One sample:

"How much do _intern_ architects make? (We define interns as those enrolled in the NCARB Intern Development Program.) The median is $37,803 in year one and $46,495 in year three. Our survey reveals that the top performers can earn more than $70,000 (including overtime) the year prior to taking the Architectural Registration Examination."

i want to see the 70k idp intern

What bugs me about the article - and I've only skimmed it, not read the entire thing - is that most of the people they interviewed about their salary at their current professional status wouldn't tell what their current salary is! Why interview them for a salary article if they won't come clean? Why not look a little deeper and find people who will reveal it?

I hate coyness.

i'm less than a year from ARE, i'd have to work a little less than 60 hours per week to hit 70k. so it is possible, but i rarely get over 52-55 even if i try.

2 yrs experience, 1 yr through grad school...I make f-ing 17/hr! This survey sucks. For my experience level, should I not be making more? Any thoughts?

i think time in and experience level are two things... but i made a significant % jump by switching jobs at 2 years.

"How much do intern architects make? The median is $37,803 in year one and $46,495 in year three. Our survey reveals that the top performers can earn more than $70,000 (including overtime) the year prior to taking the Architectural Registration Examination. Immediately upon passing the exam, newly minted architects will see their compensation increase by about 5 percent to 9 percent."

This was EXACTLY my experience, give or take a few hundred dollars.

I should say that if you're seven or more years into practicing architecture and you're not making at least $60,000, then the firm you're working for is stingy, not financially savvy, or you're working in an economically depressed market.

You can make more. Just look around, and don't undersell yourself. Present yourself as a necessity to the firms you interview with. Move to a city where pay scales are higher—they vary widely. Firms in California, in my experience, pay very well. Firms in the northwest, not so much.

...or a not-very-large midwestern city where both cost of living and pay rates are lower than on the coasts.

what's your position called when you have completed IDP but haven't yet passed the exam?

procrastinator.

The cost of living issue is a tricky one. I make a much better salary here in California than I did elsewhere, but my cost of living is only slightly higher than when I lived in the Northeast, Colorado, and the Northwest. So I take home much more pay.

If you're an architect with the ability (or willingness) to move around, it's well worth it to consider different markets, and get real cost-of-living information about those markets.

Generally, the salary poll here is misleading. The only sure way to test salaries is to interview and see what people are offering.

"what's your position called when you have completed IDP but haven't yet passed the exam?"

Professor.

4arch, you're still technically an intern.

I find cost of living in MY Midwestern city to be higher than it was on the east coast. Luckily, I'm making a bit more money than I was there. But only a bit!

bodz if you're not out of grad school yet I don't think $17/hr is really unreasonable, sorry. Just keep positive and keep LEARNING at your current job so that in a couple years you'll be able to demand more.

Also, jeez, I never got overtime when I was an intern, i was salaried from day 1 out of grad school!

what kind of split do people see for hourly versus salaried? i see some hourly numbers being thrown out here with the assumption that there is time and a half for overtime...

interns predominantly salaried or hourly? any thought?

interns=hourly till you gain enough experience to work independently and coordinate with less experienced folks, ie you've matured into a professional.

then you're salaried for the rest of your career till you gain an ownership stake when life becomes more complicated and compensation is based on profits or losses, or based on percent of work you drag in/bill for.

interesting take on it.... i guess it depends on the firm you work for

i was salaried from day 1... i think the only people that are hourly around the office are 'technical specialists' or 'draftsmen'

as for ownership its open to anyone once you've achieved a particular level of accomplishment given your role in the firm... for architects a prerequisite is licensure... then there are a series of promotions to higher levels of responsibility and ownership that follow...

so does anyone else have thoughts or experiences with salaried v. hourly?

So approx 5 years ago the intern range was about $5k less than the $37k - $46k level now quoted, give or take a few hundred. That would mean the pay for interns have increased almost exactly 3% annual. Not sure I'd be jumping for joy about that. Interns are paid poorly today just as they always have been. Food and energy are inflating at over 10% right now. Pay simply is not keeping up with the true cost of living. This article is just fluff trying to make everyone feel good. Nothing has changed here...architects are still paid poorly, end of story.

a lot of people will argue that you aren't a professional if you aren't on salary...

however, i really like my time and a half. being compensated for OT is a definite plus. there are weeks when i'll have to do 60+ hours easy, so it's nice to see something for that effort, whereas if i were salaried, i'd either feel really guilty for making so much if i only worked 40 hours, or a little miffed that when i worked 60 hours, i wouldn't have anything to show for it, except a lost weekend or a few really late nights alone.

well that definitely plays into it... i'm salaried as an intern but i would say i'm never 'expected' to work any particular amount of overtime... what i am 'expected' to do is complete the tasks and work that are assigned to me in the particular amount of hours alotted for the task... so long as i do that everything is kosher...

that said i very rarely work more than 40 hours a week and no one is upset by the fact that i don't... of course there are those days where i'll work 16 hours to get something out for a deadline... but that is rare and sometimes welcome if its for a proposal or something more interesting...

Ive never seen an hourly intern ever in Chicago. I didnt know they could be hourly.

I am an hourly intern in Chicago (if by hourly you mean gets paid overtime). All my friends are too I believe...

i've worked 1.5 years, and havent started idp yet...tisk tisk

hourly vs. salaried...

i think it would be nice if interns got paid hourly, (not necessarily the whole time and half thing), but hourly would be good for the profession as a whole. I see it almost like playing fair. There are firms that put massive amounts of work into schematic design AND IT SHOWS. They can do this largely because they exploit that unpaid overtime by their interns. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy for the newly grads. But more importantly, it does nothing to promote the value of our design services. At face value it looks like a good design costs the same as a shitty design.

really? its my experience that the top dogs are more involved in schematic than later phases b/c that is where expertise can be most beneficial to a project for the least cost...

i guess different firms take different approaches

postal - for a lot of clients, design IS just design. a necessary evil. yes, the best companies can charge more and get it, but that's a very hard sell in the public sector.

that said, even though energy and food costs are indeed spiking (and we principals feel it just like everyone else) that doesn't necessarily translate into clients handing out more fee. especially if you're doing multi-year projects.

i know everyone thinks most employers are simply out to screw their staff over to make the payments on the porsche. however, i'd say that's more of the exception (and exceptionally more interesting soundbite). most of us want to develop companies that have a great culture, pay as well as we can, get a fair return on our own equity (and believe me we have it in these firms), and do great work. it's not always as easy as it seems.

yes, you have every right to just 'demand' a pay increase to justify what you think you should be making. we have every right to determine if you're really worth it as well. realize, though, that if you put an employer in an impossible situation with your demands, the outcomes may not be pretty...

IMHO, too many in our profession limit themselves, and their careers, by getting locked into an "hourly" mentality.

The key to higher earnings - whether as an owner or employee - is productivity. We are paid for what we produce - not how many hours we spend producing it.

Get it done right and get it done quickly. Do that and you can do very well in this profession.

from personal experience, here are the best things i've read in this thread:
"get it done right and get it done quickly"
"don't undersell yourself"
"i made a significant % jump by switching jobs at 2 years."

From personal experience I know that is a true statement, but am frusturated that it is.

It makes zero sense for employers to offer good starting salaries then turn around and give meager cost of living adjustments for raises that force employees to search for a new employer. It costs way too much to hire and train employees to have employee turnover every 2-3 years.

IMO, nobody should be able to job hop for 10-20% or better pay increases. Because that is common in our industry tells me that a majority of firms offer far too little in terms of annual raises, but are forced to spend the addn'l $$ when hiring replacement employees. It would've been cheaper to just give out that 10-15% raise to keep the employee in the first place.

the kind of pay increases arising from job hopping that were commonly possible over the past few years are not likely to remain all that common over the next few years.

even as recently as 8-10 months ago, many firms were desparate for experienced talent and willing to pay outrageous sums to add warm bodies to their staff ... with the slowing of the economy, I'm not much inclined to think many firms are going to be as eager to "pay the freight" as they were in the recent past.

and, because of the recent bid-up, I believe there are a fair number of over paid people floating around firms whose jobs are likely to be in great jeapordy if the erosion continues.

sorry to be so gloomy, but that's the view from my chair.

salaries are rising?
how high will salaries be by the time im
finally an architect? 2010/2011-ish

hopefully i dont find myself in the "low end of the scale"

If you want an hourly job become a carpenter or go work in a factory

quiz - I agree that in a slowing economy job hopping won't yield the pay increases it has in the good times. However, I think my argument still stands. IMO, changing employers should be for reasons outside of pay and/or benefits, but I'd be willing to bet that a majority of job changes are pay related in good times or bad. I know a number of people that send out resumes every couple of years just to use a new offer as leverage for better pay raises. If it doesn't work, they leave, even if they have been perfectly happy with said employer. All this tells me that employers are gambling that keeping payroll costs down will save more than hiring and training new employees will cost. I do see the numbers on the projects I manage and see the dollar values in productivity of the new employees vs. the experienced, and quite frankly think it's a shame to lose someone that earns the company good $$ for something minimal like a 10% raise.

well, aqua ... I suppose it's all about your own personal frame of reference ... here at our firm, annual reviews and raises are a very deliberate and thoughtful process ... pay increases here include both a cost of living factor and a merit portion that reflects the growth in the individual's knowledge and productivity since the last review. in my experience, that approach is rather common here in our region.

while I won't say that we never, ever lose people because they get higher offers elsewhere, I will say that we work very hard to keep the pay of existing employees consistent with the marketplace for labor in our area. we absolutely understand how much it costs to lose experienced hands over a few thousand dollars.

I want to find that individual who created that adobe flash graphic and shake them a few times. It goes too fast, the text is too small, and the and it won't stay still.

Goddamn that person.

Oh and by the way, damn right salaries are rising! If the costs of every single thing in the country is rising (food, gas, etc, etc) so should our salaries.

not that it matters but my brother just interviewed at the Ralph Lauren flagship store outside of Washington, DC yesterday. He interviewed for a sales position and would only be paid a commission on the sales that he makes.

Anyways, the average monthly paycheck for that job is $2000 - $60,000

I'll top that, Mdler. A good friend from high school, now a stockbroker, was offered a $500,000 signing bonus JUST FOR JOINING a different firm.

*cough*

As I mentioned above: pay = productivity.

The two examples mdler and citizen cite are related to jobs where what you produce translates into very high compensation. firms will pay well those who deliver the goods ... not so much those who spend lots of their workday surfing the net.

in either of those jobs, incumbents who can't deliver, and continue to deliver well over time, will find themselves out on the sidewalk in a heartbeat.

Quiz is right, and my post was not crying foul at the disparity in compensation.

My friend the stockbroker has worked very hard for more than a couple of decades now to succeed in a field dominated by men. She earns every dollar of her high income, and am proud of her accomplishments. But there is considerable risk and a constant pressure to perform at a high level. I don't think I could do what she does.

On the other hand, I get to surf the net occasionally during the day, design buildings and (parts of) cities, do historical research and write about it, present at conferences, and hang out with other creative people and talk about it all. I think I'll take my gig over hers.

new service for salary and job satisfaction survey. not specifically related to architecture, but might be relevant eventually:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9965353-7.html?tag=nefd.top