I'd like to see some suggestions on how much entry level, right-out-of-school, would get at a firm. I have a job offer but I'm not too sure how much I should ask. If I ask for too much or too less, I'd like to know the average for NYC.
Interesting (and slightly shocking) that NYC's salary numbers for entry-level interns are actually lower than Chicago's. However, NYC's numbers at more senior-level positions are much higher than Chicago's.
Moral of the story: Spend a few years post-graduation working somewhere else, pay off your student loans, and then move to NYC when you're ready to become a project architect or principal.
wow that is interesting. i thought they'd pay a little more since the cost of living is a bit higher than others. im from texas and my friends got out from the b.arch with 39-40k...thanks for all your suggestions
Those numbers seem high - everyone I know straight out got 35K at the most...most numbers were around 30K. I don't like both eating and paying rent anyway.
i'm just curious.....how do you guys live in NYC on those numbers? do you have loans, credit cards, married, single, family money, etc? i am honestly baffled as to how anyone who has any debt at all can possibly live a normal life (you know, like eating and putting clothes on your back) on less than $45,000 in NYC
you don't have to give specifics on debt numbers or anything, i would really just like to hear your story....
I know someone making 38 + quarterly bonuses+ christmas bonus (bob stern), someone making 42, and someone making 38ish... all with 7-8 months of experience.
we all graduated at the same time, I chose the route of working in another city for a couple years prior to making my trek there.
all of them are barely getting by, and none of them even own cars. so that salary is tight...
I have a handful of friends working in the city. Those with 1-2 years of experience and a 4 year degree make in the low 40's. All of them are getting by just fine.
All pay below $1000 for monthly rent.
All are able to afford food, clothing and metro card.
All of them can afford to eat or drink out (so long as they keep this expenditure in check).
After taxes and all above living expenses, some of them end up with an extra $1000 or so for the savings account.
I guess "getting by" can be defined in more ways than one. Keep in mind, I'm speaking of people that haven't attended grad school, so the monthly debt bill is not extreme.
I have a lot of debt from school which I'll be paying off for years, but my rent is only $775 a month [including heat and water], utilities are usually about $120 and all my debt payments come to about $700 a month as well... Leaving more than enough money to buy more useless shit.
... but I still wish I could make what my girlfriend makes as a graphic designer.
I first moved to NY after school with little experience and went right to corporate because I was broke to start... made a salary above that bracket.. got overtime... full benefits...etc.... but realized I was loosing my soul. So now I'm scraping by on the lower end of that bracket at a small firm in Brooklyn, lost some benefits and overtime, but moved to a cheaper neighborhood (750-800 for rent and all utilities), can ride my bike to work... and still eat everyday (I don't have much to save for right now) and blow the rest on all sorts of shit I don't need.
what the....is this thread from 10 years ago?!%
me and other friends were making mid 30's right out of school in te mid-late 90's. and who's rent is 800 in nyc or even brooklyn for that matter. this profession needs to start billing more and paying more.
although i admit that one can be pretty useless first year out of college...
Biggz, obviously at least 2 people have confirmed $800 rent in BK.
I think that Architects have set ourselves in this bind. We could learn a lot from consultants and *sigh* interior designers.
When I do freelance renderings, I can bill 2x what my boss bills me out as. If money was all-important, I'd work for a corporate firm where I'd spend my days in tucked-in shirts and dress shoes. After work i'd go home and sleep until the next morning.
Luckily, I have enough resources to make an additional $5k - $10k a year and I work for a really great small office in Chinatown. I still have enough money to blow on shoes and clothes and I still eat better food than most people do in other cities.
... still, my favorite part of my day is my bike ride to and from the office.
Maybe LA pays more (which seems strange compared to NYC) but I wouldn't take less than 40k out of school (which was consistent with my peers) and now I am up to 45k (at a different job) about 7 months later. This really scares me for the PGRC (post grad reality check).
Though I love the work- the abuse in this field is disappointing. If it’s not emotional, it’s financial…
Why do architects and designers think they are doing us a favor by “letting” us work for them? I mean, it’s a mutual exchange.
thats just great. now i have even more things to worry about...my uncle lives in queens, commute is i guess 1 hr away. though my cousin is right in manhattan but i dont want to bother. im going in to talk about benefits and compensation with the firm on monday. im not too excited because i dont have to go bankrupt. thats just a scary thought...
johnprolly - what small firm is in chinatown? sounds interesting, im chinese myself.
I had worked at my first job for 8 months prior to graduation. Upon attaining my two bachelor's degrees, I was offered me 25k. I asked them "is at least 30k unreasoanble?" "Uhh, yes"... insert principal's long, random life story here. Needlesss to say I continued planning my escape and it took a while but I ended up going corporate, at almost 40k with 1.5yrs experience.
Been there before. If you ever hear one of those start looking. From my experience that's an indication you are far underpaid. Last move after hear that was a 20% bump.
And when I left, he cut short his attempts to dissuade me cause he knew he couldn't compete with 39k. (there I said it, secret's out). He's a really great guy, good boss, but I had to eat and actually leave home one day.
you guys have got to be kidding, right? i know so many people with 1-2 years experience that are making 50+. Are you talking b.arch or do some of you have graduate degrees? I was making 50K in LA with a BA in architecture, I can't believe it would be so different in NY. At least on the salary poll there seem to be some more reasonable figures.
nyc stats are absofucking ridiculous. my studio, that i used to rent a couple of years ago for $1500 is now renting for $2900. pretty soon, they're going to have a tax on air and i won't even be able to breathe.
it's possible to find cheap places to live...i have a place on
manhattan for 900 a month...i have four roomies, but we
all have our own room...
but during my two week apartment search i found quite a few
apartments for under 1k that weren't living in a closet...
granted most of them were in the 'burgh..but i've lived here for
about four years and have yet to pay more than 900/month...
and that's the LES and park slope.
i remember when i got my first real architecture job. i told my mom what i was making. her response "that's not very much money". understand my parents were working class and it wasnt much money to them. and its still not much money.
wow. i know im out of the loop but those numbers are absurd. i had a job making 39k in la and i felt like a fish in a tank w a broken water pump. nyc would be pretty tough.
you should aim for 40 and don't take anything less than 36. that's the average starting salary for new york and the surrounding metro area. also, i've been searching for an apartment for a few months now and where in nyc (in new york state, not the midwest) is there anything for less that 1k??? the only listings i've seen like that are for studios with shared bathrooms for the floor.
VMcQ
if you look at craigslist there is definitely stuff out there..
you may have to have a couple roommates, but there are
a lot places out there. i had to find a place in less than a
month and i looked at four places that were all less than
1k..two in williamsburg near the bedford stop, one in the LES
and the one where i now live in chinatown..and the place where
i now live is the largest i've lived in in boston or new york.
you have to keep looking...i looked through about 700 ads
on craigslist and responded to about 20.
ps.
i was looking for shared apts.. renting something outright isn't
going to work..cause if the place is empty the landlord immediately
jacks up the rent..you have to find a place where someone has lived
for a couple years..most likely. or find a place that's been vacant for
a while and the landlord is a bit desperate.
in Staten Island the rent is comporable to the rest of the country, (like 400-500 for a 1br). Same with NJ. There are some 'hoods in jersey where it's easier to get to the city than getting to the city is the other boroughs. I've got a friend with a 2br with his nurse wife in Ft. Lee and they do pretty well i think. There are still many 'hoods out in BK, Queens and the bronx where you can rent for less than grand, yet as BK gentrifies that's gonna change. Here's to hoping the russian mafia keeps 'em out of Brighton Beach, 'cause i wanna move there.
I've been working in NYC for 9 months now and I'm getting paid below the mean for NYC wages. I live in Astoria, Queens in a one bedroom in which I pay $1100. I'd big, and I moved up here from Kansas City and didn't know anyone and didn't really feel like finding a random roommate off of craigslist. I don't really have much extra cash, I live paycheck to paycheck, but I did get a hefty tax return for only working 6 months out of the year [won't happen again though :(]. However, I feel that it is worth it because the experience of living in NYC is second to none. I do have a gf who lives up here and works in fashion and makes more than I do [and the disparity will only increase]; hopefully soon we will move in together, thus decreasing rent and allowing me to save some money.
JP, how do you go about getting freelance render jobs here? I'm pretty skilled in Max and I have thought about maybe whoring myself out to get a little extra cash.
LIG, there is a mandatory cap on how much you can raise the rent per year - i think it's like 4%. but the way landlords get away with it is that they set their market value at something ridiculous like $5,000, but then act like they're doing you a favor by offering you the discounted rate of say $3000, even though it's clear no one in the market would pay $5000 for it. when the market was slow, they would only raise the rent on the discounted rate, after 9/11 they offered even MORE concessions on rent, but then all of a sudden, like in 2004 the economy started doing a lot better and they raised the rent by $500 because legally, they can raise the rent upto 4% of the market value. and then after that, it has just been exponential rent increases after another. people who signed long-term leases two years ago are sitting on a goldmine. my friend who has lived in the same apartment over the last 5 yrs has seen her rent go up from $2100 to $4500 in a ghetto old apt. my salary sure didn't see such an inflation, and because the construction industry was so strong, the rental market has always been soft. who is renting all of these ridiculous places, where are they getting the money and how can we make it stop!???????????????
ahhh, all you need to do is contempate that places like Goldman-Sachs and most other financial institutions give bonuses of 50% or more of a persons yearly salary....
as do many law firms.
yup, we're the dumb ones.
Apr 3, 07 11:40 am ·
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Compensation_NYC_Less than 1 yr
Hello all archinect friends,
I'd like to see some suggestions on how much entry level, right-out-of-school, would get at a firm. I have a job offer but I'm not too sure how much I should ask. If I ask for too much or too less, I'd like to know the average for NYC.
Thank you in advance!
According to the 2005 AIA Compensation Survey:
Entry-level intern: Intern in first year of internship
Mean: $36,400
Lower quartile: $33,200
Median: $35,400
Upper quartile: $39,500
Crap, I was mistakenly looking at the Chicago numbers. Here's the NYC numbers:
Mean: $36,300
Lower quartile: $35,000
Median: $36,000
Upper quartile: $38,000
Interesting (and slightly shocking) that NYC's salary numbers for entry-level interns are actually lower than Chicago's. However, NYC's numbers at more senior-level positions are much higher than Chicago's.
Maybe the NYC number is dragged down by all the starchitects there who pay crap wages...
I still find these numbers shocking. Maybe my previous employers were just cheap...
It's kind of depressing to know that I have friends in other [less urban] areas of the country making almost 2x what I'm making.
But then again, it's not NYC.
Moral of the story: Spend a few years post-graduation working somewhere else, pay off your student loans, and then move to NYC when you're ready to become a project architect or principal.
i've found in general that new york pays on the low side...
unless you work as a consultant...
wow that is interesting. i thought they'd pay a little more since the cost of living is a bit higher than others. im from texas and my friends got out from the b.arch with 39-40k...thanks for all your suggestions
Those numbers seem high - everyone I know straight out got 35K at the most...most numbers were around 30K. I don't like both eating and paying rent anyway.
yeah I've got 3 years experience in NYC and I've just recently broken through that bracket.
i'm just curious.....how do you guys live in NYC on those numbers? do you have loans, credit cards, married, single, family money, etc? i am honestly baffled as to how anyone who has any debt at all can possibly live a normal life (you know, like eating and putting clothes on your back) on less than $45,000 in NYC
you don't have to give specifics on debt numbers or anything, i would really just like to hear your story....
I know someone making 38 + quarterly bonuses+ christmas bonus (bob stern), someone making 42, and someone making 38ish... all with 7-8 months of experience.
we all graduated at the same time, I chose the route of working in another city for a couple years prior to making my trek there.
all of them are barely getting by, and none of them even own cars. so that salary is tight...
I have a handful of friends working in the city. Those with 1-2 years of experience and a 4 year degree make in the low 40's. All of them are getting by just fine.
All pay below $1000 for monthly rent.
All are able to afford food, clothing and metro card.
All of them can afford to eat or drink out (so long as they keep this expenditure in check).
After taxes and all above living expenses, some of them end up with an extra $1000 or so for the savings account.
I guess "getting by" can be defined in more ways than one. Keep in mind, I'm speaking of people that haven't attended grad school, so the monthly debt bill is not extreme.
I live just fine.
I have a lot of debt from school which I'll be paying off for years, but my rent is only $775 a month [including heat and water], utilities are usually about $120 and all my debt payments come to about $700 a month as well... Leaving more than enough money to buy more useless shit.
... but I still wish I could make what my girlfriend makes as a graphic designer.
I first moved to NY after school with little experience and went right to corporate because I was broke to start... made a salary above that bracket.. got overtime... full benefits...etc.... but realized I was loosing my soul. So now I'm scraping by on the lower end of that bracket at a small firm in Brooklyn, lost some benefits and overtime, but moved to a cheaper neighborhood (750-800 for rent and all utilities), can ride my bike to work... and still eat everyday (I don't have much to save for right now) and blow the rest on all sorts of shit I don't need.
what the....is this thread from 10 years ago?!%
me and other friends were making mid 30's right out of school in te mid-late 90's. and who's rent is 800 in nyc or even brooklyn for that matter. this profession needs to start billing more and paying more.
although i admit that one can be pretty useless first year out of college...
Biggz, obviously at least 2 people have confirmed $800 rent in BK.
I think that Architects have set ourselves in this bind. We could learn a lot from consultants and *sigh* interior designers.
When I do freelance renderings, I can bill 2x what my boss bills me out as. If money was all-important, I'd work for a corporate firm where I'd spend my days in tucked-in shirts and dress shoes. After work i'd go home and sleep until the next morning.
Luckily, I have enough resources to make an additional $5k - $10k a year and I work for a really great small office in Chinatown. I still have enough money to blow on shoes and clothes and I still eat better food than most people do in other cities.
... still, my favorite part of my day is my bike ride to and from the office.
shocking numbers...frightening in fact.
Maybe LA pays more (which seems strange compared to NYC) but I wouldn't take less than 40k out of school (which was consistent with my peers) and now I am up to 45k (at a different job) about 7 months later. This really scares me for the PGRC (post grad reality check).
Though I love the work- the abuse in this field is disappointing. If it’s not emotional, it’s financial…
Why do architects and designers think they are doing us a favor by “letting” us work for them? I mean, it’s a mutual exchange.
Rant over.
thats just great. now i have even more things to worry about...my uncle lives in queens, commute is i guess 1 hr away. though my cousin is right in manhattan but i dont want to bother. im going in to talk about benefits and compensation with the firm on monday. im not too excited because i dont have to go bankrupt. thats just a scary thought...
johnprolly - what small firm is in chinatown? sounds interesting, im chinese myself.
Damn, I need to start my own salary thread before I begin interviewing in NYC this summer.
I had worked at my first job for 8 months prior to graduation. Upon attaining my two bachelor's degrees, I was offered me 25k. I asked them "is at least 30k unreasoanble?" "Uhh, yes"... insert principal's long, random life story here. Needlesss to say I continued planning my escape and it took a while but I ended up going corporate, at almost 40k with 1.5yrs experience.
Been there before. If you ever hear one of those start looking. From my experience that's an indication you are far underpaid. Last move after hear that was a 20% bump.
Saigwa,
It's technically Nolita / Chinatown.
The owner's not chinese, but the building used to be a sweatshop.
And when I left, he cut short his attempts to dissuade me cause he knew he couldn't compete with 39k. (there I said it, secret's out). He's a really great guy, good boss, but I had to eat and actually leave home one day.
MDLER WAS HERE
^ LoL OmG TTyL
you guys have got to be kidding, right? i know so many people with 1-2 years experience that are making 50+. Are you talking b.arch or do some of you have graduate degrees? I was making 50K in LA with a BA in architecture, I can't believe it would be so different in NY. At least on the salary poll there seem to be some more reasonable figures.
$50k with a BA degree and 1-2 years experience?? I need a better agent.
nyc stats are absofucking ridiculous. my studio, that i used to rent a couple of years ago for $1500 is now renting for $2900. pretty soon, they're going to have a tax on air and i won't even be able to breathe.
Yikes. I take it this place isn't rent-stabilized? What neighborhood are you in?
I was paying $970 for a one-bedroom in 2004... Granted, it was a shitty building in a shitty neighborhood, though.
thats not good news for me. so i guess i'll expect 25-30 or less with some benefits. oh boy im nervous about living in general.
it's possible to find cheap places to live...i have a place on
manhattan for 900 a month...i have four roomies, but we
all have our own room...
but during my two week apartment search i found quite a few
apartments for under 1k that weren't living in a closet...
granted most of them were in the 'burgh..but i've lived here for
about four years and have yet to pay more than 900/month...
and that's the LES and park slope.
i remember when i got my first real architecture job. i told my mom what i was making. her response "that's not very much money". understand my parents were working class and it wasnt much money to them. and its still not much money.
wow. i know im out of the loop but those numbers are absurd. i had a job making 39k in la and i felt like a fish in a tank w a broken water pump. nyc would be pretty tough.
you should aim for 40 and don't take anything less than 36. that's the average starting salary for new york and the surrounding metro area. also, i've been searching for an apartment for a few months now and where in nyc (in new york state, not the midwest) is there anything for less that 1k??? the only listings i've seen like that are for studios with shared bathrooms for the floor.
VMcQ
if you look at craigslist there is definitely stuff out there..
you may have to have a couple roommates, but there are
a lot places out there. i had to find a place in less than a
month and i looked at four places that were all less than
1k..two in williamsburg near the bedford stop, one in the LES
and the one where i now live in chinatown..and the place where
i now live is the largest i've lived in in boston or new york.
you have to keep looking...i looked through about 700 ads
on craigslist and responded to about 20.
ps.
i was looking for shared apts.. renting something outright isn't
going to work..cause if the place is empty the landlord immediately
jacks up the rent..you have to find a place where someone has lived
for a couple years..most likely. or find a place that's been vacant for
a while and the landlord is a bit desperate.
in Staten Island the rent is comporable to the rest of the country, (like 400-500 for a 1br). Same with NJ. There are some 'hoods in jersey where it's easier to get to the city than getting to the city is the other boroughs. I've got a friend with a 2br with his nurse wife in Ft. Lee and they do pretty well i think. There are still many 'hoods out in BK, Queens and the bronx where you can rent for less than grand, yet as BK gentrifies that's gonna change. Here's to hoping the russian mafia keeps 'em out of Brighton Beach, 'cause i wanna move there.
I've been working in NYC for 9 months now and I'm getting paid below the mean for NYC wages. I live in Astoria, Queens in a one bedroom in which I pay $1100. I'd big, and I moved up here from Kansas City and didn't know anyone and didn't really feel like finding a random roommate off of craigslist. I don't really have much extra cash, I live paycheck to paycheck, but I did get a hefty tax return for only working 6 months out of the year [won't happen again though :(]. However, I feel that it is worth it because the experience of living in NYC is second to none. I do have a gf who lives up here and works in fashion and makes more than I do [and the disparity will only increase]; hopefully soon we will move in together, thus decreasing rent and allowing me to save some money.
JP, how do you go about getting freelance render jobs here? I'm pretty skilled in Max and I have thought about maybe whoring myself out to get a little extra cash.
hello, good news, i got back from the firm im wanting to work with and they said 41k. so maybe i can survive in ny!
LIG, there is a mandatory cap on how much you can raise the rent per year - i think it's like 4%. but the way landlords get away with it is that they set their market value at something ridiculous like $5,000, but then act like they're doing you a favor by offering you the discounted rate of say $3000, even though it's clear no one in the market would pay $5000 for it. when the market was slow, they would only raise the rent on the discounted rate, after 9/11 they offered even MORE concessions on rent, but then all of a sudden, like in 2004 the economy started doing a lot better and they raised the rent by $500 because legally, they can raise the rent upto 4% of the market value. and then after that, it has just been exponential rent increases after another. people who signed long-term leases two years ago are sitting on a goldmine. my friend who has lived in the same apartment over the last 5 yrs has seen her rent go up from $2100 to $4500 in a ghetto old apt. my salary sure didn't see such an inflation, and because the construction industry was so strong, the rental market has always been soft. who is renting all of these ridiculous places, where are they getting the money and how can we make it stop!???????????????
ahhh, all you need to do is contempate that places like Goldman-Sachs and most other financial institutions give bonuses of 50% or more of a persons yearly salary....
as do many law firms.
yup, we're the dumb ones.
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