actually OMA isnt one of big offenders. they stick to the dutch law in regards to intern (stagaire) payment. ok it aint much 375 - 400 euros per month.
They have to take an unpaid internships to finish get their degree. They're forcing market prices down. These regulations are not acceptable in the globalized profession of architecture.
Germans don't have to take *unpaid* internships, that would be ridiculous. They might have to take internships, and have the possibility to get funding for more or less unpaid jobs (the european Leonardo scholarship for example), but none of the german interns I've met have worked for free.
Another infamous office of unpaid internships (or so the rumour goes): Miralles / Tagliabue
i don't blame the firms who use free labor ... most of these kids are inexperienced and can only make limited contributions. Site models and photoshop work are a burden and why waste the billable hours of graduated designers on them?
I blame anyone who lets themselves be so demeaned as to work for free just to put a nice bullet point on the CV. Only interns can stop intern exploitation. Remember - no one holds a gun to your head and says you must work for eisenman!
i agree with j-turn........ slave labor isnt cool...... especially in a profession that is supposed to be respected...... but then again my sister makes 26 bones and hour plus ot working for the postal service....... and i know trades make like 25-30an hour at least after their appreticship.... makes me wonder why is hard to even find a job in the arch field that would pay 25-30 and hour when the knowledge is there........
Why is it always the stararchitects that have the rep for shitty pay, or no pay? Meanwhile many lesser known firms pay reasonable and give students/interns better exposure to the profession. I call total bullshit on the argument about competition work not making money. Any business that is decently run will be able to manage their money to cover wages for non-billable hours. Do they not pay the receptionist since that job isn't billable?
I agree with j-turn, the firms are only exploiting the easily exploitable. College courses should teach students how to demand some fair labor practices.
college courses should do a better job of weeding out the students/recent grads looking for work & inadvertently flooding the market. and college career center should probably do a better job of directing students into careers where they'll actually make enough money to donate some back to the dear old alma mater.
and for the record, puddles is happily located in a college town where he can exploit the annual glut of talented youngsters looking for a way to get a foot in the door of this profession. come on kids, how bad do you want it?
puddles, you remind me of the prof i had for my intro to arch course. first day the auditorium has about 300 people in it. he tells everyone to look that the person to the right and then to the left. then tells us that neither of those people will graduate with an arch degree. then says that only 1/3 of us that do graduate will ever become architects. i swear about a dozen people left that class and quit college right then and there.
It isn't just the big-name firms that will exploit interns. There's a local 1-person firm near me that takes on a staff of summer student interns each year and only pays them lunch each day. We've interviewed a bunch of student interns who have also interviewed there, and they just say it's so hard to find a first job with no experience here (in a city overrun with architecture students) particularly if they're not from the most highly-ranked local school that they have to consider doing that - and in fact that's where some of the students we haven't hired have ended up.
Also we get lots of resumes from people offering in their cover letters to work for free - often from international students wanting to get US experience. We're not a starchitect firm by any stretch of the imagination and yet it seems there is plenty of willing free labor if we just say the word.
But I agree that students shouldn't let themselves be used. I worked as a student as a paid model builder for a well-known architect, but some of the other interns were not being paid. I asked one of the project managers once how they decided who to offer paid jobs and he said they don't decide - they just don't pay the people who don't ask about the pay when they interview!
But A: about competitions I have to disagree. The difference between that and the non-billable receptionist is that the receptionist is supposed to be contributing by doing non-billable but necessary tasks and thereby freeing up more skilled staff for more productive billable tasks. But competitions are not in any way profitable, except indirectly as marketing/publicity materials. This is why most firms won't do them unless they either are very slow and trying to keep people occupied until they need them on something billable again, or they can use primarily very low-wage staff on them and consider them to be part of the marketing budget. So you can see how free labor would appeal on that type of project....
bloopox - isn't the idea behind a competition to win and actually get paid to finish the design? After all, if it was "just for publicity" why wouldn't firms just devote that expense to marketing materials?
I see your point about the secretary or other support staff making time for those who can bill their hours. That said, I think the arch staff working on the compeition fall into a similar support category. Essentially they are marketing staff. You said it's about publicity. Do marketing professionals work in this field for free, heck no, so why should an intern doing a competition?
If a firm can not manage their profits well enough to pay someone who is working on a competition, in hopes of landing a paying client, they shouldn't be entering competitions. I can understand cutting back on benefits when times are thin, but everyone deserves an honest wage for an honest days work. Guess Henry Ford's motto has no place in the architecture firm.
A: I agree with you and I said above that I don't think that interns should work for free. I'm in no way arguing that interns should volunteer as free labor to work on competitions. All I was saying is that I don't think most firms view the competition labor in the same way that they view the secretaries (and accountants and other staff that are carried by the billable employees.)
About competitions - especially open competitions: the odds of getting a paying project - for most firms in most competitions - are very small. This is not true for a few specific firms that do tend to have a good track record with winning the projects, but for the vast majority of other firms. In my experience this isn't the leading motivation in most firms' decisions to enter them. Competition entries (and also some award shows) tend to provide more widespread exposure - and a better response rate - than most other types of marketing materials that firms create. Many firms enter them for that reason. But I think they tend to look at them as throw-away time and labor - not in the same category as the unavoidable hours and tasks that they hire secretaries to do.
I am not defending this outlook - just trying to shed some light on what goes on and why in many firms.
I don't buy the basic premise of this thread: "exploiting free labor". I can't believe that any student has only one, unpaid option for a summer job. Students typically have many options, the large majority of which are for pay. The people taking unpaid internships are trading their pay for the ability to list a starchitect on their resume.
i have never worked for free. somehow i have always been paid more than i am worth, which seems odd....
there is a posting of so-called "hot-desks" (or maybe it is open desks...) that goes up at my uni here in tokyo every once in a while. is for open spaces in offices like sejima, ito, and other biggies, to work for free, helping with models and so on. there are always lots of people signed up for these. and i suspect they are actually a very good education. i could never afford to go this route myself, but if i was 22 and inexperienced i would likely give it a whirl. why not?
on the other hand typical wages for starting staff at such places apprently would not even cover my monthly rent, so am not sure being full time and paid is much of a step up from working for free...
oh, we got it at UT austin too. actually i got that lecture twice in the same day.
once when all us architecture students were in the auditorium waiting for our studio assignments...then four hours later in a 500-student calculus class.
both lecturers were wrong. half our class dropped out after the first semester...and there were less than 50 students in calculus on the day of the final exam. supposedly only four people passed.
I'm not wealthy. I was living off of those Burrito’s and returned security deposits until I was flat broke, then I had to get a 'real' job.
It's amazing how much better my quality of living was before I had much money and useless junk...
No stress...
No cares...
I could ride my bike to some park and take a nap in the sun whenever I wanted...
No crappie Construction. Doc.'s...
I never had to consult ANSI A117...
The list goes on...
Oct 12, 06 8:49 am ·
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UNPAID INTERNSHIPS
Who do you think is the most norious architect for exploiting free labor?
rem
FOA (so ive heard)
Back in the mid-90s I know of a famed British architect who asked all the interns to pay $150 in wasted materials for the summer... now that's rough.
actually OMA isnt one of big offenders. they stick to the dutch law in regards to intern (stagaire) payment. ok it aint much 375 - 400 euros per month.
Everyone at FOA is paid properly.
I blame the Germans.
They have to take an unpaid internships to finish get their degree. They're forcing market prices down. These regulations are not acceptable in the globalized profession of architecture.
Germans don't have to take *unpaid* internships, that would be ridiculous. They might have to take internships, and have the possibility to get funding for more or less unpaid jobs (the european Leonardo scholarship for example), but none of the german interns I've met have worked for free.
Another infamous office of unpaid internships (or so the rumour goes): Miralles / Tagliabue
fuksas (so rumor goes)
i don't blame the firms who use free labor ... most of these kids are inexperienced and can only make limited contributions. Site models and photoshop work are a burden and why waste the billable hours of graduated designers on them?
I blame anyone who lets themselves be so demeaned as to work for free just to put a nice bullet point on the CV. Only interns can stop intern exploitation. Remember - no one holds a gun to your head and says you must work for eisenman!
i agree with j-turn........ slave labor isnt cool...... especially in a profession that is supposed to be respected...... but then again my sister makes 26 bones and hour plus ot working for the postal service....... and i know trades make like 25-30an hour at least after their appreticship.... makes me wonder why is hard to even find a job in the arch field that would pay 25-30 and hour when the knowledge is there........
?
Why is it always the stararchitects that have the rep for shitty pay, or no pay? Meanwhile many lesser known firms pay reasonable and give students/interns better exposure to the profession. I call total bullshit on the argument about competition work not making money. Any business that is decently run will be able to manage their money to cover wages for non-billable hours. Do they not pay the receptionist since that job isn't billable?
I agree with j-turn, the firms are only exploiting the easily exploitable. College courses should teach students how to demand some fair labor practices.
college courses should do a better job of weeding out the students/recent grads looking for work & inadvertently flooding the market. and college career center should probably do a better job of directing students into careers where they'll actually make enough money to donate some back to the dear old alma mater.
and for the record, puddles is happily located in a college town where he can exploit the annual glut of talented youngsters looking for a way to get a foot in the door of this profession. come on kids, how bad do you want it?
puddles, you remind me of the prof i had for my intro to arch course. first day the auditorium has about 300 people in it. he tells everyone to look that the person to the right and then to the left. then tells us that neither of those people will graduate with an arch degree. then says that only 1/3 of us that do graduate will ever become architects. i swear about a dozen people left that class and quit college right then and there.
It isn't just the big-name firms that will exploit interns. There's a local 1-person firm near me that takes on a staff of summer student interns each year and only pays them lunch each day. We've interviewed a bunch of student interns who have also interviewed there, and they just say it's so hard to find a first job with no experience here (in a city overrun with architecture students) particularly if they're not from the most highly-ranked local school that they have to consider doing that - and in fact that's where some of the students we haven't hired have ended up.
Also we get lots of resumes from people offering in their cover letters to work for free - often from international students wanting to get US experience. We're not a starchitect firm by any stretch of the imagination and yet it seems there is plenty of willing free labor if we just say the word.
But I agree that students shouldn't let themselves be used. I worked as a student as a paid model builder for a well-known architect, but some of the other interns were not being paid. I asked one of the project managers once how they decided who to offer paid jobs and he said they don't decide - they just don't pay the people who don't ask about the pay when they interview!
But A: about competitions I have to disagree. The difference between that and the non-billable receptionist is that the receptionist is supposed to be contributing by doing non-billable but necessary tasks and thereby freeing up more skilled staff for more productive billable tasks. But competitions are not in any way profitable, except indirectly as marketing/publicity materials. This is why most firms won't do them unless they either are very slow and trying to keep people occupied until they need them on something billable again, or they can use primarily very low-wage staff on them and consider them to be part of the marketing budget. So you can see how free labor would appeal on that type of project....
bloopox - isn't the idea behind a competition to win and actually get paid to finish the design? After all, if it was "just for publicity" why wouldn't firms just devote that expense to marketing materials?
I see your point about the secretary or other support staff making time for those who can bill their hours. That said, I think the arch staff working on the compeition fall into a similar support category. Essentially they are marketing staff. You said it's about publicity. Do marketing professionals work in this field for free, heck no, so why should an intern doing a competition?
If a firm can not manage their profits well enough to pay someone who is working on a competition, in hopes of landing a paying client, they shouldn't be entering competitions. I can understand cutting back on benefits when times are thin, but everyone deserves an honest wage for an honest days work. Guess Henry Ford's motto has no place in the architecture firm.
A: I agree with you and I said above that I don't think that interns should work for free. I'm in no way arguing that interns should volunteer as free labor to work on competitions. All I was saying is that I don't think most firms view the competition labor in the same way that they view the secretaries (and accountants and other staff that are carried by the billable employees.)
About competitions - especially open competitions: the odds of getting a paying project - for most firms in most competitions - are very small. This is not true for a few specific firms that do tend to have a good track record with winning the projects, but for the vast majority of other firms. In my experience this isn't the leading motivation in most firms' decisions to enter them. Competition entries (and also some award shows) tend to provide more widespread exposure - and a better response rate - than most other types of marketing materials that firms create. Many firms enter them for that reason. But I think they tend to look at them as throw-away time and labor - not in the same category as the unavoidable hours and tasks that they hire secretaries to do.
I am not defending this outlook - just trying to shed some light on what goes on and why in many firms.
I don't buy the basic premise of this thread: "exploiting free labor". I can't believe that any student has only one, unpaid option for a summer job. Students typically have many options, the large majority of which are for pay. The people taking unpaid internships are trading their pay for the ability to list a starchitect on their resume.
i think OMANY doesn't pay their interns, oops.. should be REX, right?!
i have never worked for free. somehow i have always been paid more than i am worth, which seems odd....
there is a posting of so-called "hot-desks" (or maybe it is open desks...) that goes up at my uni here in tokyo every once in a while. is for open spaces in offices like sejima, ito, and other biggies, to work for free, helping with models and so on. there are always lots of people signed up for these. and i suspect they are actually a very good education. i could never afford to go this route myself, but if i was 22 and inexperienced i would likely give it a whirl. why not?
on the other hand typical wages for starting staff at such places apprently would not even cover my monthly rent, so am not sure being full time and paid is much of a step up from working for free...
I worked in an office that paid us in Burritos. They were delicious.
No lie.
A - where did you go to school? I got the same lecture in the same class.
oh, we got it at UT austin too. actually i got that lecture twice in the same day.
once when all us architecture students were in the auditorium waiting for our studio assignments...then four hours later in a 500-student calculus class.
both lecturers were wrong. half our class dropped out after the first semester...and there were less than 50 students in calculus on the day of the final exam. supposedly only four people passed.
i need a maid. a cook... a what else, oh yeah and one of those too. Free Burritos ladiezzz!!!
Wealthy kids, both domestic and foreign, ruin it for the rest of us. But that's supposed to happen. All I can do is drink and complain.
I'm not wealthy. I was living off of those Burrito’s and returned security deposits until I was flat broke, then I had to get a 'real' job.
It's amazing how much better my quality of living was before I had much money and useless junk...
No stress...
No cares...
I could ride my bike to some park and take a nap in the sun whenever I wanted...
No crappie Construction. Doc.'s...
I never had to consult ANSI A117...
The list goes on...
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