Hey folks. I am a recent graduate of architecture, having received my B. of Arch. degree in May 2007. I have 2 years of work experience in a licensed firm in Louisiana, currently fulfilling my IDP requirements. I am interested in moving to Los Angeles after the new year, and was wondering what interns with my qualifications are. I am currently making $23/hr, which is a little under $48,000 / year. I get medical benefits, and paid vacation/sick.
really? it's a slightly different story but a friend of mine just got a job after finishing his m.arch. his starting salary is $ 50,000 in LA. He doesn't have much a job experience.
allim70, your rate of pay, and your friend's, is much more in line with what i would expect than others here suggest.
here is a bit from my own experience...in a market with a very low cost of living i started at 37,500 with no previous experience and was bumped up to 40,000 within my first 90 days (for context, i have a Bachelor of Design in Architecture, a pre-pro degree that's part of a 4+2 program). my peers, with the same pre-pro degree, did more or less the same right out of school. i left this 'low cost of living' market earlier this year with 2 years of experience under my belt. now that i'm in a larger market my pay has increased accordingly.
*of course there are practices, especially in large cities it seems, that pay below the market rate (see salary.com for median salary figures). some people seek employment from low-paying practices, perhaps because they are attracted to the work being produced there. nevertheless, you don't have to work at these places, and so long as you're employable, you should be able to find good work at or near market rate.
......to add at the end of sameolddoctor......
although the sal is pretty decent, anything below that (annually) is a crime. Esp. for those having to pay their loans back w/o a family or any other financial assistance.
like with all things rubblex2, if you look hard enough you might find a job which offers you the 50K but prob not a whole lot more, with your exp. But make sure you look at the larger offices.
ya know what gets my goat, tumbleweed...it's not so much the offices that pay the low rate, it's the young professionals that agree to work for them. if no one was taking the low paying jobs...
I feel ya tumbleweed.....but I also have to agree with AP, however, AP there comes a point where one must take a job otherwise, they cant survive.....I know cause no matter how hard I've tried to work for a "good" office, I seemingly got stuck in the less attractive office, only cause they were willing to pay the decent salary, and basically not rape you!
she works for a corporate firm in LA. As far as I know, some corporate firms have a decent salary for the intern architects. but, good salary doesn't guarantee the quality of work.
bad salart doesnt guarantee the quality of work, either. The longer that I live in LA, the more I realize that I rather have the $$$ over the quality of work
It sounds like you are way underpaid. I am not at all familiar with the cost of living in LA but I have a friend who took a job right out of school for 40k in Atlanta. I can't imagine the cost of living difference is only 8k.
tumbles - " it really gets my goat that non-starchitect offices can expect young people with huge loans to be willing to work for them for less than 40k/year"
so, does this mean that we should ask young people who managed to exit college without huge loans to work for less?
it's not now, nor has it ever been, about what you need - it's about what you can contribute - with your logic, an employee with 3 kids should be paid more than a single person doing the same job.
rubble - I think your current wage and benefits are "market" for your experience level in my area.
What I'm not understanding is how you say you have two years of work experience, but also that you just recieved your B.Arch five months ago...? If those two years were part-time, they don't count as two years. That would be an average to above average salary for two real years experience, post-graduation, in LA. So it seems like you're making out pretty well already. I'd stick it out there until you had a year or two of experience after graduation to ensure that you don't take a paycut when you move.
well rub to give a bit more depth, I would make sure I had a job offering me north of my current salary waiting for me in L.A. before I made the move. I don't have a full degree yet (and bet your ass when I do I'll start asking for more like $20 an hour with about 2 years of part-time work experience under my belt), but for my knowledge 43k is good money for an intern, its about the northern edge of what an intern can expect to make to my knowledge then again i've hear of guys getting hookups at corp. firms offering 45k straight out the gate, but note I'm an intern (just starting) and make $10 an hour working almost full time. I consider this reasonable given my current experience level, but if a firm likes you enough to pay you 43k a year plus full benefits they must like you, and that must be a major consideration before you make a move.
one problem with LA is that there are many kids living in the city with trust funds who are willing to work for next to nothing (the same is true in NYC).
not that Louisiana isnt the architecture capital of the world, but I doubt that there are as many people looking for architecture jobs there
hahaha..... it was a salary gig and 70 hour weeks for 4-5 months during busy season...exhibit stuff..... then they probably would "lay me off" after the fact..... so.....
I really, really dislike the people who exploit that market full of eager, young interns who have no clue how much they're "really"worth. Right now, since I used to be paid $10 an hour hustling files at an insurance company, $10 dollars/hr feels about right for my very first job in this field which has mutated from intern architect (read:office bitch) to construction assistant where I actually feel like I learn alot of valuable things each day. When I graduate though I'm gonna have to either ask for a very sizeable raise or leave for greener pastures and hope my experience will make me more payable and employable down the road.
to make everyone feel worse..... my sister make 27 and hour sitting at a mail machine...hits a button every once in a while and moves the baskets of mail a few times...... full benefits/etc
how are you supposed to live in LA on $28k? try finding a decent one-bedroom apartment for under $1400 / month. then you have to get a car too. the math doesn't work out.
having recently been to several interviews and not having graduated YET (one month! for b.arch) i can tell you that the going rate quoted to me from several firms is $38-42k, standard in los angeles for full time intern positions (ie. right out of school). so don't settle for less, or you're selling yourself short.
38-40k is standard in the medium-sized city that I live currently live in. It's in the middle of Tennessee and the cost of living is dirt cheap. I don't see how I would be able to survive on may same income level in Los Angeles.
Is there are oversaturation of intern architects in the area?
I've always thought that LA paid better anywhere else, minus maybe NYC. From my experience I am familiar with "trust fund" graduates willing to work for little or nothing. I encountered that out east where I was asking 5-10% more than the mid-west to cover the cost of living diff. So, given that history it wouldn't surprise me if LA wasn't paying any better than Louisana. I do have an old friend that was working in NOLA when Katrina came through. She's now making a killing off all the expansion up in Baton Rouge.
Sounds like you are doing very well in cajun country. What's the reason to leave that and go to the land of earthquakes and fires? By no means am I saying not to go, but just be aware, even with a decent % pay increase, your standard of living probably won't be equal to what it is now. What good is living somewhere if you can't afford to enjoy it?
Yeah mdler. You should start slinging. You would make a considerable pay increase, keep your sweet design job, and you could smoke the shake to help take care of your sleep problem. Just stay away from that damn Mexican brickweed. You couldn't sell that crap to an eager middle school student who just won the lotto.
like any small town, LA has cabals and alumni networks. it's who you know and what your pedigree is before considering what you can do. It will be an uphill battle to get noticed by the better offices (note mdler's situation) or to make bank with a degree from the south/midwest.
Even with my ivy degree, I had a difficult time competing with all the trojans, kids from calpoly and UC. that said, one of the best architects I've worked with in LA was from Mississippi.
it's not the quantity of debt, but the quality of debt that matters.
I lived and worked in LA, 48k with that kind of experience is more than anyone I knew was making (doesn't mean it isn't out there). 28-36k was more along the lines of what I saw. Your best bet for that kind of pay will be the big firms like DMJM or Gensler, Jerde pays a little better too.
I agree I think it's a crime, but it is the reality.
i was recently on one of those cost of living comparison websites. Was looking at Portland. The cost of living was 27% lower than it is in LA, but the comparative salaries were only 7% lower. According to this info, people in Portland tend to overpair or people in LA tend to underpair their employees. I think that the latter is true.
I think it has to do with the employers being faced with the higher cost of living as well...if they dont have a surplus of $$$ to pay you after all the other expenses, you arent going to get paid as much.
I think this is what Bush refers to as trickle down economics ;{
I was shocked too when I graduated only to find I could barely afford rent let alone my student loans.
I got paid more working as an intern my first year of arch school for a one man firm in Portland than I did at my first two architecture jobs after graduation 5 to 6 years later in Los Angeles.
I'm back in Portland now (working for myself), I can attest that the pay cut I would have seen is not proportional to the difference in the cost of living, in fact I probably would have seen a handsome raise. I purchased my own place here in Portland. In LA a place like this would cost at least twice as much, there's no way I could purchase anything in LA. There is a reason I moved. Oh yeah and after my visit last week, the air really is horrible.
I know a few people with whom I graduated college with and work in Manhattan. Similar to myself, they have pre-professional degree with about 2 years experience. They make in the range of 44-51k a year. One girl works in a very well known corporate firm and the others work at medium to small sized firms.
I would have assumed that LA would pay similar or even higher to someone with a professional degree and same amount of experience.
I guess I was way wrong. And I guess I just learned I probably can't afford LA. Sad face.
I thought the idea is that in economies where the cost of living is higher everybody charges more to offset this higher cost of living, meaning employees get paid more, rent costs more, architects have to charge more, clients have to pay more, so architecture fees in NYC and LA should be higher than in rural Idaho. Is this a fallacy? I'm no economist.
This is how it seems to work in every other profession and industry anyway.
What's also sad is I make more working for myself doing renderings... and I'm kind of lazy.
One of my good friends who works in a small office in LA, has 5.5 years experience after getting her professional degree, makes about 36-38k, I believe. She's not retarded/a slacker either.
I am so confused. I don't think anybody knows what architects are supposed to make. Top reason this profession is a total joke.
I have noted all of the above posts, as well as the salary poll and I have noticed Intern pay ranges anywhere from $0-$30 an hour regardless of location or experience. One simply must shop around and not be afraid to jump at a higher paying job at the expense of burning bridges at a current gig.
Los Angeles Inter Salary???
Hey folks. I am a recent graduate of architecture, having received my B. of Arch. degree in May 2007. I have 2 years of work experience in a licensed firm in Louisiana, currently fulfilling my IDP requirements. I am interested in moving to Los Angeles after the new year, and was wondering what interns with my qualifications are. I am currently making $23/hr, which is a little under $48,000 / year. I get medical benefits, and paid vacation/sick.
Any ideas on L.A. salaries?
you are overpaid
dont move
Interns.....
Paid?
Really....
$28,000 out of school...that is with a masters
agreed that is more than most at that level. hope your bosses don't see this and cut your pay.
really? it's a slightly different story but a friend of mine just got a job after finishing his m.arch. his starting salary is $ 50,000 in LA. He doesn't have much a job experience.
allim70
where is he working?
48K is pretty good, actually. Ive heard, 22-24$ per hour is the going rate these days - in Los Angeles.
allim70, your rate of pay, and your friend's, is much more in line with what i would expect than others here suggest.
here is a bit from my own experience...in a market with a very low cost of living i started at 37,500 with no previous experience and was bumped up to 40,000 within my first 90 days (for context, i have a Bachelor of Design in Architecture, a pre-pro degree that's part of a 4+2 program). my peers, with the same pre-pro degree, did more or less the same right out of school. i left this 'low cost of living' market earlier this year with 2 years of experience under my belt. now that i'm in a larger market my pay has increased accordingly.
*of course there are practices, especially in large cities it seems, that pay below the market rate (see salary.com for median salary figures). some people seek employment from low-paying practices, perhaps because they are attracted to the work being produced there. nevertheless, you don't have to work at these places, and so long as you're employable, you should be able to find good work at or near market rate.
......to add at the end of sameolddoctor......
although the sal is pretty decent, anything below that (annually) is a crime. Esp. for those having to pay their loans back w/o a family or any other financial assistance.
like with all things rubblex2, if you look hard enough you might find a job which offers you the 50K but prob not a whole lot more, with your exp. But make sure you look at the larger offices.
my $.02 cents
ya know what gets my goat, tumbleweed...it's not so much the offices that pay the low rate, it's the young professionals that agree to work for them. if no one was taking the low paying jobs...
sounds like I should look for a new job
tumbles
you have a goat?
Mdler...... you like the goats, dont you???
I feel ya tumbleweed.....but I also have to agree with AP, however, AP there comes a point where one must take a job otherwise, they cant survive.....I know cause no matter how hard I've tried to work for a "good" office, I seemingly got stuck in the less attractive office, only cause they were willing to pay the decent salary, and basically not rape you!
she works for a corporate firm in LA. As far as I know, some corporate firms have a decent salary for the intern architects. but, good salary doesn't guarantee the quality of work.
bad salart doesnt guarantee the quality of work, either. The longer that I live in LA, the more I realize that I rather have the $$$ over the quality of work
It sounds like you are way underpaid. I am not at all familiar with the cost of living in LA but I have a friend who took a job right out of school for 40k in Atlanta. I can't imagine the cost of living difference is only 8k.
Check out " http://www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc.asp " According to that you should be making about 65k.
hahaha Apu, now that made me laugh!!!
tumbles - " it really gets my goat that non-starchitect offices can expect young people with huge loans to be willing to work for them for less than 40k/year"
so, does this mean that we should ask young people who managed to exit college without huge loans to work for less?
it's not now, nor has it ever been, about what you need - it's about what you can contribute - with your logic, an employee with 3 kids should be paid more than a single person doing the same job.
rubble - I think your current wage and benefits are "market" for your experience level in my area.
good luck.
What I'm not understanding is how you say you have two years of work experience, but also that you just recieved your B.Arch five months ago...? If those two years were part-time, they don't count as two years. That would be an average to above average salary for two real years experience, post-graduation, in LA. So it seems like you're making out pretty well already. I'd stick it out there until you had a year or two of experience after graduation to ensure that you don't take a paycut when you move.
well rub to give a bit more depth, I would make sure I had a job offering me north of my current salary waiting for me in L.A. before I made the move. I don't have a full degree yet (and bet your ass when I do I'll start asking for more like $20 an hour with about 2 years of part-time work experience under my belt), but for my knowledge 43k is good money for an intern, its about the northern edge of what an intern can expect to make to my knowledge then again i've hear of guys getting hookups at corp. firms offering 45k straight out the gate, but note I'm an intern (just starting) and make $10 an hour working almost full time. I consider this reasonable given my current experience level, but if a firm likes you enough to pay you 43k a year plus full benefits they must like you, and that must be a major consideration before you make a move.
one problem with LA is that there are many kids living in the city with trust funds who are willing to work for next to nothing (the same is true in NYC).
not that Louisiana isnt the architecture capital of the world, but I doubt that there are as many people looking for architecture jobs there
i turned down a 50g's a year job....if that makes people feel better
b
Yeah : cryz : ! 2:37 represent! Keep it rugged!
hahaha..... it was a salary gig and 70 hour weeks for 4-5 months during busy season...exhibit stuff..... then they probably would "lay me off" after the fact..... so.....
I am actually quite shocked with how low some of the numbers being tossed around are for LA area.
So someone with a prof. degree and 2 years experience should expect to make about 28-36k? Seriously?
It looks like my plan B of LA just came to a screeching halt.
I feel like a dirty whore oh so often...
I really, really dislike the people who exploit that market full of eager, young interns who have no clue how much they're "really"worth. Right now, since I used to be paid $10 an hour hustling files at an insurance company, $10 dollars/hr feels about right for my very first job in this field which has mutated from intern architect (read:office bitch) to construction assistant where I actually feel like I learn alot of valuable things each day. When I graduate though I'm gonna have to either ask for a very sizeable raise or leave for greener pastures and hope my experience will make me more payable and employable down the road.
to make everyone feel worse..... my sister make 27 and hour sitting at a mail machine...hits a button every once in a while and moves the baskets of mail a few times...... full benefits/etc
b
how are you supposed to live in LA on $28k? try finding a decent one-bedroom apartment for under $1400 / month. then you have to get a car too. the math doesn't work out.
independent means, I suspect, chase. Architecture for a trust fund society. :P
dumb thought:.. what's to stop firms from tryin' to lower our expectations by messin' with the archinect salary poll? Just a thought.
having recently been to several interviews and not having graduated YET (one month! for b.arch) i can tell you that the going rate quoted to me from several firms is $38-42k, standard in los angeles for full time intern positions (ie. right out of school). so don't settle for less, or you're selling yourself short.
cheers.
can always sell some "stuff" on the side......
make it happen
38-40k is standard in the medium-sized city that I live currently live in. It's in the middle of Tennessee and the cost of living is dirt cheap. I don't see how I would be able to survive on may same income level in Los Angeles.
Is there are oversaturation of intern architects in the area?
I've always thought that LA paid better anywhere else, minus maybe NYC. From my experience I am familiar with "trust fund" graduates willing to work for little or nothing. I encountered that out east where I was asking 5-10% more than the mid-west to cover the cost of living diff. So, given that history it wouldn't surprise me if LA wasn't paying any better than Louisana. I do have an old friend that was working in NOLA when Katrina came through. She's now making a killing off all the expansion up in Baton Rouge.
Sounds like you are doing very well in cajun country. What's the reason to leave that and go to the land of earthquakes and fires? By no means am I saying not to go, but just be aware, even with a decent % pay increase, your standard of living probably won't be equal to what it is now. What good is living somewhere if you can't afford to enjoy it?
make it happen
Yeah mdler. You should start slinging. You would make a considerable pay increase, keep your sweet design job, and you could smoke the shake to help take care of your sleep problem. Just stay away from that damn Mexican brickweed. You couldn't sell that crap to an eager middle school student who just won the lotto.
like any small town, LA has cabals and alumni networks. it's who you know and what your pedigree is before considering what you can do. It will be an uphill battle to get noticed by the better offices (note mdler's situation) or to make bank with a degree from the south/midwest.
Even with my ivy degree, I had a difficult time competing with all the trojans, kids from calpoly and UC. that said, one of the best architects I've worked with in LA was from Mississippi.
it's not the quantity of debt, but the quality of debt that matters.
I lived and worked in LA, 48k with that kind of experience is more than anyone I knew was making (doesn't mean it isn't out there). 28-36k was more along the lines of what I saw. Your best bet for that kind of pay will be the big firms like DMJM or Gensler, Jerde pays a little better too.
I agree I think it's a crime, but it is the reality.
I repeat, I am still absolutely shocked.
i was recently on one of those cost of living comparison websites. Was looking at Portland. The cost of living was 27% lower than it is in LA, but the comparative salaries were only 7% lower. According to this info, people in Portland tend to overpair or people in LA tend to underpair their employees. I think that the latter is true.
I think it has to do with the employers being faced with the higher cost of living as well...if they dont have a surplus of $$$ to pay you after all the other expenses, you arent going to get paid as much.
I think this is what Bush refers to as trickle down economics ;{
I was shocked too when I graduated only to find I could barely afford rent let alone my student loans.
I got paid more working as an intern my first year of arch school for a one man firm in Portland than I did at my first two architecture jobs after graduation 5 to 6 years later in Los Angeles.
I'm back in Portland now (working for myself), I can attest that the pay cut I would have seen is not proportional to the difference in the cost of living, in fact I probably would have seen a handsome raise. I purchased my own place here in Portland. In LA a place like this would cost at least twice as much, there's no way I could purchase anything in LA. There is a reason I moved. Oh yeah and after my visit last week, the air really is horrible.
I know a few people with whom I graduated college with and work in Manhattan. Similar to myself, they have pre-professional degree with about 2 years experience. They make in the range of 44-51k a year. One girl works in a very well known corporate firm and the others work at medium to small sized firms.
I would have assumed that LA would pay similar or even higher to someone with a professional degree and same amount of experience.
I guess I was way wrong. And I guess I just learned I probably can't afford LA. Sad face.
yeah but not everybody is a gladitor.
mdler
I thought the idea is that in economies where the cost of living is higher everybody charges more to offset this higher cost of living, meaning employees get paid more, rent costs more, architects have to charge more, clients have to pay more, so architecture fees in NYC and LA should be higher than in rural Idaho. Is this a fallacy? I'm no economist.
This is how it seems to work in every other profession and industry anyway.
What's also sad is I make more working for myself doing renderings... and I'm kind of lazy.
That's true, Vado.
I bet they would pay me at least 75k if they knew I was a part-time American Gladiator. Hey, I'd kick their ass if it was a penny less.
One of my good friends who works in a small office in LA, has 5.5 years experience after getting her professional degree, makes about 36-38k, I believe. She's not retarded/a slacker either.
I am so confused. I don't think anybody knows what architects are supposed to make. Top reason this profession is a total joke.
to all:
I have noted all of the above posts, as well as the salary poll and I have noticed Intern pay ranges anywhere from $0-$30 an hour regardless of location or experience. One simply must shop around and not be afraid to jump at a higher paying job at the expense of burning bridges at a current gig.
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