Will some of you more experienced architects give a brief timeline of your pay increases?
There is plenty of information out there on entry level/intern architects salaries and higher up project managers, but I'm more interested in the progression of your career. When to ask for raises, when you felt it necessary to move on, etc.?
There are actually books written about this stuff. In general, the really good / aggressive / proactive gets a promotions every 18 months or so without feeling stagnated. Each time with a 10 to 15% bump in pay.
I’m not quite “seasoned” yet, but my last 4 promotions / pay increase pretty much followed the above trend. Not one of my promotions were “given”. They had to be asked for, negotiated, and reminded (never demanded).
One key lesson from some of my reading (which is counter intuitive to a lot of us) is: “A promotion is NOT a reward. Employers are not rewarding (you) for past contributions; they are investing in (your) future contributions”. So, what you want to ask yourself is: what do you bring to the table.
“A promotion is NOT a reward. Employers are not rewarding (you) for past contributions; they are investing in (your) future contributions”. So, what you want to ask yourself is: what do you bring to the table."
reread that a couple of times. absolutely correct.
I didn't actually know the answer, so I went back over 20 years of info and found that I've been averaging 9.2% per year since my first job out of architecture school. That excludes the two years when I had quit architecture entirely (so as not to skew the data: I was running an investment fund at the time, and that's a whole other ball game financially). It also includes a couple of major recessions, so the year-on-year increases varied considerably from that average number. Some years less, some years more. Note that I am NOT currently an equity partner in a firm and when I was running my own office my only compensation was what I made in profit, so this is a good representation of salary progression almost exclusively, not ownership distributions.
I agree with CHC that promotions are different from salary increases. Promotions aren't compensation, they're expectations and responsibilities. Also, his number of 10%-15% every 18 months works out to 7.7% to 11.6% annually. So I'm somewhere in the middle on that. Note also (evidenced in the AIA compensation surveys) that there are a few quantum jump levels in architectural salaries, sort of like there are in firm sizes. There's a major ceiling/resistance level in the $85K per year range, below which are many and above which are few.
Mar 28, 13 2:09 pm ·
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Pay Grade Timeline
Will some of you more experienced architects give a brief timeline of your pay increases?
There is plenty of information out there on entry level/intern architects salaries and higher up project managers, but I'm more interested in the progression of your career. When to ask for raises, when you felt it necessary to move on, etc.?
Thanks!
There are actually books written about this stuff. In general, the really good / aggressive / proactive gets a promotions every 18 months or so without feeling stagnated. Each time with a 10 to 15% bump in pay.
I’m not quite “seasoned” yet, but my last 4 promotions / pay increase pretty much followed the above trend. Not one of my promotions were “given”. They had to be asked for, negotiated, and reminded (never demanded).
One key lesson from some of my reading (which is counter intuitive to a lot of us) is: “A promotion is NOT a reward. Employers are not rewarding (you) for past contributions; they are investing in (your) future contributions”. So, what you want to ask yourself is: what do you bring to the table.
“A promotion is NOT a reward. Employers are not rewarding (you) for past contributions; they are investing in (your) future contributions”. So, what you want to ask yourself is: what do you bring to the table."
reread that a couple of times. absolutely correct.
Pay grade? SOM has their C,D,E,F... system
That's an interesting question.
I didn't actually know the answer, so I went back over 20 years of info and found that I've been averaging 9.2% per year since my first job out of architecture school. That excludes the two years when I had quit architecture entirely (so as not to skew the data: I was running an investment fund at the time, and that's a whole other ball game financially). It also includes a couple of major recessions, so the year-on-year increases varied considerably from that average number. Some years less, some years more. Note that I am NOT currently an equity partner in a firm and when I was running my own office my only compensation was what I made in profit, so this is a good representation of salary progression almost exclusively, not ownership distributions.
I agree with CHC that promotions are different from salary increases. Promotions aren't compensation, they're expectations and responsibilities. Also, his number of 10%-15% every 18 months works out to 7.7% to 11.6% annually. So I'm somewhere in the middle on that. Note also (evidenced in the AIA compensation surveys) that there are a few quantum jump levels in architectural salaries, sort of like there are in firm sizes. There's a major ceiling/resistance level in the $85K per year range, below which are many and above which are few.
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