDP is great - we interns are supposed to be exposed to the widest variety of situations... In practice, IDP seems to be more of a hinderance and beaurocratic test of record fabrication that does not make us better architects.
Why must you have 10 weeks at a job before the hours count?
Why must you work more the 30 hours a week to get credit for experience?
Does building models really make me a worse architect or is time spent managing a project with a client more valuable towards my IDP?
Am I training to be an creative architect or a technician that can detail bathroom stalls???
My current firm doesn't do DD or CDs - so all those hours analyzing the site and preparing for the next presentation don't dent my recent deficit of detailing.. Well maybe my next job will help balance the situation...
regarding running a firm
is it better to launch your own practice with a blank slate? or climb the corporate ladder to the top of an existing firm? I appreciate the appeal of inventing a practice from scratch, but I'd rather have the structure and deep talent of an established firm backing up my commissions. Then again - I like the big projects with complex teams and huge budgets/fees. Is this so wrong?
Why the rush to have your own practice before your ___ birthday? is it ego? I've seen what skills are needed, and will patiently learn most of them first.
Abra, LB, SW and all those other great archinector that have created very personal practice- hats off to you! I've learned that my best work is part of a collaborative team, by myself, my mind spins with too many ideas.
DSC - what about buying out another practice to aquire the talent and clients? There have to be several small firms in the Chi-town region with retiring principles?
former employer - getting hours in ANYTHING but CD's, DD, SD and, sruprisingly, cost estimating was like pulling teeth. Employer will not sign off on my IDP without verifying the 100's of spreadsheet pages it takes to document the shit. I am thru about 2 years of it and have 200% of the experience in CD's I needed. -- It is the most depressing thing I have ever done, to review every tenth of an hour of everyday for several years, evaluating what I did at a job I loathed. I had forgotten that I worked every Saturday for 5 months, and that I spent 3 months developing standard details, and another 3 months drawing as-builts of an old rural hospital that had 7 different additions. Forgot, that is, till I tried to document all my IDP retroactively.
current employer - "I will sign off on whatever you want", and will actually give me the experience I need.
Why didn't I do my IDP every two weeks like you are supposed to? First of all, didn't really know what it was, how the things I was working on fit into it, and didn't really care. Second, I didn't have a mentor to help me see the light. Third, NCARB took their sweet ass time to establish my record, 8 months I believe, and then only after a nasty e-mail or two from me. So I couldn't have started on time if I had wanted to.
Conclusion - work for current employer for 3 years to get IDP, starting from scratch, pay NCARB dues to keep my record the whole time, and then get take the ARE.
Thanks, ochona, for recognizing how much time is involved in running your own firm.
But dsc_arch does also deserve respect for keeping afloat a firm with employees. One of the reasons I work so many hours is I'm not yet ready to make a commitment to an employee. The thought of someone else's livelihood depending on me (and the prospect of $35K/mo in billings, jeepers!) scares me too much right now. Just last week my partner and I hired someone to do some freelance drafting for us: this is a huge step, and I'm optimistic it will go well. (This person is someone in the 6-10 experience range, but not yet licensed, actually, as befits the thread topic.)
If we were to hire someone full-time, I would really want to position myself as a good mentor to a young-ish intern. I, like others here, had great mentors in my old firm, and that has made an enormous difference in my career.
metamechanic, thank you for the ENR post!!! I have copied it to read offline, later tonight when I'm done dealing with finances ugh.
Abracadabra: i really think making people a part owner of the practice is a way to go.
This one is hard. Forgetting about the time spent in developing the practice, sweating it out until the first few projects were built and having a reputation as a firm. – I started out eight months after receiving my license. We boot strapped everything, still do in some months to keep it going. How do you look at a peer and them make them a part owner. It would be hard to award it solely on merit. Also how does the new owner deal with the pay cut that happens after the cllient goes 90 days past due.
There are some books about managing (see the business of architecture thread.) I have them placed on hold at the library and plan to pick them up this week. However, this should be subject of another thread we can all work on. Right now it is hard letting go of control. Even partial control.
Treekiller: DSC - what about buying out another practice to acquire the talent and clients? There have to be several small firms in the Chi-town region with retiring principles?
Last year we began talks to purchase a firm. The culture and the practice did not fit so we passed. Currently two firms are in discussion with us to take on more of their work because they are looking to retire and/or having production problems. The only problem with this is we already are having problems getting the work out the door as it is. This goes back to finding the ALI that started this thread.
Owning and running a firm is not for everyone. Some strive for consistency. I would love to find a recently minted ALI, wishing to pursue solid work, and desirous of flexible hours to bring life into balance. I hope that the new thread about a democratic partnership mentioned earlier can assist us all.
[Marty and Grocer are shooting eachother]
Mr. Grocer: Comrade! Comrade!
Marty: What?
Mr. Grocer: Why don't you just join the union, we'll go upstairs together and cap daddy!
Marty: This union, there's gonna be meetings?
Mr. Grocer: Of course!
Marty: No meetings.
most firms I've worked for and litereature I've read on running arch firms suggest you need to charge 3-4 times what you want to take home. This of course will vary with how you structure your office, but your suggesting chraging 1.5 times what you want to take home... seems a bit low.
I've been working for myself now, my overhead is much lower than a traditional office and I dont need as a consistentn of an income, but I'm fininding even in this situation I need to charge more than I thought.
Not that the $150/hour you suggest is particularly low depending on the role of that person, but taking home $100/hour seems a bit high. Ok really high. The firms I worked for charged more than that for some jobs but nobody took home $200k/year, granted things could have been streamlined. (this is also assuming you bill for 40 hours per week, a big part of your profit is used to pay for unbillable hours like marketing).
Mybe the other more experienced business owners can comment.
You did account for your initial capital investment (I don't know where you'll get that money), but you didnt account for operating capital: you're overlooking profit. You have no profit. Profit seems like the most commonly misunderstood part of business finance (I'm still figureing it out myslef). Proift is NOT what you take home (in public companies it can be used to pay divedends to share holders, in sole proprieterships you can take it home I suppose, how much you reinvest is up to you). But generally profit is what you use to as capitol to purchase new computers when your old ones die unespectedly, or when you hire a new employee and need a new workstation and all the associated software. Aslo to pay for the first few weeks when he's learning the ropes and not that productive, as well as the time that is not billable, like dsc_arch notes as he's become more of a ceo basically none of his time is billable, so his salary is out of the profit (which you lef out) of his emlpoyees salary, as well as all marketing expenses.
Also as dsc_arch stated sometimes clients go 90 days without paying, but you still have to pay your employees and rent etc., so you need to figure out your monthly expenditures and have a few months of total operating costs saved up, otherise the first time somebody doesnt pay you have to lay everybody off. This capital comes from your profit. As your business grows your expenditures go up, so to your operating capital needs to go up.
From several established architects I've been told that nearly 1/3 of your income goes into profit, 1/3 to overhead, 1/3 take home. I guess they're assuming your taxes all get written off in office expense? Should have asked that... not sure how reasonable an assumption that is...
One thing you can do to minimize capital investments is lease equipment and outsource as much as possible, prinitng for example, I'd consider not purchasing an Oce. Not only does this reduce your capital it's very easy to tell the client what the printing cost, when you print in house, clients can get fussy and what to haggle on these things and you tend to cave. If you outsource it prices are fixed, also tech support and maintenance of printers can be a higtmare until your office is big enough to justifiy a full time in house person.
I'm learning all this the hardway at the moment.
Slightly more on topic I’ve been reading a lot of Peter Ducker lately and he had an interesting observation. “The first sign of decline of an industry is loss of appeal to qualified, able, and ambitions people.â€
I'm not sure it's a good idea, but I'm a bit surprised there hasnt been more formal specialization within the architectural discipline and education. Within the building industry we have Civil, mecanical, strucutral, electricla, and plumbing engineers, to name the most common all of which have specialized education. Then there are architecs. As the industry is increasingly sophisticated and specialized we seem as general as ever... if not more so, everyone seems to facny themselves as a Renaissance man.
the renaissance was actually one of the most specialized times for artisans. painters painted, armormakers made armor, shoemakers made shoes. little giotto was interned by mom and dad at age 11 or whatever and learned from there. it was only much later in the renaissance that the idea of the renaissance man came about. oh and by the way the renaissance artist saw his work as a business and wouldn't lift a finger unless he was getting paid.
I was speaking of the contemporary notion of the renaissnce man, however misinformed that idea might be, and the idea I thought was more in relation to guys like Michelangelo who where acomplished painets, scupltors and architects, no?
Well then, it seems modern architects might do well to learn from the renaissance artist on how to run a business. Where do you read of renaissance artists business practices?
If we assume an average career of 40 years (start work at 25 retire at 65), then the 10+ years people are 75% of the pool (assuming relatively consistent number of graduates over the last 40 years). Then the 6-10 year crowd is only 10%.
I’d like to suggest the reason there are so many recent grads looking for work is because recent grad don’t have jobs. Seemingly obvious I know, but surprisingly overlooked. The 10% who are in 6-10 year experience range presumably have jobs, and therefore aren’t looking to know anyone is hiring, and has been stated, need some serious incentive to make a lateral move for average pay (or they’re looking to start their own firm or any of the other numerous reasons already given).
So the question is how to come up with people with the skill set and experience level desired by so many architecture firms nationwide (I personally know of many firms looing for these people as well)? I think dsc_arch already answered it. Train them, and create and environment that will make them want to stay long enough to make the investment worth your time and theirs. This is very common in other industries and they are increasingly looking to get people hooked into their organizations younger and younger.
Everybody wants people with experience but no one will train them. How on earth do employers expect employees to become the experienced architect the employers are asking when they won’t allow them to get that experience?
It takes time and money but I think long term it will pay off clearly smaller firms may have that luxury.
I think it’s great that dsc_arch is doing that. I wish more firms would recognize the value in it.
Architects: the new endangered species part two or: are the ranks of the qualified dwindling to nothing
exactly! that is why Luis Férnadez Galiano's believe makes sense, that a star system has not helped architecture
abracadabra, i mean this from the bottom of my heart...God bless you for writing that-you articulated so many of my issues with architecture so much better and more concisely that I ever could. I am having nearly existential issues about whether to continue to pursue architecture and am questioning my interest in the field because the firms basically seem to be looking for "braceros" and not for architects with a brain and with a POV. I know that you have to slog through the CAD monkey aspect of the job to eventually, just maybe, get to the "good stuff" but I am wondering if even the good stuff is all it's cracked up to be.
: i feel your pain, but let's get some perspective here. the state of our profession is not what it is altogether because most architects want it that way. there are broad economic, legal, societal and cultural forces at work that are difficult for us to influence, much less dominate.
in the middle part of the last century, work was plentiful, schedules were reasonable, fees were high relative to the effort required, building technology was stable and relatively simple, architects rarely spoke to a lawyer unless he was a client, E&O insurance was not yet a major concern, and it was relatively easy to make a good living as an architect. in these conditions, most architects could focus on creative work because their attention was not consumed by all of the other frightful things we must contend with today.
today, in addition to design there are a ton of other things that we must master and manage. it's damn hard to run a profitable practice, find and develop enough qualified help, maintain a steady supply of new work, stay out of court, keep abreast of all the new technologies and products, etc.
while i agree that design must be our salvation, i think you are being unduly harsh in your criticism of practitioners who attempt , in good faith, to contend with these operational issues not faced by earlier generations of architects.
until we learn how to manage our practices efficiently, command higher fees, maintain a steady supply of work over time, the frustrations you describe will remain in place simply because the typical practitioner has no other real option. i'm not suggesting that we are victims here, but this is a complex professional transition that is not yet complete.
babs, I wonder if the scenario you outline above is similar for other professions, for example, doctors and lawyers, against whom we always compare our salaries vis a vis our professional status?
I ask sincerely, I really don't know, except I know my sister the doctor pays a ton of malpractice insurance, much more than doctors did 50 years ago. But have other professions dealt better with the issues you raise? I wonder.
bourbon please!
babs, oldfogey - great posts !
this is such a great thread - such depth and experience being applied to the topics at hand - i love this place and learn so much here - thank you all for sharing so much of what you know - this gives me renewed faith in our profession.
thanks .... i'll have a nice Oregon State Pinot Gris, please.
liberty bell - thought-provoking question - i'll want to think about that overnight
Damn, got here too late for the drinks... but this really is a fabulous discussion anyway, even sober.
I think that that particular level is smaller than other levels. Think about it- there are a ton of recent grads because the people who are going to leave the profession haven't done so yet. There are a ton of people with 10+ years experience, because that also includes people with 20 years or more of experience- people who used to be considered not to be on the same level are now lumped together. The 3-5 years, newly minted architect range is an incredibly small one, and exists right when a lot of people have just left the profession, so you don't get as many of those as recent grads because a lot of people decide to bail within those first three years of work.
I absolutely agree with what many have said with regards to WHY so many people are bailing on this profession. I'm exploring my options so that I can join them right now. There's just not a good outlook. You work your ass off to get good, then all people want you to do is draft. So you draft because that's where the work is, you're not allowed to go to meetings because there are already two licensed people in there, your project manager gets pissy if you try to communicate directly with consultants because they think they're getting squeezed out of the loop. At some point, people forget that you can do something besides draft. They give you instructions so detailed you want to punch them and scream, "I've got a BRAIN! Let me use it, instead of telling me when to wipe my ass just so you can claim credit for thinking of it!" Oh, and then they tell you that they could care less whether you ever get licensed or not, because they don't need you to stamp drawings anyway. And at some point, you look around and realize that you don't want the life that any of the architects in your office have anyway. And you can tell yourself that you'll be different, better somehow, or you can find something else to spend your days doing that doesn't feel like you're fighting everyone all the time.
I don't think it's because of computers, per say. It's not that computers are *that* important. I think it's more the idea of a young worker realizing that the firm they work for would not get by without them because they can do something their boss(es) can't, yet the way they are treated and the way they are paid do not reflect that.
Oh, and on that vein, another great excuse for being kept out of meetings- "But then you wouldn't be getting any work done."
hey LB - going to digress on this thread a bit (great discussion), but I'm feeling the same slowdown and worried about having to get back into an office with young children right when there's a massive slowdown. Everyone is still hiring here, but I feel like the last time everyone was hiring like crazy - right when I got out of school - was just before the tech bust when tons of layoffs happened. We've had lots of meetings lately that haven't gone anywhere - once people find out how much it's going to cost they get cold feet because their house value is now static. anyways, we'll do what we have to do I guess but I'm getting nervous...
i would like to offer a rememdy and suggest that our profession should begin by reforming our internship program and implement mentoring programs nationwide...as I am sure most will agree that the current IDP is a joke. we should rethink the master-apprentice relationship model of the early 20th century and try to adapt it to current practice. all the offices i have worked at lack such a program and i believe that this attributes to the gaps mentioned earlier. i would think a young person with technology abilities and an old person with a lot of experience would have a lot to learn from one another, but it suprises me how dettached these two groups are at all the offices i have worked in (also an american cultural thing)
from my personal experience, i attribute most of my success (and good wage) to the wonderful relationship i have had with my mentor who is about 10 years my senior. part of why many young interns are pigeon holed i think is bc (as i have seen in other threads) many of them expect the office to do a lot for them without having the initiative to seek learning experiences for themselves.
my word of advice is to go into the office tomorrow (monday), identify who in the office you would get along with and learn a lot from, go buy them a drink, get to know them, and establish a good mentor relationship, then both of you sit down with the principal and make it official. if the principal was smart, he/she recognize that teaming the both of you would help retention, produce better efficiency, and create a good work environment.
hear hear, dot. worked the same way for me. in a few different offices, actually. and i hope to serve as a mentor the way my mentors helped me. helps you feel involved, like you're a stakeholder.
Listing the things I find irritating about the profession:
-many years of school and practical training before registration
-low pay
-limited responsibility / respect from bosses
oh yeah and lest I forget:
-proliferation of really cruddy (read: ugly or dull) design
I remember going a few rounds with quizzical awhile back regarding my irritation with the leaders of the profession - I'll say it again, I wish the AIA would take a look at the compensation survey and realize that something is VERY wrong here.
$50k for 8 years experience? Might as well manage a McDonalds.
Let's face it - smart kids are not choosing architecture - why would they? Only reason I did it is because I've got a thick skull, and somehow I thought I could do something more intresting than push paper. Wow, that was wrong.
Here's a suggestion:
1- architecture degree should be 4 years-like engineering
2- you can take the exam at any time after graduation
3- the exam is hard, and many can't do it right away, or fail
4- we pay people commensurate with other professions
5- we give them real responsibility
I'll tell you - if I thought I could find something vaguely intresting outside of architecture I'd do it in a heartbeat - but I've already committed so much to this profession...dang
And yeah, to echo what others have said - I'll start my own firm soon enough, cut out of this cycle.
gruen's suggestions, to me, don't fit with his frustrations.
1 i definitely don't think arch school should be shorter, at least not with the provision of a b.arch. if going on to m.arch. is required for registration, maybe. it's hard enough to fit the education required into 5 yrs.
3 the exam is already hard, but in the wrong way. the people that get weeded out are often those who think the exam is going to be about designing, professional values like ethics and responsibility, etc. when in fact it's merely about answering the question carefully, exactly as it is asked, and having an understanding of lowest-common-denominator satisfaction of life safety requirements. the test needs to be fundamentally different.
5 giving responsibility has to match up with the individual's ability to earn responsibility. giving responsibility to one who hasn't stepped up guarantees the advancement of more mediocre architects who are just pulling the traces and taking home a check.
I don't think school should be as long as it is, either. I know that at 3 years, I had learned just about everything I needed to enter the profession (by current standards). The next 4 years were simply practice. This isn't the same with everyone, of course, but I think 4 intense years is good.
I mean, there's MArch I programs where people get a masters in 3 years, so why wouldn't 4 be enough?
gruen - there are interesting things outside of architecture. I am doing them daily. While I don't do much architecture, when I do it's my way and my designs.
If there's one thing that I really cherish about the architecture education (beyond designing) is the ability to solve problems creatively. Look at your career as a problem, then find a creative solution.
I received an MArch 3 years ago and have been steadily chipping away at IDP. My first summer internship out of undergrad was in 2000 with a firm that did extremely well landing mission critical projects with .com companies. I was not involved in any of those projects, but they spread the wealth throughout the firm. As a summer intern I was making $17/hour plus time and a half. They provided free lunches for us every Friday, lots of training days which basically involved jobsite visits, and even an all expenses paid trip to Boston for a "summit" with their other interns from around the country. The whole experience gave me a completely unrealistic picture of what working at an architecture firm would be like, but I still think it's what working at an architecture firm should be like.
Now that I'm getting close to finishing IDP, I'm pretty certain that upon receiving my license I'll bolt from the profession and look for work either in construction management or development. My reasons for doing this are basically along the same lines as rationalist noted above plus the fact that I'm really a hands-on type of person and despise being behind a desk for 40+ hours a week.
Unlike many others who will leave the profession, getting the license IS important to me in that it will allow me to moonlight legitimately and perhaps start my own architectural firm after paying off some debts and setting aside some money. I've decided this is the better path to being able to design and build what I want than putting in 6-10 years with an arch firm in the hopes of being thrown a bone or two.
Gruen.
I empathize with you and the desire to go out on your own and break the cycle. That is one of the reasons why I went out on my own as young as I did. However, going out on your own is not hard. Being a one man (or girl) is easy. You can afford to be uber creative and live your passion. However what happens when you get sick, or on vacation. Who does the work then?
Surviving growth and success is incredibly hard. I think we are doing incredibly decent work given the client demands, the budgets, and the local architecture review boards.
Read the “e-myth revisited†before you venture out on your own. It really puts running a business into perspective. This also relates beck to some of what others are saying too. The impending economic slowdown will offer more consolidation as well as an impetus to do more marketing.
My job now is securing the project pipeline as well as developing and recruiting talent. (not to mention taking our the trash, chasing money, ect.) I think that there really is large difference between the 1-3 person firm and the 10-15. The hard decisions are much harder.
Any thoughts.
Arghhh, the local architecture review boards, planning departments, etc. can all go to hell as far as I'm concerned. When did this stop being a free country? Why should anybody be able to tell me what I can or cannot do with a piece of land that I have purchased? I understand legitimate planning stuff, as much as I may not like it, but I draw the line when a planning board tries to get us to put cornices on a distinctly contemporary building, or requires 50% of your exterior to be wood siding or fake stone. It's bloody ridiculous, and to me it's a big part of why so much crappy work has been produced. These people who look at the project for a few hours total think they know better than people who are immersed in it for months on end how it should look, and that's just outright wrong. Who CARES if they'd LIKE to see some more wood siding on the front? Thanks for your opinion, it has nothing to do with our building...
I just lost my job at a firm (strangely enough I hated the firm and their work and just needed a job, but next time, I will be more careful) and hearing all this talk about an impending economic slowdown is scaring me, except for the fact that I am not sure that I want to go back into the field anyway. Whenever resumes come into the office, the recruiter would just circle the name of the school (if it was Ivy League, it made the firm look good) and check to see whether AutoCAD was listed as a skill. That's all they would look for-that's all they wanted from you. There were a lot of young junior architects there, but I can only think of one that was applying for IDP points and looking to be a project manager eventually and seeking mentorship. And they started him at a $27K salary-in *New York City*. There were a lot of foreigners there that were locked into the office because the firm sponsored the visa and couldn't go anywhere else and had no ambition to get licensed themselves. There was very little communication between principals and anyone below that-except at monthly meetings where he would ask 'are there any questions' and then silence-and when he fires you. I got the impression that when the principal died, the firm would die off with him-he wasn't looking to the future and he wasn't keeping up and he didn't care about anything except the contract work, keeping the checks rolling in, and getting workers for the lowest possible price. I am starting to worry that this is the norm and if it really is, I don't want to bone up on even more computer skills, and get back into the game and put up with that, especially since the vast majority of design pumped out by firms is so god-awful (and I am not saying everyone should be a starchitect and I know that crappy clients usually lead to crappy work) that I think a little retrenchment of the field might not be such a bad thing.
Also, someone was asking the difference between lawyers, doctors and architects. it seems like everyone in my immediate and extended family is a a lawyer so I can tell some differences in that-they can take the bar right out of school, there is no internship, apprenticeship as it is defined in architecture. Everyone knows the flexibility of a law degree, whereas the flexibility of an architecture degree (which is incredible) is not stressed enough to kids in school and to potential employers. There is a fixed payment structure and rules about firm competition that prevent low balling payment which drives fees down and results in the atrocious compensation which has been discussed in this thread. They have the American Bar Association, we have the AIA. Nuff' said. I also think that architecture leaves fewer opportunities to affect the community positively in a structured way-we need clients with a lot of money to execute our work and those are often developers who just want to throw up another banal luxury tower, high end whatever, boutique, or corporate thing-and we don't have the pro-bono set up that lawyers have. I know a lot of younger architects that are troubled by that. I think architecture is just a loose profession and in some ways that's good, but it also works to our detriment in some ways.
oldirty, how is this different from price fixing, which rumor has it the architecture field was prevented from doing back in the 1970's or something (I don't know the whole story, have just heard of it here on archinect)?
Sorry, on a tight schedule today so no time for a more informative post but I'm still enjoying this discussion I had to pop in for a quick read.
Not price fixing per se, just there seems to not be the situation you find in architecture, where the client is (maybe understandably) mortified by the how much everything is going to cost, seeks to cut corners, the architect always seems to be the one that feels it, and then to keep work, the architect agrees to a smaller and smaller cut, which affects firm salaries across the board at all firms-the client knows that they can leave and get what they want from another architect for a lower price, so the architect goes lower so as not to lose the work. I think lawyers (and I am sorry for doing the lawyer/architect comparison-it's done to death on this forum) just seem to have an agreement that this service will cost this much. Period. You can comparison shop for a lawyer that you click with and that you think does a good job, and of course big pockets will get you a blue chip firm, but in general you pay a certain amount for a certain service and it does not really vary at whatever firm level you seek. Whereas in architecture, we are having to work so hard to stay afloat that we will put up with anything to get work, even if it damages the profession as a whole. Just my opinion, though.
I am really liking this thread.
this is not true at all. altough it is not a common thing. i dare you to become one person office mister.
try to find, attract clients who still can sign you up for important projects based on your design merit and tract record, deliver them on time, on budget, work with them in a dignified way so the design is usefull to both parties, orginize army of people to take on the work, pay your bills, fees,dues, be an active member of architectural community, do the trash answer the phone, return calls, show up on time, develope a system of documentation and detailing methods so projects don't become bottomless pits and gets lost in socket details, live your passion (why the hell not) and survive as an architect in a city where there is an architects' office on every corner.
vacation what vacation. oh its easy. just plan ahead and say when you'll be back.
i dare you sir. please...
it is not what you think it is. call it whatever but not easy boss.
6-10 years experience...hmmm. seems like that time when people (like myself) are just getting the hang of this architecture thing, and we either are happy where we are or we are striking out on our own. i don't know how the chicago job market is, but in austin it's hard to find ANYBODY just because right now the labor market is a seller's market. (your impending economic slowdown won't hit us for another 9-12 months or more.)
and man, is it hard to attract the cream of the crop when you're in the suburbs doing bread-n-butter work. i feel for ya. quality of life issues like access to child care don't matter to those of us single folks who went to the big city (in my case, yes, chicago) to do exciting work and live the urban lifestyle.
suburbs are the new ghetto
My take on all of this is a little more simple I suppose... People with 10 years experience are few and far between because the market in 1996 was absolutely horrible. I started undergrad in 1992 and nobody that was graduating could find jobs in architecture. So many architecture graduates from 1996 - 1998 or so simply went into other avenues other than architecture practice at that time which I think explains the lack of people in the 10 year experience range. For me, to understand the current state of experienced architects, one must look back at the economic conditions for architecture 10 years ago.
I will say that what I did notice around 2004 is that people in the 5-6 year experience range (including myself) were given leadership roles and were running jobs all by themselves. So now you have people that on paper may only have 6-8 years of experience, but more than likely have been placed into roles beyond their years.
i agree it's hard to find people above 6 years of experience and many firms are giving 2-3,000 bonuses for bringing in people with experience that stay 3 months. Good thing is, salaries are going up because nobody wants to lose the experienced people they have.
Orhan, an example to counter your point...
http://www.suhaildesign.com/index2.html
one person firm in chicago, he does one project at a time all by himself... I know because I tried to work for him and he told me so.
He has a very impressive portfolio and with all the press he's been getting, I'm assuming a pretty healthy backlog of work...
we should kill all the lawyers. But do you ever hear ranting about architects by the public?
Curtclay was right- we lost a generation of architects to the dot com boom and recession. Then IDP got instituted... so now we're loosing the fresh meat before they get registered.
Concurrent testing (like CA) is one small fix to the broken system.
metamechanic what is ENR?
Also, one thing about your post re: going into business for yourself sticks out at me. I went from billing out at $75 in a firm to billing out at $150/hour, supposedly all take-home by me now that I'm self-employed. But instead I'm bringing home significantly less money: that jump in hourly rate did not, for me, translate to a bump in take-home pay.
Running a business is hardand expensive and though busy I'm not getting rich, in fact I'm hardly making ends meet. Now if I had a spouse who made a reasonable salary and most importantly could provide our family with health insurance through his employer, we'd be in very good shape. Instead insurance of all types is taking a huge chunk of our income.
I'm all for price fixing in the architecture market. Bring it on, I say!!
curtclay, thats my point too. suhail studio is another example.
being one person for me doesn't mean i only do one project at a time.
i felt the need of countering dsc_arch's dismissive statement of portraying one or two people offices in a less than serious way.
i don't have any objections of his dreams of becoming bigger office employing or hoping to employ more people thus increasing his income and establishing his business as he sees fit. i just don't buy his attidute of everything else is easy or less than standart in rather stereotyping way.
i put a lot of thought streamlining my operation so i can do it that way. he or anybody else have no position to undermine that. we are not all the same and that should be good for improvements and lessons learned. i choosed to be a fish in an ocean where hundreds of architects, my collegues, do little more than avarage work, challenging themselves and increasing the bar for our profession overall in certain ways.
he can call that 'uberdesign' or whatever. it is our reality in these shores. that is all.
i have to stand up for the one- and two-person firms out there, too. it's hella easier to have multiple employees, especially if (by your own admission, dsc_arch) they are all working under 40 hours a week. 40 hours a week is probably what guys like orhan and libertybell consider "vacation." and because of our screwed-up social system (see my response to "denmark is the happiest place on earth" thread) guys like orhan and liberty bell are barely able to keep their heads above water.
whereas, dsc_arch, if you have time to take your kids to school, you're not exactly overworked. b/c you have a firm to answer the phone when you're taking the kids to school.
lb and orhan - I want to be like you guys when I grow up
great thread, I hope I can contribute in 10 years from now and not get to be a lost cause
...and that's why orhan is a star architect...cause he's walking the walk. word.
and liberty bell's right, starting a business is hard with a capital h. most fail within the first five years. and even those who succeed, well, it's amazing the kind of shit that they'll have to go through.
orhan,
i feel you man.. projects barely get done right with a whole team of people... I can't imagine doing it all by myself...
Everyone,
I did not mean to be dismissive of one to three person firms. I mentioned the book the “e-myth revisited†because it illustrates what can happen to a one person firm.
Also it wonderfully describes putting together systems and procedures. However, what i ment to stress was that if you become sick, there is no backup, no net.
For me this was too entirely risky to have my family depend on me as the sole means of income.
I now have a staff, including me and my wife partner, of eight people. My bookkeeper and my PA’s take home is a lot more than mine / ours. There are many months out of the year where we are investing in the company to keep it afloat.
It is not a grass is greener issue.
It is decision issue of what you want out of life.
Also it is a personal choice, not right or wrong. There are many times where my partner and I want to go back to three people. However, we know that there will be one to answer the phone and we would give up the flexibility we enjoy.
By working small projects we have multiple streams of income. We have to collect over $35,000 per month before we pay ourselves. That is a big nut. Yet we have committed to training our jr staff to fill-in in that lost generation.
Bless the small firm, it pushes the envelope.
But another question:
Is the small firm self-serving?
abracadabra writes:
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 doesn’t this add to the problem of training of mid level people? In abracadabra’s scenario this person would be like Athena fully formed.
Do small firms have the resources to train and develop talent?
treekiller,
thanks, but I don't think IDP is really the problem.. IDP seems to be a timeconsuming paper pushing exercise that from my experience most people fudge in order to get the required hours, and most employers sign the forms without actually reviewing them.
As an intern, I used it to my advantage. when I wanted to do CA I went to my boss and said, "yo, IDP says you gotta give me this much CA experience, so hook it up!" IDP can become a good tool for interns to lean on to get experience and for that I think its great.
I think most people find the whole IDP process / task too daunting to be bothered with so they don't even bother... I think if its important to people, they'll do it... its kinda like why i didn't apply to Harvard. to me, it wasn't worth it, but IDP was worth it to me because I really wanted to get my license.
dsc_arch, i respect your goals and achievements and wish you attain everything you are setting out for and looks like you have already achieved a lot. i am impressed that you bring in min. 35k every mounth and get paid less than some of your employees. i am sure its only temporary, i hope.
my practice isn't really good for an intern nor i can afford one.
if i had the need for an employee it would be an experienced person like i described and you quoted. it would be more like an associate who would share the credits and definitely be a self propelling kind of a person. sure, i understand that architect would require a proportionate compensation for his or her contribution to business.
better yet, if i ever change my mind about current structure, i would really go for a firm that everybody owns a part of it. that is what i really like to do or be a part of. i think that will be the future of our profession. if you look at it some successfull and creative firms have that structure. i was always impressed by charles moore's structure of his firms where he was always surrounded by co owners of his offices. i really think making people a part owner of the practice is a way to go.
what do you think about that?
3rd from the top! WooHoo!!!!
In theory, IDP is great - we interns are supposed to be exposed to the widest variety of situations... In practice, IDP seems to be more of a hinderance and beaurocratic test of record fabrication that does not make us better architects.
Why must you have 10 weeks at a job before the hours count?
Why must you work more the 30 hours a week to get credit for experience?
Does building models really make me a worse architect or is time spent managing a project with a client more valuable towards my IDP?
Am I training to be an creative architect or a technician that can detail bathroom stalls???
My current firm doesn't do DD or CDs - so all those hours analyzing the site and preparing for the next presentation don't dent my recent deficit of detailing.. Well maybe my next job will help balance the situation...
regarding running a firm
is it better to launch your own practice with a blank slate? or climb the corporate ladder to the top of an existing firm? I appreciate the appeal of inventing a practice from scratch, but I'd rather have the structure and deep talent of an established firm backing up my commissions. Then again - I like the big projects with complex teams and huge budgets/fees. Is this so wrong?
Why the rush to have your own practice before your ___ birthday? is it ego? I've seen what skills are needed, and will patiently learn most of them first.
Abra, LB, SW and all those other great archinector that have created very personal practice- hats off to you! I've learned that my best work is part of a collaborative team, by myself, my mind spins with too many ideas.
DSC - what about buying out another practice to aquire the talent and clients? There have to be several small firms in the Chi-town region with retiring principles?
ah, IDP - I am the ultimate IDP complainer:
former employer - getting hours in ANYTHING but CD's, DD, SD and, sruprisingly, cost estimating was like pulling teeth. Employer will not sign off on my IDP without verifying the 100's of spreadsheet pages it takes to document the shit. I am thru about 2 years of it and have 200% of the experience in CD's I needed. -- It is the most depressing thing I have ever done, to review every tenth of an hour of everyday for several years, evaluating what I did at a job I loathed. I had forgotten that I worked every Saturday for 5 months, and that I spent 3 months developing standard details, and another 3 months drawing as-builts of an old rural hospital that had 7 different additions. Forgot, that is, till I tried to document all my IDP retroactively.
current employer - "I will sign off on whatever you want", and will actually give me the experience I need.
Why didn't I do my IDP every two weeks like you are supposed to? First of all, didn't really know what it was, how the things I was working on fit into it, and didn't really care. Second, I didn't have a mentor to help me see the light. Third, NCARB took their sweet ass time to establish my record, 8 months I believe, and then only after a nasty e-mail or two from me. So I couldn't have started on time if I had wanted to.
Conclusion - work for current employer for 3 years to get IDP, starting from scratch, pay NCARB dues to keep my record the whole time, and then get take the ARE.
Thanks, ochona, for recognizing how much time is involved in running your own firm.
But dsc_arch does also deserve respect for keeping afloat a firm with employees. One of the reasons I work so many hours is I'm not yet ready to make a commitment to an employee. The thought of someone else's livelihood depending on me (and the prospect of $35K/mo in billings, jeepers!) scares me too much right now. Just last week my partner and I hired someone to do some freelance drafting for us: this is a huge step, and I'm optimistic it will go well. (This person is someone in the 6-10 experience range, but not yet licensed, actually, as befits the thread topic.)
If we were to hire someone full-time, I would really want to position myself as a good mentor to a young-ish intern. I, like others here, had great mentors in my old firm, and that has made an enormous difference in my career.
metamechanic, thank you for the ENR post!!! I have copied it to read offline, later tonight when I'm done dealing with finances ugh.
Abracadabra:
i really think making people a part owner of the practice is a way to go.
This one is hard. Forgetting about the time spent in developing the practice, sweating it out until the first few projects were built and having a reputation as a firm. – I started out eight months after receiving my license. We boot strapped everything, still do in some months to keep it going. How do you look at a peer and them make them a part owner. It would be hard to award it solely on merit. Also how does the new owner deal with the pay cut that happens after the cllient goes 90 days past due.
There are some books about managing (see the business of architecture thread.) I have them placed on hold at the library and plan to pick them up this week. However, this should be subject of another thread we can all work on. Right now it is hard letting go of control. Even partial control.
Treekiller:
DSC - what about buying out another practice to acquire the talent and clients? There have to be several small firms in the Chi-town region with retiring principles?
Last year we began talks to purchase a firm. The culture and the practice did not fit so we passed. Currently two firms are in discussion with us to take on more of their work because they are looking to retire and/or having production problems. The only problem with this is we already are having problems getting the work out the door as it is. This goes back to finding the ALI that started this thread.
Owning and running a firm is not for everyone. Some strive for consistency. I would love to find a recently minted ALI, wishing to pursue solid work, and desirous of flexible hours to bring life into balance. I hope that the new thread about a democratic partnership mentioned earlier can assist us all.
Lb,
Not billings. Collections! and yes this is before we pay ourselves.
But don't distress. there was a long time when it was only $16,000 / month.
[Marty and Grocer are shooting eachother]
Mr. Grocer: Comrade! Comrade!
Marty: What?
Mr. Grocer: Why don't you just join the union, we'll go upstairs together and cap daddy!
Marty: This union, there's gonna be meetings?
Mr. Grocer: Of course!
Marty: No meetings.
[they continue shooting]
metamechanic
most firms I've worked for and litereature I've read on running arch firms suggest you need to charge 3-4 times what you want to take home. This of course will vary with how you structure your office, but your suggesting chraging 1.5 times what you want to take home... seems a bit low.
I've been working for myself now, my overhead is much lower than a traditional office and I dont need as a consistentn of an income, but I'm fininding even in this situation I need to charge more than I thought.
Not that the $150/hour you suggest is particularly low depending on the role of that person, but taking home $100/hour seems a bit high. Ok really high. The firms I worked for charged more than that for some jobs but nobody took home $200k/year, granted things could have been streamlined. (this is also assuming you bill for 40 hours per week, a big part of your profit is used to pay for unbillable hours like marketing).
Mybe the other more experienced business owners can comment.
I am about 25% billable now.
However, that may be going down the more i am becoming obsessed with this thread.
You did account for your initial capital investment (I don't know where you'll get that money), but you didnt account for operating capital: you're overlooking profit. You have no profit. Profit seems like the most commonly misunderstood part of business finance (I'm still figureing it out myslef). Proift is NOT what you take home (in public companies it can be used to pay divedends to share holders, in sole proprieterships you can take it home I suppose, how much you reinvest is up to you). But generally profit is what you use to as capitol to purchase new computers when your old ones die unespectedly, or when you hire a new employee and need a new workstation and all the associated software. Aslo to pay for the first few weeks when he's learning the ropes and not that productive, as well as the time that is not billable, like dsc_arch notes as he's become more of a ceo basically none of his time is billable, so his salary is out of the profit (which you lef out) of his emlpoyees salary, as well as all marketing expenses.
Also as dsc_arch stated sometimes clients go 90 days without paying, but you still have to pay your employees and rent etc., so you need to figure out your monthly expenditures and have a few months of total operating costs saved up, otherise the first time somebody doesnt pay you have to lay everybody off. This capital comes from your profit. As your business grows your expenditures go up, so to your operating capital needs to go up.
From several established architects I've been told that nearly 1/3 of your income goes into profit, 1/3 to overhead, 1/3 take home. I guess they're assuming your taxes all get written off in office expense? Should have asked that... not sure how reasonable an assumption that is...
One thing you can do to minimize capital investments is lease equipment and outsource as much as possible, prinitng for example, I'd consider not purchasing an Oce. Not only does this reduce your capital it's very easy to tell the client what the printing cost, when you print in house, clients can get fussy and what to haggle on these things and you tend to cave. If you outsource it prices are fixed, also tech support and maintenance of printers can be a higtmare until your office is big enough to justifiy a full time in house person.
I'm learning all this the hardway at the moment.
Slightly more on topic I’ve been reading a lot of Peter Ducker lately and he had an interesting observation. “The first sign of decline of an industry is loss of appeal to qualified, able, and ambitions people.â€
I'm not sure it's a good idea, but I'm a bit surprised there hasnt been more formal specialization within the architectural discipline and education. Within the building industry we have Civil, mecanical, strucutral, electricla, and plumbing engineers, to name the most common all of which have specialized education. Then there are architecs. As the industry is increasingly sophisticated and specialized we seem as general as ever... if not more so, everyone seems to facny themselves as a Renaissance man.
Someday I hope to be more concise...
the renaissance was actually one of the most specialized times for artisans. painters painted, armormakers made armor, shoemakers made shoes. little giotto was interned by mom and dad at age 11 or whatever and learned from there. it was only much later in the renaissance that the idea of the renaissance man came about. oh and by the way the renaissance artist saw his work as a business and wouldn't lift a finger unless he was getting paid.
I was speaking of the contemporary notion of the renaissnce man, however misinformed that idea might be, and the idea I thought was more in relation to guys like Michelangelo who where acomplished painets, scupltors and architects, no?
Well then, it seems modern architects might do well to learn from the renaissance artist on how to run a business. Where do you read of renaissance artists business practices?
If we assume an average career of 40 years (start work at 25 retire at 65), then the 10+ years people are 75% of the pool (assuming relatively consistent number of graduates over the last 40 years). Then the 6-10 year crowd is only 10%.
I’d like to suggest the reason there are so many recent grads looking for work is because recent grad don’t have jobs. Seemingly obvious I know, but surprisingly overlooked. The 10% who are in 6-10 year experience range presumably have jobs, and therefore aren’t looking to know anyone is hiring, and has been stated, need some serious incentive to make a lateral move for average pay (or they’re looking to start their own firm or any of the other numerous reasons already given).
So the question is how to come up with people with the skill set and experience level desired by so many architecture firms nationwide (I personally know of many firms looing for these people as well)? I think dsc_arch already answered it. Train them, and create and environment that will make them want to stay long enough to make the investment worth your time and theirs. This is very common in other industries and they are increasingly looking to get people hooked into their organizations younger and younger.
Everybody wants people with experience but no one will train them. How on earth do employers expect employees to become the experienced architect the employers are asking when they won’t allow them to get that experience?
It takes time and money but I think long term it will pay off clearly smaller firms may have that luxury.
I think it’s great that dsc_arch is doing that. I wish more firms would recognize the value in it.
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