: We remember when you accepted that job - and all the excitement and promise it produced. Through your posts here we also witnessed the gradual, but inexorable, manner in which your feelings about, and respect for, the firm declined.
These are not good times to be without work. For that reason alone I send along my sympathy. However, I hope from the bottom of my heart that you move on to something bigger and better - something that can make you genuinely happy and take full advantage of your extraordinary abilities.
hang in there straw. i join to the sentiments of quiz above.
i hope this brings you to a new better level with your work as it should. recently it start to sound like the work environment in that office wasn't one to let you be happy with your work and accomplishments.
you can now consider yourself more experienced and have better people skills. and good luck with your licensing efforts.
Funny how Architect magazine had him as the comeback kid, and the next day in Crain's Chicago Business talked about the massive layoffs. I e mailed the editor of architect magazine about his poor timing of his article.
Funny thing we did a project for his next door neighbor. Since he is the ARC for his subdivision, we had to get his (and only his) approval to remodel.
Some time in the near future we will be told the economic crisis was so deep another few years will be needed before we see the light at the end of the tunnel. Current rhetoric is already in this direction.
We will be constantly told the prior twenty years (I include the dot.com rise and fall) were a historical aberration due to deeply flawed policy.
Gee Big O! You had two years to open your eyes, take a peek around, and see what went wrong.We hired you to clean up the mess and all we got was a 1000 page bill you didn't even read. what happened to cutting out all the pork? If you cannot fix the problem, out the door with you. My money says any further government hand in this will muck it up further.
When the stimulus plan was announced there was much rejoicing in the buildings community. An ETF comprised of publicly held industry giants peaked that day. Now? As the old commercial once asked, "Where's the beef?"
Since it became apparent you were to be President the market dropped precipitously and steadily declined. That's a pretty good consensus. Many Americans wanted a Savior and got...you! When are you going to walk on water as promised?
Morning rant complete.
Still looking for a CM position within driving distance of southeastern Ohio. Am planning trip late March to visit with several firms that have expressed an interest. Corp of Engineers work is on the upswing. Not pretty stuff but, puts food on the table.
Present employment is stable. Workload is good for next eight to nine months tailing off near holidays. Anticipating another round of layoffs this month as partners get nervous about future. Hope a few smaller projects start. They will share with me soon.
Word is Gensler will have another big cut soon. One or more east coast acronyms may close up shop in California this year. Their west coast experiment in healthcare not up to corporate expectations. Local firms specializing in healthcare seem to have work and some are hiring people with good experience.
Good news! Sports facilities seem to be happening. The Aloha Bowl in Hawaii is to undergo major renovations. All of the major sports facilities players are being interviewed. Los Angeles may get a football team...again.
If interested in transportation, rail might be on the horizon. Honolulu! California high-speed rail. The perennial black hole - Amtrack. Look to E/a firms for this work.
The bush administration policies and values created this crisis: deregulation of banks, special interest driven policy to inflate stock and housing bubbles... Emphasis on personal profits over a long term energy future, prioritizing ideology over long term investment in economic strength and stability to compete globally...
Which makes it even more laughable when Republicans whine and start crying over the short term volatility of the stock market and try to blame Democrats for their individual short term losses and gains which is simply based on emotional and irrational reactions of markets which are in part fueled by the media hot wind and a mob mentality...
Relax people, lets give the stimulus a chance to take affect before feaking out and calling it a failure! These things take several months to have an affect...
As noted above, Santelli’s contract with CNBC runs out in a few months. His 10 years with the network haven’t been remarkable, and he’ll enter a brutal downsizing media job market. Thanks to the “tea party” campaign, as the article notes, Santelli’s value has suddenly soared. If you look at the scores of blogs and fake-commenters on blogs (for example, Daily Blog, a slick new blog launched in January which is also based in Chicago) all puff up Santelli like he’s the greatest journalist in America, and the greatest hero known to mankind. Daily Bail, like so much of this “tea party” machine, is “headquartered nearby” to Santelli, that is, in Chicago. With Odom, the Sam Adams Alliance, and the whole “tea party” nexus: “Rick, this message is to you. You are a true American hero and there are no words to describe what you did today except your own. Headquartered nearby, we will be helping the organization in whatever way possible.”
The economics of stimulus are not as complicated. They amount to taking from some and giving to others. There is no wealth creation at all. There is no magic "multiplier" to turn stones into bread. The economics of stimulus is value destroying, because property is pried loose from owners, who put it to socially useful purposes, and given to government so it can pass it out to friends.
That's like saying there's no difference whether you buy a Prius or a Lincoln Navigator. And it's about investment in education such as Pell Grants or rebuilding rail viaducts that date from 1910 here in Chicago. These are investments that will pay dividends for decades, they are not static transfers of wealth. I think the whole opposition to Obama is reduced to the imbecility of Joe the Plumber.
I'll stick with Playboy, at least the articles are intelligently written. And the pictures! ;-)
when your intellectual leaders are joe the (unlicensed) plumber, rush limbaugh, sarah flailin and bobby "as a youth, my dad called my bobby even though my name is piyush" jindal... you really have no good ideas left.
I'm not sure why the faltering economic system is being made a republican/democrat issue. The culture in the USA has trended toward an unsustainable amount of debt.
[url=http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/02/household_debt_vs_gdp.html?ft=1&f=93559255]
The debt enabled everyone to get jobs but I hope it has peaked and the country finds a way to create a more sustainable economic model. We need to start something now that works longer term.
"Since it became apparent you were to be President the market dropped precipitously and steadily declined. That's a pretty good consensus. Many Americans wanted a Savior and got...you! When are you going to walk on water as promised?"
I find this sentiment infuriating. So the Republicans ran the economy into the ground in the last eight years, and now expect the new administration to clean up the mess they created "presto chango." I sense a deep-rooted sense of shame and guilt, that is being projected outwards... the Republicans know deep-down that they are responsible for this mess, and don't want to take blame for it, and the minute Obama was elected, they were frothing at the mouth to point fingers and say "see, told you so!" A desire for vindication at being rightly replaced and childish blame-displacement. It's going to take a hell of a lot longer than a few months for us to drag ourselves out of this morass. There is no magic cure. But at least the pendulum will have a chance to swing back. Inertia is keeping us skidding downwards, it will take time to swing back.
Inertia is not whats continuing the downward slide. The recession started at least in late 2006 early 2007 if you view capital investment like new buildings to be the indicator, as architect I do. The current market slide is a direct result of fear of the new administration's policies. This is the encore to the September swoon. We've tried the Pelosi / Reid / Franks form of government before and it doesn't work. It will not work this time either and the markets reflect it. It's true the government can make jobs, they do so very well but at the cost of private sector growth. So America is deciding what it wants to be, a country of boom and bust cycles which lead to wealth and advancement or a safe, less prosperous comand and control economy like in Western Europe.
Make - I find it odd that the same playboy article which makes unsubsatantiated links between the Rosenbergs and Rick Santeli's rant via the fact a website was created well in advance of his on air display, has proliferated in less than 24 hours knocking Rick's rant off the search page results. If anything I think theres a smear campaign going on here by the left wing blogoshpere. One article is all that keeps getting repeated. I want to know which one of the hundreds of "tea party" sites was the conspiratorial site? Could it be that the investigative journalists at playboy are convienantly linking one site mentioning the words "tea party" and Chicago, which happened 2 years on the Mich ave bridge with the event for their own aims? And could it be that if the Sam Adams society exists in Chicago it's easy to say well then a banker from Chicago must be connected? Could it also be that Rick is just right regardless of what society he may or may not belong to? Even at -2% mortgage rate the majority simply cant afford the principle anyways, is that a conspiracy to?
If the aim of this thread is layoffs, then one should be concerned with how to prevent them, and that is stabilizing the credit markets which appears to have happened some time in December. The second is stabilizing Housing which can only happen when the market is allowed to work, which it's not being allowed to do. The third is to stop the interventions by the government. If the BOA and Citi are indeed insolvent, then grab THEM, but dont take down every bank stock with them, which is whats happening as they drive them all towards penny status. God knows what Liberal Billionaire will come snatch the banks all up - perhaps everyone's favorite Eastern European Liberal and Obama's biggest backer George Soros will buy them all? The new administration is being reckless in order to promote their new agenda, which is scarier than anything Bush did.
A lot of the acronym firms have created this mess for themselves. Hiring huge numbers of people so they could bill the client for more cash is a normal practice in the corporate world. I should know because we are the subs to a huge acronym firm, and our team of three produces vastly superior work (if i say so myself) than their group of 12.
These companies had a lot of the work because of their brand image and nothing more. What sucks though is that it is the small guy who gets fired in the end, and not the VP.
I predict that this heralds the end of a lot of corporate biggies and clients will increasingly turn to smaller firms because they are cheaper, more on-their-toes, responsive, and just much better. To come of think of it, a bunch of small firms grouped together under one umbrella could be a really effective way to market to clients these days.
spaceman, thank you. Anyone claiming the mess we are in right now is the fault of one party or one set of regulations is, frankly, willfully blinded. This has been a long time coming for many complex integrated reasons.
Can we please, on this thread, get back to issues surrounding layoffs, who has been, what they should consider doing in the future and not whining and looking backwards trying to assign blame? Ever seen crabs in a bucket?
I spoke to the leader of a medium-sized local firm on Friday and his firm has not had to do layoffs. They are an exceptionally well-run firm, from what I can tell, and have always focused on providing excellent service.
I agree with sameolddoctor: smaller firms are going to be the ones more likely to wether this storm. Overhead is a killer, and larger firms will naturally have a bit of dead weight. For those looking for jobs: try the one-man operations in your towns. Even if it's temporary work.
I can't seem to open the later pages in this thread; maybe this is already discussed, but does anyone know if unemployment would pay for licensing fees? I am in NYS.
"if you view capital investment like new buildings to be the indicator, as architect I do. The current market slide is a direct result of fear of the new administration's policies."
Banks have a certain amount of capital as a percentage of their loans they are required to keep as cash (and for good reason). As means of attracting capital banks have been using the securitization process, where a diverse set of loans are pooled together and then sold to private investors or other banks to get investment from outside the bank. One of the problems with this process is the loans as packaged become too complex to really understand the value of what you are purchasing or even WHAT exactly your are purchasing. So we look to rating agencies to tell us the value. They look at these and say they are properly diversified and insured therefore they are safe triple A double plus good loans. The premise though is that there's in enough insurance money to cover the defaults... it turns out there never was. This is just one of the problems with the process.
So now that entire source of capital, the primary means by which home loans were made, is essentially off the table. The only money the banks have to loan out is their own and it's already loaned out. This is why we're currently deadlocked, we need to get that capital back into the economy but until we have a vehicle for investors to reliably purchase these loans and understand what they are getting we aren't going to see the same volume of loans we have been, and we probably shouldn't.
So I don't believe it has nothing to do with fear of the new administration's policies.
Also don't kid yourselves, McCain was all over this stimulus he called the campaign short to get it moving. Republicans would have passed it as well, certainly it would have been weighted more heavily towards their own interests but it wouldn't have been significantly different. Congress passed that bill and not one of them read it, they don't read any of them, they can't they don't have time to.
And evilplatypus I agree the Govt. intervention is a contributing factor. One major problem I have with the republican party is their anti-big government slogan is a platitude they put out there to rally the troops but the elected officials actions consistently fail to reflect this.
"These companies had a lot of the work because of their brand image and nothing more. What sucks though is that it is the small guy who gets fired in the end, and not the VP."
sameold... at my own firm, the VP's were asked to take a 5% pay decrease with no more options or benefits. i understand 5% ain't sh*t to a certain extent... but they haven't asked a single one of the rest of us to take a pay decrease, nor have they decreased hours. additionally, there have been VP's let go in my office, and in many of our other offices- and some forced into early retirement. i know this was also the same situation at other large firms that friends of mine are at from Atlanta to Chicago.
many of the small firms - and one or two person "firms"- are doing temporary work elsewhere or have otherwise closed shop around here.
so i can't say that any "new work" will be heavily leaned towards either large or small- because the small firm is disappearing just as fast as the "dead weight" at the large firm.
and it seems like this "new" work is more geared towards E/A firms not, A/E firms- or sole architecture firms.
as far as what else to do as an architect- i think as architects we need to think more broadly- as in consulting, economic advising, policy analysis, etc. many of the United Nations sectors could benefit from architectural insight- as they continue to (re)write planning guidelines in developing countries and do them wrongly i might add. or even developing public-private partnerships for under-represented communities to grow and build, etc. if there will be a shift in wealth, then we need to understand how this will actually impact our profession.
we need to see our position as ever-changing and not as some figural and static image of "designer at the desk".
Banks and brokerage houses vastly overextended in western land deals, crop loans and the underwriting of every sort of inflated paper scheme, had suddenly begun to feel panicky and to call in their money. The infection spread; one after another great business houses collapsed. "Times can hardly be worse than they our now" exclained Greeley on April 1st.---from Horace Greeley Voice of the People on the economic collapse of 1836..
Who can really say what will work. We know what doesn't work. What doesn't work is unregulated conmen in brioni suits, what doesn't work is lassaiz faire until i fail capitalism, what doesn't work is the widening gap between the ultra rich and joe cul de sac. what doesn't work is the progressive deterioration of a manufacturing sector that can provide middle class income employment, what doesn't work is a nod and a wink to mortgage lenders who close up shop after they have gotten their commission and the loans are bundled up and sold with three star credit ratings to a bank, or a pension, or a municipality that has no idea what they have even purchased, what doesn't work, is the decreased advocacy of congress for their constituents, what doesn't work is the culture of debt, what doesn't work is being the world's policeman, what doesn't work being too big to fail, what doesn't work is a sense of entitlement entitled to exploit, corrupt, consume with no expectation of consequence and no sense of responsiblity to your fellow fucking man.
I keep wondering if the “big bang” shift will sound the death knell for architecture as we know it.
Right now it seems that the practice of architecture has devolved into Government work and everything else. Currently, I see the market for traditional services under siege.
The interiors and the home designers who want to design up to 5,000 cubic feet with out a license. (ok’d in Wisconsin)
The steel building / component contractors delivering complete building solutions at competitive prices. (industrial buildings can be designed and brought to the site fully clad and erected within a week)
KES suppliers developing restaurant plans for the architect to implement
Cities and owners looking the other way for small interior remodeling even though it changes occupancy and structure leaving it to the competency of the contractor to ascertain if it is sound.
Lastly, because of the relative low cost of architectural services, it is better for the larger GC’s to buy architecture firms and turn them into a division. With BIM being needed for all federal work, it is a competitive advantage to have the wholly owned subsidiary in house.
Going forward there is a smaller pie and more hungry people. I wonder what will happen next.
"what doesn't work is a sense of entitlement entitled to exploit, corrupt, consume with no expectation of consequence and no sense of responsiblity to your fellow fucking man."
Thanks all for the great words! I must have good karma cuz Mr. Strawbeary got a job offer-ish about an hour before I got laid off. (has been in school so unemployed for over a year)
I am SO relieved. What am I going to do? I'm going to see if I can do some freelance for now and finish up the ARE (find myself again too.) My bills are super low and we are used to one income anyways, so I'm going to see if I can build a business. Maybe get into energy modeling. Yes, there is always professional poker, vado, thanks.
Geither is continuing Paulson's limited action that is merely pouring money down a bottomless pit. There's no end to the number of bailouts because they do not address the fundamental problem which is that many of the big players are insolvent.
That's one reason why the market is freaking out. The banks have not owned to the fact that their mismanagement has led them down the garden path.
The government needs, and I believe will, to nationalize the banks, install better management, recapitalize them and then sell them back to Wall Street.
There really are not any other options. Well, there's the muddle or a real depression...
Building Information Modeling BIM is to Architecture what computerized automation was to the Auto Industry. In 2005 there were 200K people employed in the architecture industry. Once BIM takes hold we will probably be able to shed half the labor force. Architecture needs to be reevaluated not as a business but as an art as a philosophy, as a lifestyle. People don’t study dance or painting to become rich monetarily they study to enrich their lives. Architecture is at this crossroads now and will be forever changed. BIM can effectively design a building using standard techniques with out intern architects, and eventually without consultants. You simply select the type of construction, place the doors and widows, determine the air temperature desired and humidity set points and identify the wind and seismic zones and the computer computes the rest. The need for hours upon hours of revising schedules and sections and the like is over. I believe any architect who doesn’t know BIM will be out of the industry in 5 years time. I also believe the going rate for architecture jobs for those of us with no professional registration will be half what a teacher makes and I third what a nurse makes. The race is on to not be the last one on the BIM train and it is picking up speed as it barrels out of the station.
however, knowledge of BIM alone doesn't make one a qualified architect. I see your description leading to a streamlined version what we already exists - soulless developer driven boxes.
firms that do strictly residential and low-rise won't need BIM to do the projects they've exceled at and we all marvelled at for years.
In fact, i'd almost say that description of BIM is anti-Architecture. the home depot-ization of design.
BIM sometimes means you have to model more than you need to. It's suited for some work more than others. It's been around in the form of Archicad longer than Revit. I look forward to continued competition and improvements.
of course, the other view of BIM is that it offers a salvation of architecture ... a tool that that allows detailed analysis of form and function and performance in rapid fashion. combine that with Integrated Project Delivery and you have a real chance for those who "get it" to reverse the many negative trends impacting the profession for decades.
those who "get it" will, in my estimation, eat everybody else's lunch because they will demonstrate, through performance, the real value of the architect's services. by contrast, those that don't "get it" will fall further behind and eventually disappear.
IMHO, this is a development of immense proportions. those who dismiss the technical delivery process to concentrate solely on design run the real risk of becoming irrelevant - not because their skills don't have great value but because the can't (or won't) engage effectively in the emerging process.
dsc - that provision blows for small business owners. 99% of the time we have to let someone go because the cash flow isn't working. requiring us to pay that cost upfront is just rubbing salt in that wound. sure, the tax credit helps, but by the time you'd see it...
One more reason for a universal health care system outed.
It amazes me that people think that the end is nigh for the architecture profession and that it will all be done with robots like an assembly line. Will there be more pre-manufactured housing? Probably. More computer modeling and BIM software - certainly. But the whole point of being an architect, that makes our jobs more secure (so long as we get good at convincing our clients of it) is that our professional ability to synthesize everything about a complex process - the art of crafting space - requires knowledge that is learned in the field and from experience. You can't teach a robot experience. A guy in south korea may be able to read the code book, but couldn't tell you how the inspector interprets it (unless he's building in South Korea). A contractor starts with the buildable and then draws a line past which he will not go.
We don't do that.
Much of the problem is that we have chosen to let the profession to be less visionary, less adventurous, more mundane and timid. You're sitting at the back desk on an old computer with outdated software and newly-found time on your hands? Get people excited. Good luck Miss Beary!
I would guess they set up the tax credit system so the owners could front in the Cobra monies to the Insurance companies by borrowing on their Bank Credit Line from the banks while they wait to make enough monies to take a tax credit. So in the long run the insurance companies and bankers continue on giving out big bonuses to the upper management and the life is sucked out of architecture as we know it because AutoCad has gone bata bim!
Methinks it takes about 18 months for the average huge corporation to finalize such moves. Smaller entities are more nimble and do so faster. We'll see how this all shakes out.
Layoffs....layoffs......
Big firm in Chi-town just laid off around 50...
Rumored big cut at Smith Gill today
I was let go today. I'm ok with that.
strawbeary - sorry to hear it all the same.
: We remember when you accepted that job - and all the excitement and promise it produced. Through your posts here we also witnessed the gradual, but inexorable, manner in which your feelings about, and respect for, the firm declined.
These are not good times to be without work. For that reason alone I send along my sympathy. However, I hope from the bottom of my heart that you move on to something bigger and better - something that can make you genuinely happy and take full advantage of your extraordinary abilities.
Warmest wishes and good luck.
hang in there straw. i join to the sentiments of quiz above.
i hope this brings you to a new better level with your work as it should. recently it start to sound like the work environment in that office wasn't one to let you be happy with your work and accomplishments.
you can now consider yourself more experienced and have better people skills. and good luck with your licensing efforts.
"Big firm in Chi-town just laid off around 50..."
Who?
Ditto what quizzical stated so well above. Good luck, Ms. Beary, I imagine things will be better in the long run.
How many Smith Gill layoff for the second round?
Straw you can become a professional poker player now like you always dreamed of!
He graduated in May 2006 from Yale University with a degree in Economics and Mathematics.
Everyone guessed the firm I was talking about...
Strawbeary, I know how you feel. Its almost zen-like.
Funny how Architect magazine had him as the comeback kid, and the next day in Crain's Chicago Business talked about the massive layoffs. I e mailed the editor of architect magazine about his poor timing of his article.
Funny thing we did a project for his next door neighbor. Since he is the ARC for his subdivision, we had to get his (and only his) approval to remodel.
FX Fowle and Perkins Eastman are laying off more...10 at FX, 20 at PE. PE's already done about 20% of the firm, worldwide.
Staw....just don't go to his hairdresser...If he looses in Poker he could get a roll in the TV Series "Mod Squad"
Straw just out of curiousity, what's next....?
The reason I ask this is because I think many of us here are asking ourselves that.
At any rate sorry about the news.
Good read on Obamaism.
http://mises.org/story/3360
Some time in the near future we will be told the economic crisis was so deep another few years will be needed before we see the light at the end of the tunnel. Current rhetoric is already in this direction.
We will be constantly told the prior twenty years (I include the dot.com rise and fall) were a historical aberration due to deeply flawed policy.
Gee Big O! You had two years to open your eyes, take a peek around, and see what went wrong.We hired you to clean up the mess and all we got was a 1000 page bill you didn't even read. what happened to cutting out all the pork? If you cannot fix the problem, out the door with you. My money says any further government hand in this will muck it up further.
When the stimulus plan was announced there was much rejoicing in the buildings community. An ETF comprised of publicly held industry giants peaked that day. Now? As the old commercial once asked, "Where's the beef?"
Since it became apparent you were to be President the market dropped precipitously and steadily declined. That's a pretty good consensus. Many Americans wanted a Savior and got...you! When are you going to walk on water as promised?
Morning rant complete.
Still looking for a CM position within driving distance of southeastern Ohio. Am planning trip late March to visit with several firms that have expressed an interest. Corp of Engineers work is on the upswing. Not pretty stuff but, puts food on the table.
Present employment is stable. Workload is good for next eight to nine months tailing off near holidays. Anticipating another round of layoffs this month as partners get nervous about future. Hope a few smaller projects start. They will share with me soon.
Word is Gensler will have another big cut soon. One or more east coast acronyms may close up shop in California this year. Their west coast experiment in healthcare not up to corporate expectations. Local firms specializing in healthcare seem to have work and some are hiring people with good experience.
Good news! Sports facilities seem to be happening. The Aloha Bowl in Hawaii is to undergo major renovations. All of the major sports facilities players are being interviewed. Los Angeles may get a football team...again.
If interested in transportation, rail might be on the horizon. Honolulu! California high-speed rail. The perennial black hole - Amtrack. Look to E/a firms for this work.
The bush administration policies and values created this crisis: deregulation of banks, special interest driven policy to inflate stock and housing bubbles... Emphasis on personal profits over a long term energy future, prioritizing ideology over long term investment in economic strength and stability to compete globally...
Which makes it even more laughable when Republicans whine and start crying over the short term volatility of the stock market and try to blame Democrats for their individual short term losses and gains which is simply based on emotional and irrational reactions of markets which are in part fueled by the media hot wind and a mob mentality...
Relax people, lets give the stimulus a chance to take affect before feaking out and calling it a failure! These things take several months to have an affect...
The Sam Adams project was behind Santelli's rant on MSNBC. Santellii hadn't read the motgage bailout. He is the front man for the group:
http://www.playboy.com/blog/2009/02/backstabber.html
As noted above, Santelli’s contract with CNBC runs out in a few months. His 10 years with the network haven’t been remarkable, and he’ll enter a brutal downsizing media job market. Thanks to the “tea party” campaign, as the article notes, Santelli’s value has suddenly soared. If you look at the scores of blogs and fake-commenters on blogs (for example, Daily Blog, a slick new blog launched in January which is also based in Chicago) all puff up Santelli like he’s the greatest journalist in America, and the greatest hero known to mankind. Daily Bail, like so much of this “tea party” machine, is “headquartered nearby” to Santelli, that is, in Chicago. With Odom, the Sam Adams Alliance, and the whole “tea party” nexus: “Rick, this message is to you. You are a true American hero and there are no words to describe what you did today except your own. Headquartered nearby, we will be helping the organization in whatever way possible.”
This is what martini reads:
The economics of stimulus are not as complicated. They amount to taking from some and giving to others. There is no wealth creation at all. There is no magic "multiplier" to turn stones into bread. The economics of stimulus is value destroying, because property is pried loose from owners, who put it to socially useful purposes, and given to government so it can pass it out to friends.
That's like saying there's no difference whether you buy a Prius or a Lincoln Navigator. And it's about investment in education such as Pell Grants or rebuilding rail viaducts that date from 1910 here in Chicago. These are investments that will pay dividends for decades, they are not static transfers of wealth. I think the whole opposition to Obama is reduced to the imbecility of Joe the Plumber.
I'll stick with Playboy, at least the articles are intelligently written. And the pictures! ;-)
when your intellectual leaders are joe the (unlicensed) plumber, rush limbaugh, sarah flailin and bobby "as a youth, my dad called my bobby even though my name is piyush" jindal... you really have no good ideas left.
I'm not sure why the faltering economic system is being made a republican/democrat issue. The culture in the USA has trended toward an unsustainable amount of debt.
[url=http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/02/household_debt_vs_gdp.html?ft=1&f=93559255]
The debt enabled everyone to get jobs but I hope it has peaked and the country finds a way to create a more sustainable economic model. We need to start something now that works longer term.
"Since it became apparent you were to be President the market dropped precipitously and steadily declined. That's a pretty good consensus. Many Americans wanted a Savior and got...you! When are you going to walk on water as promised?"
I find this sentiment infuriating. So the Republicans ran the economy into the ground in the last eight years, and now expect the new administration to clean up the mess they created "presto chango." I sense a deep-rooted sense of shame and guilt, that is being projected outwards... the Republicans know deep-down that they are responsible for this mess, and don't want to take blame for it, and the minute Obama was elected, they were frothing at the mouth to point fingers and say "see, told you so!" A desire for vindication at being rightly replaced and childish blame-displacement. It's going to take a hell of a lot longer than a few months for us to drag ourselves out of this morass. There is no magic cure. But at least the pendulum will have a chance to swing back. Inertia is keeping us skidding downwards, it will take time to swing back.
Inertia is not whats continuing the downward slide. The recession started at least in late 2006 early 2007 if you view capital investment like new buildings to be the indicator, as architect I do. The current market slide is a direct result of fear of the new administration's policies. This is the encore to the September swoon. We've tried the Pelosi / Reid / Franks form of government before and it doesn't work. It will not work this time either and the markets reflect it. It's true the government can make jobs, they do so very well but at the cost of private sector growth. So America is deciding what it wants to be, a country of boom and bust cycles which lead to wealth and advancement or a safe, less prosperous comand and control economy like in Western Europe.
Make - I find it odd that the same playboy article which makes unsubsatantiated links between the Rosenbergs and Rick Santeli's rant via the fact a website was created well in advance of his on air display, has proliferated in less than 24 hours knocking Rick's rant off the search page results. If anything I think theres a smear campaign going on here by the left wing blogoshpere. One article is all that keeps getting repeated. I want to know which one of the hundreds of "tea party" sites was the conspiratorial site? Could it be that the investigative journalists at playboy are convienantly linking one site mentioning the words "tea party" and Chicago, which happened 2 years on the Mich ave bridge with the event for their own aims? And could it be that if the Sam Adams society exists in Chicago it's easy to say well then a banker from Chicago must be connected? Could it also be that Rick is just right regardless of what society he may or may not belong to? Even at -2% mortgage rate the majority simply cant afford the principle anyways, is that a conspiracy to?
If the aim of this thread is layoffs, then one should be concerned with how to prevent them, and that is stabilizing the credit markets which appears to have happened some time in December. The second is stabilizing Housing which can only happen when the market is allowed to work, which it's not being allowed to do. The third is to stop the interventions by the government. If the BOA and Citi are indeed insolvent, then grab THEM, but dont take down every bank stock with them, which is whats happening as they drive them all towards penny status. God knows what Liberal Billionaire will come snatch the banks all up - perhaps everyone's favorite Eastern European Liberal and Obama's biggest backer George Soros will buy them all? The new administration is being reckless in order to promote their new agenda, which is scarier than anything Bush did.
A lot of the acronym firms have created this mess for themselves. Hiring huge numbers of people so they could bill the client for more cash is a normal practice in the corporate world. I should know because we are the subs to a huge acronym firm, and our team of three produces vastly superior work (if i say so myself) than their group of 12.
These companies had a lot of the work because of their brand image and nothing more. What sucks though is that it is the small guy who gets fired in the end, and not the VP.
I predict that this heralds the end of a lot of corporate biggies and clients will increasingly turn to smaller firms because they are cheaper, more on-their-toes, responsive, and just much better. To come of think of it, a bunch of small firms grouped together under one umbrella could be a really effective way to market to clients these days.
spaceman, thank you. Anyone claiming the mess we are in right now is the fault of one party or one set of regulations is, frankly, willfully blinded. This has been a long time coming for many complex integrated reasons.
Can we please, on this thread, get back to issues surrounding layoffs, who has been, what they should consider doing in the future and not whining and looking backwards trying to assign blame? Ever seen crabs in a bucket?
I spoke to the leader of a medium-sized local firm on Friday and his firm has not had to do layoffs. They are an exceptionally well-run firm, from what I can tell, and have always focused on providing excellent service.
I agree with sameolddoctor: smaller firms are going to be the ones more likely to wether this storm. Overhead is a killer, and larger firms will naturally have a bit of dead weight. For those looking for jobs: try the one-man operations in your towns. Even if it's temporary work.
I can't seem to open the later pages in this thread; maybe this is already discussed, but does anyone know if unemployment would pay for licensing fees? I am in NYS.
"if you view capital investment like new buildings to be the indicator, as architect I do. The current market slide is a direct result of fear of the new administration's policies."
Banks have a certain amount of capital as a percentage of their loans they are required to keep as cash (and for good reason). As means of attracting capital banks have been using the securitization process, where a diverse set of loans are pooled together and then sold to private investors or other banks to get investment from outside the bank. One of the problems with this process is the loans as packaged become too complex to really understand the value of what you are purchasing or even WHAT exactly your are purchasing. So we look to rating agencies to tell us the value. They look at these and say they are properly diversified and insured therefore they are safe triple A double plus good loans. The premise though is that there's in enough insurance money to cover the defaults... it turns out there never was. This is just one of the problems with the process.
So now that entire source of capital, the primary means by which home loans were made, is essentially off the table. The only money the banks have to loan out is their own and it's already loaned out. This is why we're currently deadlocked, we need to get that capital back into the economy but until we have a vehicle for investors to reliably purchase these loans and understand what they are getting we aren't going to see the same volume of loans we have been, and we probably shouldn't.
So I don't believe it has nothing to do with fear of the new administration's policies.
Also don't kid yourselves, McCain was all over this stimulus he called the campaign short to get it moving. Republicans would have passed it as well, certainly it would have been weighted more heavily towards their own interests but it wouldn't have been significantly different. Congress passed that bill and not one of them read it, they don't read any of them, they can't they don't have time to.
And evilplatypus I agree the Govt. intervention is a contributing factor. One major problem I have with the republican party is their anti-big government slogan is a platitude they put out there to rally the troops but the elected officials actions consistently fail to reflect this.
"These companies had a lot of the work because of their brand image and nothing more. What sucks though is that it is the small guy who gets fired in the end, and not the VP."
sameold... at my own firm, the VP's were asked to take a 5% pay decrease with no more options or benefits. i understand 5% ain't sh*t to a certain extent... but they haven't asked a single one of the rest of us to take a pay decrease, nor have they decreased hours. additionally, there have been VP's let go in my office, and in many of our other offices- and some forced into early retirement. i know this was also the same situation at other large firms that friends of mine are at from Atlanta to Chicago.
many of the small firms - and one or two person "firms"- are doing temporary work elsewhere or have otherwise closed shop around here.
so i can't say that any "new work" will be heavily leaned towards either large or small- because the small firm is disappearing just as fast as the "dead weight" at the large firm.
and it seems like this "new" work is more geared towards E/A firms not, A/E firms- or sole architecture firms.
as far as what else to do as an architect- i think as architects we need to think more broadly- as in consulting, economic advising, policy analysis, etc. many of the United Nations sectors could benefit from architectural insight- as they continue to (re)write planning guidelines in developing countries and do them wrongly i might add. or even developing public-private partnerships for under-represented communities to grow and build, etc. if there will be a shift in wealth, then we need to understand how this will actually impact our profession.
we need to see our position as ever-changing and not as some figural and static image of "designer at the desk".
Good blog on whats going to happen next
Architecture's Big Bang-
http://www.planetizen.com/node/37646
rick abelson is an interesting act. I think companies like his will do well in this new economy.
Banks and brokerage houses vastly overextended in western land deals, crop loans and the underwriting of every sort of inflated paper scheme, had suddenly begun to feel panicky and to call in their money. The infection spread; one after another great business houses collapsed. "Times can hardly be worse than they our now" exclained Greeley on April 1st.---from Horace Greeley Voice of the People on the economic collapse of 1836..
Who can really say what will work. We know what doesn't work. What doesn't work is unregulated conmen in brioni suits, what doesn't work is lassaiz faire until i fail capitalism, what doesn't work is the widening gap between the ultra rich and joe cul de sac. what doesn't work is the progressive deterioration of a manufacturing sector that can provide middle class income employment, what doesn't work is a nod and a wink to mortgage lenders who close up shop after they have gotten their commission and the loans are bundled up and sold with three star credit ratings to a bank, or a pension, or a municipality that has no idea what they have even purchased, what doesn't work, is the decreased advocacy of congress for their constituents, what doesn't work is the culture of debt, what doesn't work is being the world's policeman, what doesn't work being too big to fail, what doesn't work is a sense of entitlement entitled to exploit, corrupt, consume with no expectation of consequence and no sense of responsiblity to your fellow fucking man.
I keep wondering if the “big bang” shift will sound the death knell for architecture as we know it.
Right now it seems that the practice of architecture has devolved into Government work and everything else. Currently, I see the market for traditional services under siege.
The interiors and the home designers who want to design up to 5,000 cubic feet with out a license. (ok’d in Wisconsin)
The steel building / component contractors delivering complete building solutions at competitive prices. (industrial buildings can be designed and brought to the site fully clad and erected within a week)
KES suppliers developing restaurant plans for the architect to implement
Cities and owners looking the other way for small interior remodeling even though it changes occupancy and structure leaving it to the competency of the contractor to ascertain if it is sound.
Lastly, because of the relative low cost of architectural services, it is better for the larger GC’s to buy architecture firms and turn them into a division. With BIM being needed for all federal work, it is a competitive advantage to have the wholly owned subsidiary in house.
Going forward there is a smaller pie and more hungry people. I wonder what will happen next.
"what doesn't work is a sense of entitlement entitled to exploit, corrupt, consume with no expectation of consequence and no sense of responsiblity to your fellow fucking man."
It takes 2 to be exploited
It takes the consent of 535 people to make a law. Vote them ALL out and start over.
Thanks all for the great words! I must have good karma cuz Mr. Strawbeary got a job offer-ish about an hour before I got laid off. (has been in school so unemployed for over a year)
I am SO relieved. What am I going to do? I'm going to see if I can do some freelance for now and finish up the ARE (find myself again too.) My bills are super low and we are used to one income anyways, so I'm going to see if I can build a business. Maybe get into energy modeling. Yes, there is always professional poker, vado, thanks.
You ever done any modeling? I can make sure your photographed appropriately
huh?
Evil,
Geither is continuing Paulson's limited action that is merely pouring money down a bottomless pit. There's no end to the number of bailouts because they do not address the fundamental problem which is that many of the big players are insolvent.
That's one reason why the market is freaking out. The banks have not owned to the fact that their mismanagement has led them down the garden path.
The government needs, and I believe will, to nationalize the banks, install better management, recapitalize them and then sell them back to Wall Street.
There really are not any other options. Well, there's the muddle or a real depression...
Building Information Modeling BIM is to Architecture what computerized automation was to the Auto Industry. In 2005 there were 200K people employed in the architecture industry. Once BIM takes hold we will probably be able to shed half the labor force. Architecture needs to be reevaluated not as a business but as an art as a philosophy, as a lifestyle. People don’t study dance or painting to become rich monetarily they study to enrich their lives. Architecture is at this crossroads now and will be forever changed. BIM can effectively design a building using standard techniques with out intern architects, and eventually without consultants. You simply select the type of construction, place the doors and widows, determine the air temperature desired and humidity set points and identify the wind and seismic zones and the computer computes the rest. The need for hours upon hours of revising schedules and sections and the like is over. I believe any architect who doesn’t know BIM will be out of the industry in 5 years time. I also believe the going rate for architecture jobs for those of us with no professional registration will be half what a teacher makes and I third what a nurse makes. The race is on to not be the last one on the BIM train and it is picking up speed as it barrels out of the station.
PJN26-
you might be half right.
however, knowledge of BIM alone doesn't make one a qualified architect. I see your description leading to a streamlined version what we already exists - soulless developer driven boxes.
firms that do strictly residential and low-rise won't need BIM to do the projects they've exceled at and we all marvelled at for years.
In fact, i'd almost say that description of BIM is anti-Architecture. the home depot-ization of design.
BIM sometimes means you have to model more than you need to. It's suited for some work more than others. It's been around in the form of Archicad longer than Revit. I look forward to continued competition and improvements.
Back to layoffs.
Did anyone see the COBRA provisions to the stimulus bill?
The employer is required to pay 60% of the COBRA premium for his/her laid off worker and in turn the employer gets the 60% back as a tax credit.
of course, the other view of BIM is that it offers a salvation of architecture ... a tool that that allows detailed analysis of form and function and performance in rapid fashion. combine that with Integrated Project Delivery and you have a real chance for those who "get it" to reverse the many negative trends impacting the profession for decades.
those who "get it" will, in my estimation, eat everybody else's lunch because they will demonstrate, through performance, the real value of the architect's services. by contrast, those that don't "get it" will fall further behind and eventually disappear.
IMHO, this is a development of immense proportions. those who dismiss the technical delivery process to concentrate solely on design run the real risk of becoming irrelevant - not because their skills don't have great value but because the can't (or won't) engage effectively in the emerging process.
dsc - that provision blows for small business owners. 99% of the time we have to let someone go because the cash flow isn't working. requiring us to pay that cost upfront is just rubbing salt in that wound. sure, the tax credit helps, but by the time you'd see it...
One more reason for a universal health care system outed.
It amazes me that people think that the end is nigh for the architecture profession and that it will all be done with robots like an assembly line. Will there be more pre-manufactured housing? Probably. More computer modeling and BIM software - certainly. But the whole point of being an architect, that makes our jobs more secure (so long as we get good at convincing our clients of it) is that our professional ability to synthesize everything about a complex process - the art of crafting space - requires knowledge that is learned in the field and from experience. You can't teach a robot experience. A guy in south korea may be able to read the code book, but couldn't tell you how the inspector interprets it (unless he's building in South Korea). A contractor starts with the buildable and then draws a line past which he will not go.
We don't do that.
Much of the problem is that we have chosen to let the profession to be less visionary, less adventurous, more mundane and timid. You're sitting at the back desk on an old computer with outdated software and newly-found time on your hands? Get people excited. Good luck Miss Beary!
I would guess they set up the tax credit system so the owners could front in the Cobra monies to the Insurance companies by borrowing on their Bank Credit Line from the banks while they wait to make enough monies to take a tax credit. So in the long run the insurance companies and bankers continue on giving out big bonuses to the upper management and the life is sucked out of architecture as we know it because AutoCad has gone bata bim!
..bata bim...heehee
One can wonder in how many states and cities similar discussions are occurring,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/nyregion/02border.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss
and, will it translate into architecture.
Methinks it takes about 18 months for the average huge corporation to finalize such moves. Smaller entities are more nimble and do so faster. We'll see how this all shakes out.
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