Try this link for starters.

boutiques have more chicks.

there ya go - go boutique!!

and pink satin couches.

and chicks .

What's a chick? We don't have any of those here.

oh man..chili...then you have to see a lot in Life !

I'm gonna march into the bosses office right now and demand that we get some chicks in here!!!

go for it man.

you fools. aside from the tittAYs....

what's a tittAYs??

most firms are neither boutique or corporate, but crummy little mom and pop equivalents doing whatever they can to keep the lights on...

Is that true? sounds sucky unless you're the principle....and making money.
Granted, I've only visited one firm (Polshek) but a corporate firm seems ideal to me.

i think vado is right- boutique is more a marketing term, it means you're small, and as such will pamper clients with luxurious taste that demand...well...everything.

but really most boutiques are just pretending.

corporate= love boat without isaac washington or the alcapulco deck.
a big ship with the means and resources to get you through the big project.

boutique= the minnow masqurading as a luxury yatch.
a little boat that will get there, but the main engine might die en route.

my experience is 'boutique', and would rather stay with that than work corporate. I like the unpreditability and looseness of it all... plus I hardly ever have to wear a tie.

do you feel more ownership over your work at the boutique than you surmise you would feel at a firm? I guess it depends on the firm and the boutique.

I've been interning for the last year or so at a 'boutique' firm run by a huge, huge starchitect. What I found 'boutique' actually means, is having your head completely up your ass. The problem is no one seems to be thinking about the nuts and bolts of the project, they're too concerned about the type of light bulbs we need to import from the Netherlands, than about real issues. It's making me crazy. I'm helping to wrap up a project that I've been on since I started here, and it's in the very final stages. It looks amazing, but because of some huge design oversights, the heat doesn't work at all and there are major problems with the certificate of occupancy because of the lack of exits and where the staircases are. I feel that these issues would have been resolved in planning at a more 'corporate' firm, whereas, in this 'boutique' firm, people are so afraid to ruffle feathers that mistakes are made. It's sad. If you work at a 'boutique' firm, my advice is to keep your mouth shut, your head down and become very good friends with the site manager. The site manager actually knows what's going on, on the ground level. My bosses are clueless. Granted, I'm still in school, but I have an engineering degree and worked as such for quite a while, so I'm not ignorant about how the real world works. My main point being - boutique firms get away with a lot because of their name and reputation, whereas corporate outfits are more thorough because they are afraid of lawsuits.

my idea of corporate firm has a lot of factors.
first, corporate firms tend to be big. a lotta people and staff. a secretary for each director.
production line type designs. a full archive of past works or works whihc can be drawn upon for application into an array of conditions.
survival for the business. gotta feed a lot of people.. so gota grab every business opportunity

for boutique...
staff count tends to be small in number... and principal oversees everyone..
projects tend to be diverse in experimentation... no distinct solution for certain problems...
huge huge egos by principals... slave driving is common...

well these are just my thoughts on observations... my own POV...

I have worked in a corporate offices and a "boutique" office, and the biggest difference was that corporate offices are more organized in office management, project management, design standards, etc. than boutique offices. That was the difference that made me appreciate the corporate-ness of the office I worked at before.

I got a lot of reponsibility with less training at the boutique office, but this responsibility did not necessarily translate to a higher position and pay because of the office size. I got a lot of training with less responsibility at the corporate office, but I was able to gain more responsibility, a higher position, and pay by thoroughly doing the work that was assigned to me. (By less responsibility, I mean that when I first began work at a corporate office, I was doing a lot of technical work, rather than design work.)

boutique = less ownership

sahar:
interesting post.

i'm at a boutique that often acts as AOR for more corporate 'design' firms. It seems that corporate might be the right transition for my career at some point as my responsibility is greater (here) but the exposure is MUCH less than that of a bigger firm (i would imagine).

i do dislike 'the ego', the lack of office organization, and often personalized office standards.

how long was that technical work time period, and what do u think was the catalyst for your upgrade to design work and better pay (other than doing the work that was assigned to you)?

Just like many people here, I've also worked at both small and large offices, and based on my experience, my conclusion is this;

boutique firms don't want designers; heck, the principals open up their firms, so they can design... they don't want your input, they want everything their way. All they need is cheap slaves, who still have some design sense but would be willing to just shut up and work. Oh, they want project managers, or more like people who just want to do CAs, so they don't have to deal with daily headaches from the job site.

corporate offices have 100+ projects in any given time, and the partners just don't have time to pay attentions on all of them; that means anyone who can prove s/he can design can grab the opportunity and climbing up the ladder. Of course, the big bosses have the power to kill your design... it's like studio in school.

well, at least that's how I see.

thanks fulcrum - makes sense. which had better compensation?

corporate offices. My salary got doubled (really) in 18 months since switching from boutique to corporate.

i made the decision last year to switch from a residential supply type company, making 50% more than i making now, to a local boutique. that hurts... but i keep telling myself that i am 'paying for my professional education and experience'

yeah, I can feel that pain... I got paycut when I switch between boutique firms... they obviously have this attitude; "you must feel grateful and honored working under me." You know what, those bosses at boutique firms always tell their employees that they will be slaved and pigeon-holed if they work for the big corporate firms. I got pigeon-holed so badly by those guys, there's no way I'm going back.

ironic- but i see that dynamic forming in my office. it's a political game of favorites... but i imagined that corporate would be more political.

my fear (one of) is that the jobs i work on now are soo small that when i try to transition to a larger corporate firm with more complex issues- i might be a bit out of my league for a while and i would hate to start from the bottom again.

One difference among many in my experience anyway:

Corporate firm: $60,000 printer that spits out an entire set of working drawings in about a minute like a laser printer.

Boutique firm: Click "print". Put coat on. Walk down the street to get a coffee. Come back, and the first sheet is almost down lurching out of the 10 year old plotter. Load next sheet. Repeat.

my office does both corporate and botique bathroom renovations...at the end of the day, it all smells like shit

I have to disagree about having nice kit at a boutique firm. We have the nicest of everything, period. Even I, the lowly intern get fancy stuff like a MacBook and a Blackberry. I agree with many of the other criticisms, however.

1. If you have a site manager you really are a boutique firm (can't get the Prada boots dirty). But honestly most small firms don't have the luxury of hiring their own PM for site work, too highly specialised.

2. There is a difference between a boutique & a small firm. Boutique practices won't do cd's to "feed the kids"

3. Corporate firms pay more (for your soul)

On a related note, is it easier going from boutique to corp or corp to boutq? Or is it a non factor. I've worked in small (non boutq), med, & large firms. Just moved to a city (seattle) that seems to have decent work coming out of sm/md size firms. At first I thought, go small. But now am wondering if I should get a corp firm to pay for my upcoming exams, build contacts/exp, and let myself get hired away by a smaller group. would like to hear opinions.

corp firms are nice if you dont like getting stuck with the same people everyday/every project.. and if youre younger, likeme , it's nice to have a more interns in the office.

This springs an interesting debate:

I feel that because of the volume of work in the last 6 years Starchitect offices are, for the most part, now operating at the size and infrastructural wieght of corporate firms 20 yrs ago.

may be i am wrong.

does starchitect = boutique?

i used to think the same before ... starchitect = boutique. but starchitects now are corporate in size and boutique in task/ method.

but corporate offices in the recent past and also, in the present, have exponentially increased as well in terms of staff number.

corporate offices now are still corporate in method but mega-corporate / conglomerate in size.