and yet, whenever i go to an exhibition, all the guys dressed in black are looking like they're the leaders of the pack, here someone speaking and its like only they have the key to great architecture...
so we're up our asses when we're among ourselves, while behaving like servants in the outside world...good on us! we deserve to be the last, least respected professionals on earth!

hey !!
i was just thinking abt sometyhing on these lines a few hours ago..when we analyze the ratio of our input towards a project to the returns expected.. it seems pretty insane..
most people in universities here begin migrating professions en masse after their architecture undergrad... makes the rest of us wonder if we are the smart ones or the losers.. i myself was offered an engineering job about which i have no idea about halfway into my final yr of my undergrad...
and the killer is tht the engineering job pays 4 times more than what i get now (i love what i do)
i dont know if i would put that down to self esteem, but i guess we all should begin to speak up a lot more for ourselves...

Hey, I Write the Off The Wall Crap Around Here Buddy!!!

Ahh, Self Love.., Architects do Alot of that in School.

That's why you become an Architect/Builder.
Find the money and displace a hack developer.

I think the difference is the enjoyment of the work, granted, there are plenty of architects out there that are unhappy with their jobs. But if you look at even education, I really enjoy most of my classes and I enjoy spending a lot of time working on home work ie time in the studio. you'd be hard pressed to find any law or buisness students that can say the same. So if they want to spend their entire life working at some job thats main benifit is ability to take a couple of more weeks off a year, then great for them. The potential enjoyment in arch is far greater I'd say

am thinking on the lines of an architect-builder archangel. i started spending the last few months after my undergrad working towards it... but i find that it is too though to do justice to your creative side while focussing on both... we invariably end up managing most of the building while leaving the designing to our subordinates because of the time factor...

true, but we're still a frustrated bunch as a whole

I don't think architects want to be rich. They wouldn't mind, but it is not their primarily goal in life. They just want to be able to pay the rent and it seems that even that is highly prohibitive.

I think that whenever what you do for a living is relegated to 'job' status, then money becomes a much stronger issue. I don't hear of many lawyers, real estate agents, accountants who chose their profession because it was their ' vocation', their calling, their passion, something they love. And when you spend 8 hours a day doing something that you don't particularly enjoy, then you justify it
reminding yourself how much the job is bringing in -- the income
issue is at the forefront most of the time ("I'm raking in the cash, that's why I keep doing this").

But when you're doing something you love, the money issue
generally becomes background noise .. of course you need money
to live and eat but when your soul is well-fed, abundance of money
doesn't seem quite as important. You don't see too many artists, writers, etc. complaining incessantly about not making enough money, coz they are living their bliss.

While I agree that designers should stand up for themselves more
when it comes to billing issues, I don't think it points to low self-esteem .. just different priorities. Most designers live to work ..
to us, design is life .. while the abovementioned professionals work to live. Entirely different philosophies towards life.

By the way, was the speaker at this seminar even a friggin designer?

That lecture was a tip-off you dumb ass. In codetalk " - - - people who don't love themselves" = overwork and underpay the hell out of 'em. The lecture was about RUNNING a firm, not working in one. Love yourself! Love your insurer. Love your accountant. Love your lawyer. Don't love your real estate agent - unless she hot.

PS it good to be BACK!

it's striking to see your kick-ass, all-black all-the-time wearing professor that your studio is in awe of as a design instructor pulling out of the parking lot in a shitty multi-colored toyota, and to think he has been working in the profession for 20+ years

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3+ years later:

lately, I've been thinking it's more like a collective inferiority complex

most lawyers want to make $$$ and go on vacation and buy shit because they hate their jobs and professional lives.

I gotta tell ya' - I know a bunch of attorneys and I know a bunch of architects ... this quote clearly does not apply to most of the attorneys I know - whereas, it does apply to many of the architects I know.

I'd rather love what I am doing then make loads of money doing something I hate. I didn't get into this profession b/c of the money I got into it b/c I love design and have a passion to create functional and aesthetically pleasing spaces.

I feel like we've had the discussion around here somewhere, about how we all magically have no self-esteem yet enormous egos... maybe it was the confessions thread?

We DO have something called cultural capital, however. Whenever the subject of school comes up, I invariably get "OOOH! That's great! I hear it's a lot of hard work!"

Lawyers make money but everybody hates them. They're surrounded by distrust, snide remarks, backstabbing, lying..... (I know a few lawyers personally).

I wouldn't trade it. I don't need a yacht or a second home.

Well maybe a yacht or a second home isn't on the menu but a better school, safer neighborhood, a chance to send your kids to a good college and not have them go into stupid debt like many on this site. Money does buy better things in life and although excessive wealth may not buy happiness it will provide the opportunity to you and your family to have a better life, or even spend time together as a family and not work weekends and holidays out of necessity.

money talks and the bullshit keeps getting smeared around until it's thinned out

Well, it has been said. Either you do something you hate and make money or you do something you love and earn nothing. This obviously is the thing we got to tell ourselves every single day to justify what we do and what we earn. But then again, the majority of professionals must hate their jobs, because all of them make way more money than architects. And the Mcdonalds worker is the happiest man in the world, loving his job because he earns minimum wage.

This attitude (love what you do and accept bad pay) is the real reason why we are the worst paid professional in the world. The most humain profession, marine biologist (and don't say he does that for the money), is smart enough to ask for more pay as he has to pay his student loan back and wants to send his kids to proper schools.

loving life, making decent $$, doing some interesting work here and there, and really not displeased with myself.

so 'nyaah'!

IMHO, this simply is not a valid reflection on the state of our profession. Sure, there are situations where it's true, but for the vast majority of us, we have the freedom to make a change and we have choices about how we spend out professional time.

But, we can't conduct our professional lives as dilettantes, without actually producing something with real economic value, and still expect to receive a high level of compensation.

If we don't exercise the freedom available to us -- and aren't willing to make some degree of professional adjustment (i.e. such as taking the trouble to learn how to negotiate higher fees) then we're just choosing to be victims.

I choose not to be a victim

granted, i might have low self-esteem in certain areas, i feel pretty confident thus far in my professional life. Im feeling very good about my competency, my preparedness, my talent, my ambition... im feeling pretty good about the possibilities that at some point soon ill be able to take a shot at some of the things ive wanted to do for a long long time now.
And, i dont do too badly money wise. I pay my rent, i have enough to go out with my friends and pay all my bills. I dont have much left over to save, but thats only because i CHOOSE to live in a nice neighborhood in the city where im paying a premium for rent.

So, overall, i agree with quizzical's assessment. If you take a crap job, and you dont get paid, and you dont work on interesting stuff... leave!
get a new job, do something to improve your lot in life... that old adage that you are in control of your own life is about a true a statement as i know.

remeber you have to earn the money. Figure it out. You might be doing something wrong.

I'm making enough coin to buy a house, thankfully. I really love my job - urban planning atm, and work with a great set of consultants architects, economists, planners, etc and they are paid accordingly.

attorneys, accountant and even real estate agents as references. The most important thing in their lives is the quality of live and not the profession


attorneys, accountants and real estate agents are really different from architects as a profession in general.
architects are more like artists in that they dont always view it as just a job, it is an art form also. i imagine that most people in the architectural field when they began wanted to be designers, and going through school like that is almost like going through art school, because you love that art/design aspect of it

now i am not saying that attorneys, accountants and real estate agents dont love their work. i actually have no idea if they do.

i am just saying the comparison isnt really accurate.

artists can tend to think the world is against them as well and that they are misunderstood, when no one buys their $4000 paintings right out of school. i think architects can fall into that as well when dealing with a client who makes any changes for monetary reasons instead of design ideas.

plus
for example

an accountant can do his job right, and his client will accept it. he has certain guidelines that tell him if he did his work right or not.
same with an attorney, who must follow the law.

but an architect can do a great job on something, and lose out due to a million different factors out of his control, where he could do nothing about it.
the client could have a relative who is an architect, so he gets the job over you. the client could decide they dont want to spend the money they said they would. the client could care less about aesthetics, and just want a cheap functional building.
all of those scenarios, and probably a bunch more, could lead to an architect having low self esteem with regards to his work, since a lot of it is out of his control
most other professions dont have to deal with that