Core is a place I would not recommend anybody to work there. Their management is bad, and structure of studio is unhealthy. They used to be a good company, but they are going down the hill.
My friend is a 3D Renderer, he says, arch-firms are getting more work these days, and are actually outsourcing less to china and india because the prices for renderings dropped like 10 times in USA.
So this is my second week working for the census and I got a promotion on the third day. It is the third highest hourly rate I have ever made in my 15 years of working since high school. Has anyone else out there found census work?
Also sub teaching will probably not be a good option In Illinois due to the 18 Billion cut in education funding resulting in thousands if not hundreds of thousands of teachers getting laid off. 300 were given notice in Urbana a city of 37K. If we look on the bright side the deterioration of public education will lead to more private schools and possibly some construction work in the future.
The Census is a huge life-preserver for me financially and I imagine it is just the kind of economic aid many other out of work people need right now, not a hand out but a job.
I am also learning more about REVIT at a class offered by the local community college.
Those of you landing interviews and Jobs or who are searching for candidates, please share what sort of skills are most in demand or impressive so the rest of us can find some way to get those skills or enhance them.
The other thing that has started to irk me is with all the freelancers out there finding a name for a start up design firms is hard, all the good ones are taken or recently went out of business. But I am starting a loose confederation of designers and artist to try and share any work we can scrounge up. As one friend’s tweet said “Due to the lack of job openings I have decided to make my own job”
Any suggestions for book keeping software or other busyness essentials?
Anyone working on taking the GRE to get into a masters or PHD in a related or other field?
"Apparently, firms are now doing "Strategic" hires - where they lay off people who aren't 'perfect' and hire others who are 'just right' for specific jobs (mostly quick turn-around small stuff)."
That does seem to be the case these days. I can't even remember how many job posts lately that have read something like:
Looking for Architectural Designer with 5+ years of experience design and documenting LEED-certified single-family residential home additions using MicroStation and Form-Z in the Random City, USA Area. Must be well versed in Random City, USA building codes, esp Form 34x-57.13.
ONLY LOCAL APPLICATIONS WITH EXACT QUALIFICATIONS SHOULD APPLY. AutoCad experience WILL NOT be counted. No other drafting, rendering or modeling programs acceptable. Must be able to provide a minimum of 5 construction document sets that demonstrate single-family home additions ONLY (commercial, education and hospitality work will not be considered). LEED certification mandatory and must demonstrate previous experience with LEED projects. LOCAL APPLICATIONS ONLY. License preferred.
More unemployed architects I fear (took from BDOnline):
Viñoly cuts staff at London office
23 April, 2010
Rafael Viñoly’s British presence has suffered a blow after the office confirmed it was cutting around a quarter of its staff
The firm, whose UK projects include the masterplan for Battersea power station and the Walkie Talkie building in the City, said it was cutting around half a dozen staff at its Ladbrooke Grove office but added it was still in consultation with those affected over exactly how many jobs will go.
The losses are likely to leave the New York-based architect with 16 staff in the UK, down from 22.
A spokeswoman added the firm had no intention of closing the office, which has been running for 10 years.
I’m taking Revit classes and soon 3d printing at my local community college, Parkland, in Champaign IL, It cost $300 plus $50 for the book and DVD. It has been good and I highly recommend the book by Daniel John Stine Commercial design using Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010 the complex program and huge array of options are broken down into small easy to digest concepts.
Any other books or online video lessons for REVIT people would like to recommend?
So are there any other census workers out there?
It seems that the census has become sort of an economic aid program along the same lines as a WPA. Unfortunately the work will not last the whole year but I will be able to pay off some debt and I have actually made some contacts. 3 out of the 12 people on my crew were involved the construction industry one held a design draftsman position designing high end equestrian facilities. Her firm employed 50 people.
Any plans to help rebuild from Katrina this summer? If so you will probably run into my Dad who is devoting his retirement rebuilding the Mississippi gulf coast.
What about starting your own firm? Has anyone taken the plunge recently? I wonder if long standing firms will be outmaneuvered by new practices that have low overhead and lower paid partners and or stockholders.
That's the thing with the Census jobs... it's only temporary which means here in a few months all of those people will be unemployed again. It made me really annoyed when the media/govt. was celebrating how the census helped curb unemployment numbers.
It gets even more complicated for those of us still receiving unemployment benefits. Taking a temporary job will push me off unemployment and I may not get back so in some ways it makes more sense NOT to take temp. jobs.
It depends on your state but in Illinois you can reopen a claim if you worked less than a year without losing benefits if you work for an employer and then get laid off again a week or a month or a year or two. Most states don’t want you to give up a temp job since your earnings help replenish the unemployment trust funds with your employers unemployment insurance taxes. So you are most likely extending your government support instead of cutting it short, and it is not double dipping since you are actually working not just sitting around. So go for it if you can. Many of us are actually out of unemployment benefits so this is not even an issue but I would look up the rules about reporting income while on benefits to see if you can actually come out ahead.
^ I think in NM once your out, your out. Doesn't really matter anyway. Census jobs only pay $1 more an hour than unemployment so to me it's not even worth it.
Well your unemployment is really a fixed pot of money you can dig into, so taking a job means you are saving your unemployment for when you need it... you're postponing digging into your unemployment benefits, and it will help you ride out the downturn a little while longer until recovery picks up and you find another job... So working is always better than not, think of it like your unemployment is a pot of savings paid for over time by your company's taxes and which is available to you... Better to not dig into your savings and save it for future rainy days...
Arup is looking to make close to 100 job cuts in the UK by the end of the month.
The engineering consultant, which employs more than 4,000 people in the UK including 115 architects, said concerns about future workloads had prompted the decision.
In a statement, it said the groups affected include Arup Bristol, its North-west arm, which has offices in Manchester and Liverpool, and ‘Buildings London’, which includes part of Arup’s property arm.
It added: “Arup needs to ensure its long-term business health and it is essential that we match our resources to our anticipated workload.
“While we will endeavour to redeploy staff within the firm where possible, we anticipate up to 99 people will be made redundant.”
A 30 day consultation period is due to run out later this week.
A spokeswoman confirmed that any architects working at the affected businesses would be under threat.
i posted on the employment thread a few minutes ago. i have two interviews this week- for actual positions, not "informational interviews". one is at a small firm in DC, the other at a mid-size firm in Richmond. i'm excited... the first interview was yesterday and went very well. the second is tomorrow. i feel very positive. unfortunately, positivity and good interviews mean nothing in this economy without an actual job offer in hand.
just curious to know how you found about the positions? I am finding more and more that offices are not posting to any of the various job boards out there.
I second more info to the above comment. I am looking for work in Richmond and DC. I have in the works massive amounts of emails to apply to firms in both of these areas. Just emailing everyone cold. I did have one interview in DC for a small condo job for a 6-8 project. Nothing full time yet. Been laid off since last August.
The funniest listing I have seen yet is for a admin assistant with cad exp. req.
Even though firms aren't advertising jobs, they might still be hiring someone. There have been many cases where firms had laid off too many people and now that some firms are experiencing a slight pickup in inquiries and work in general, the idea is to send your stuff in anywhere. +i has said numerous times in this thread how many resumes she has sent out and still got limited responses. You just have to be persistent.
i didnt just look at job boards. and i have to say ive had a total of four interviews after sending out a TON of resumes. i've never had this much difficulty ever before. in one day i was called for two interviews and in the same day received four denials from other places (three gov jobs and one planning job). it's a crapshoot.
i loved the firm in DC i interviewed with and i was insulted by the salary of the interview in richmond. firms are capitalizing on peoples' despair- trying to get a great person for next to nothing. and that's just pathetic and not a firm i want to work for. but that's my own opinion.
uh...thanks med. for that amazing advice. Trust me, I've been sending out my fair share of resumes. You can only shoot some many blanks though before it starts to seem like a fruitless effort. I was just interested to see if people were having luck with any particular methods other than the standard job boards or just blankly sending out resumes.
"firms are capitalizing on peoples' despair - trying to get a great person for next to nothing. and that's just pathetic"
While I understand, and appreciate, where the frustration underlying the above post originates, I think the sweeping generalization conveyed must be challenged.
While I don't doubt that some abuses might be taking place, I personally don't believe that many firms are deliberately setting out to take unfair advantage of the situation. What the poster may not realize is the absolutely brutal decline in design fees that has accompanied this recession.
My partners and I have fairly frequent discussions about how dramatically the economics of professional practice have changed in the past 24 months. At times, we're inclined to think it may be years before we experience again a "normal" relationship between income and expenses.
I can tell you for certain that were we hiring right now, we simply would not be able to pay wage levels comparable to what we were paying during the summer of 2008. It's not a ploy on our part - it's simple arithmetic.
^ I appreciate that but there is a limit and I think some offices have really exceeded that. Someone with a masters degree and years of experience should reasonable expect to make more than a fast-food employee, recession or not.
dot / dash: I appreciate your point of view -- however, this conversation leaves employers with the following delimma:
a) we can offer someone a job at low pay, or
b) we can offer no jobs at all.
Those are the facts. I'm not making this up. When there's no money to pay salaries, there's no money.
Like you, I also have "a masters degree and [considerable] years of experience" -- I understand your point of view. My understanding doesn't change one iota my capacity to pay higher salaries or increase my staffing levels.
There is the obvious battle with supply & demand. Also the willingness of some architects to work for free (or nearly so) holds fees down for the moment. The economy is slowly picking up, but I imagine a lag for fees to catch up.
Quizzical, if you are in need of hiring people, that would mean the level of work has picked up at your firm, meaning that your organizatrion is reporting profitiability, meaning that you need to pay your staff accordingly for the hard work they are doing. that's just the way it works. So it's only fair.
This is all the only "arithmetics" we care about. Even prior to the recession, our pay was shitty enough.
We are NOT being melodramatic when we say that some of the salaries are insulting -- we are only beign honest. Since many of these firms are in impossibly expensive cities (i.e. New York, DC, LA, Boston, San Fran, etc) we are not exaggerating when we say that we cannot afford to work at your firm by getting glorified full-time McDonnald paychecks.
This are NOT getting cheaper despite the recession. It's only becoming more and more impossible to make a living as an architect. So if this is what you want for the future of the profession, than this is what you will get.
"if you are in need of hiring people, that would mean the level of work has picked up at your firm, meaning that your organizatrion is reporting profitiability'
"we cannot afford to work at your firm by getting glorified full-time McDonnald paychecks'
Well, since neither of those outrageous statements are even remotely accurate representations of "my firm" I'm not quite sure how to respond.
As has been mentioned by others earlier, just because workload increases doesn't mean revenues have followed. In our case, we're extremely busy doing two different types of work -- neither of which is generating much in the way of billiings. We're doing a lot of CA work, which fees don't come close to covering our costs. We're also doing a lot of work associated with business development to find new fees to cover the cost of those staff members who won't have much to do when their current projects finish.
Since we can't afford to pay our current staff and pay salaries to a few new people who would be helpful to have around, we are not doing any hiring.
Med - you are well known here for that enormous log you carry around on your shoulder. It will be interesting to see how you manage these sorts of decisions when you become a firm principal and no longer have the luxury of viewing these complex, daunting issues from your ivory tower.
At least for me, my rant is more geared at offices that are paying less than $10 an hour for positions way beyond newbie internship. That is less than I am collecting sitting on unemployment. I know times are tough, but rent/food/etc hasn't exactly gotten any cheaper.
Now, I don't just look for salary when I look for a position. Being interested in the work of the firm as well as having a good relationship with the other staff members are equally important. I want the job to be satisfying and enjoyable to attend on a M-F basis. But if I am sitting at work stressed about how I am going to make even the most basic of ends meet, well then all of the other aspects of the job are no longer as satisfying... goodbye productivity (since I will now be forced to work 2, possibly 3 jobs).
See, that's the point! Don't hire new staff if you can't even afford to pay for your current staff!
I know of firms that laid off a shitload of people only to realize that none of their existing projects were anywhere near completion -- only their bugets were! So in turn, they decided to ask a bunch of suckers to work for free (all under the idea of get IDP credits) or give people with 10 years of experience wages where full-time taco-bell employees with no education enjoy better wages and better pay.
Most firms are not at all efficient. Ive worked in too many places where there's 2 or 3 managing principles and too many staff. This model is a leftover from the old days of large project hierarchy. That coupled with severely expensive benefits and radically increased amounts of bureaucracy in all types of form, of which we are partially to blame for relying on in the past to justify our fees, have eroded the profitability of the old model. The old guard expanded the fluff of the paper pushing side of the business to justify their large organizations - the architect as lawyer model where the architect navigates the complexities of codes and zoning boards is a huge part of the contemporary fee structure versus 50 years ago. After all, an insurance company wants to do business with companies that resemble their corporate structure right? But now it simply cant be sustained. Theres just not enough money sloshing around. Its not just the Architects either. This is happening all over as the old structure topples. A small firm who knows what they are doing and can leverage their technology and is willing to work HARD can beat a large firm any day of the week. Honestly, how many of you at large firms are really busting ass? Spending a week on spandrel panel studies all dolled up for presentations is a luxury few in the rest of the economy have.
I'm rather excited about what this recession will bring. It may be our biggest saving grace.
Govman - if an architect is willing to work for as you say nearly free, but at that price is making 2 or 3 times as much as at their former job working for a larger firm, and can deliver the product, then isnt that a good thing? The individual architect makes more, the client gets a better price and if this spreads there will be more work for small firms versus the trend towards mega-firms currently dominating the market.
Mega firmss will continue dominating the market ... that ship has sailed and will not return. Small firm will survive, but will not necessarily prosper. It's the firms in the middle that will suffer the most.
ManBearPig - Unfortunately the way architectural services are usually procured here is through "on-call" contracts that specify a need for a dozen different specialties that favor the jack-of all-trades mega firm over the small company. We usually only perform plain vanilla work that most firms could handle, but ask for the capability to perform specialized work "just in case". If more small firms would team together in a way responsive to our request for services, perhaps a different outcome would result.
Just a thought for quizzical, if you offer a service like CA and you lose money on it and it makes up most of your busines that means that something is wrong with your business model. Either you need to stop offering CA services or you need to adjust your pricing model so that CA services can make you money.
This is the problem with Architecture offices today, so many of the services and projects are structured so that the profit all shows up in the beginning and by then end the office is borrowing from the profit of another project to make ends meet. Most offices I've worked at were structured this way, project managers see the profit margin during the deisgn and documentation phases and bill too much against that, nto realising that the project will need some of that profit to off set cut rate CA hours.
There is no excuse for a non-profitable commercial service. If you can't make money from it, don't offer it to your clients.
: well, it's not quite that simple ... in the overall context of the firm, we make money on our projects, or at least break even. While we're often given the opportunity to avoid CA services, we want to do CA - both to ensure the project comes out close to what we designed, but also to protect ourselves from an E&O standpoint.
The main confusion here is between "profitability" and "cash flow". Most of our projects are for developer clients. We actually want to collect as much of our money as early in the project as possible because developers are notorious for getting into trouble and not wanting to fund design and CA services late in the project.
While we recognize the difficulty you discuss above, we'd still rather collect the bulk of our money early - before CA starts - in order to protect our profitability. But yes, you're right, that decision does sometimes cause cash flow issues when there's a disproportionate amount of CA work in the office and not so many new projects coming in.
From an overall firm management standpoint, there's another problem as well. When you layer on the difficulty of retaining earnings because of the structure of the tax laws, cash flow becomes even more complicated. We'd love to sock away a ton of money to use as a 'rainy day fund' for times like these. But, the corporate income tax bite is just too large for that to make sense, so we end up bonusing out most of our profits to our employees. Once that money's out the door in that fashion, it's pretty hard to get it back.
I think the traditional practice will slowly fade out of fashion but will probably be around for a long time. Freelancers and consultants adrift in the digital wilderness will come together for projects in digital or semi digital offices and split up when that project is done. Architecture will be ruled by self-employed freelancers, employment at firms may no longer be the norm especially for interns or specialist. The licensing system in the US will need to change as there will be a huge issue of credibility not to mention a two to three year drought in eligible Interns to take the ARE. A tiered system will probably emerge as a means to shelter the mega firms from digital freelancer drift colonies of epic proportions. Architects will be joining the ranks of graphic designers and artist, freelancing, starving and free to innovate again. I also see the big acronym firms folding one by one as Dubai and other Middle Eastern monarchies default on their national debts and can no longer pay the fees they owe on the numerous projects they have completed or are in design development right now. It would be interesting to see how much HOK SOM, KPF and other big firms have leveraged against owed fees from Middle Eastern and Chinese projects.
Just my predictions for the next few years maybe some of it will happen or maybe not. I think some of it is happening right now.
Construction Administration CA has in the past, where I worked, actually taken a project from a small net loss to a large profit. Not sure how that happened but it did. I think we got into trouble due to a lot of design changes to the structural system as a means of value engineering during the CD phase.
I believe the best way to lose money on CA is to have terrible construction documents prepared by poorly trained interns who are spewed forth from institutions of higher learning not vocational trade schools. It is a sad state of affairs when a student with a community college associates degree in construction management know more about masonry details than a masters of architecture graduate from a top tier school. The graduate schools are surrendering the future market share their graduates can handle. Most architecture graduate schools are not doing a good job at teaching software and building technology, they rather hold seminars on theory or some other interesting subject. Architecture students have to seek out cad and drafting classes if they are even offered.
I could see that model working for projects that come from private money and maybe large, international competitions - basic project types that rely more on actual design merit and that also can operate with a more flexible office structure.
I don't see that model working with state and government work which is largely controlled by very specific and finite rules and regulations that really necessitate the structure many corporate "acronym" offices currently have. Considering that state and government work, in many areas of the country, is the only consistent jobs coming in the door, I don't really foresee that the entire industry is going to change that dramatically.
The "graphic designer/artisit" freelancer sounds good in theory... being able to move from job to job, working only when you need to and on projects that you are interested in, the freedom to "innovate"... but you also have to keep in mind that those are all industries that work at a much faster pace than we do. It's not uncommon for a project to last upwards of 5 years in our industry, something I don't think happens very frequently with graphic design. Even film productions, which can take several years, don't require many of the staff, esp. the creative staff, to be involved the entire time. Usually people are brought in a various times in the process, hired to perform one singular task, and then eliminated as soon as that job or task is finished.
PJN26 - Its easy to lose money on CA when you don't account for [b]enough hours, and its easy to make a lot of money in CA when you charge for CA services hourly. No matter how "good" your documents are you will always spend considerable time in CA, partial due to oversights and partially due to the fact that nothing is ever built exactly as drawn. CA is where construction tolerances and problems with finishes selections get worked out.
Quizzical - At my last office we followed a similar billing system of frontloading projects, but instead of doing ti because of worry over developer longevitiy, they did it because they did a lot of educational and governmental porjects which ahve a habit of stopping midstream and delaying payment by very long periods of time (years, not months). The issue we were discussing which became moot becuase we ran into cash flow problems (hence why i was laid off) was how to integrate BIM into their billing model (because their institutional clients wanted BIM for future projects).
Unlike traditional design BIM really front loads much of the time and decision making, and if that was to happen then they would lose much of their built in padding in the beginning of the job. If they asked for a greater percentage upfront they would have to explain how they were overbilling in the beginning and underbilling in the end which would erode the client's confidence in tehir billing model. In the end no decision was made because technology purchases were frozen.
But I really think that this is where practice will be changing. Architect's billing models for BIM projects may push through a new way of looking at office cash flow.
We'd love to sock away a ton of money to use as a 'rainy day fund' for times like these. But, the corporate income tax bite is just too large for that to make sense
This is something that has always intrigued me, and not being a tax accountant I just have not idea why it's true. On top of that, going into this downturn my employers have at least claimed that they "socked" away spare cash to ride out the dip. Does that mean that much of it was lost to taxes? A bigger bonus in 2008 would have helped a lot for what happened in 2009.
My partners and I have fairly frequent discussions about how dramatically the economics of professional practice have changed in the past 24 months. At times, we're inclined to think it may be years before we experience again a "normal" relationship between income and expenses.
I don't disagree with this at all, however I DO want to be in your shoes because at very least partners/principals have some power over their own destiny in this economy. So called "production staff" are helpless to the decisions of management which can have huge life changing implications as many of us know all too well. I know everyone has been Monday Morning Quarterbacking for y-e-a-r-s now, but who would say they wouldn't have handled it any differently?
That said, from my lowly position as a Project Architect, I do wonder how to advance my career in a multi-year downturn? I've done the professional development part (arch registration/LEED/etc) and I do my job effectively and efficiently. Always been told that I make the company money, am a leader and so on. Heck, I've even brought in some small clients over the past year. Yet any kind of advancement seems 100% out of the question given the economy.
As a partner, would you promote in the current economic environment? If so, would pay and benefit increases for said promotion be put on hold? Any advise on what those of us mid-career can do given the greater economic situation out there?
What works for one firm doesn't work for all... that being said-
I will not go into debt to accept a job.
I agree with most of you- and have seen my share of fluff in both large and medium sized firms. I don't mean to offend anyone here, but I really could never understand the need for a dozen graphics/marketing staff who must be walked through a project to "showcase" it in order for us to get another project of similar type\size/budget. I have actually had to spell out word for word what they should say in the proposal AND had to create special graphics for them- and for what- to plop it into InDesign?! And then I'M the one who is presenting it! Well, sh*t, I can do that- so why is the firm paying for these staff?!! It's waste and I just did their job while doing my own... yet benefits have been cut, I'm working overtime and don't charge it, and I constantly had to worry when I would be laid off. All I'm saying is, maybe some smarter hiring/staffing strategies should be used so that employees are earning what they deserve. By the way... the market will turn around eventually, and that person you got for next to nothing will inevitably leave your firm to earn a better wage elsewhere- it happened in 2001 and it'll happen again.
And perhaps if more firms were realistic about timelines and deliverables and quit "fast-tracking" every project you would have less mistakes, a more quality design, and a budget that works.
quizzical;
There are ways to stockpile cash to be able to weather a downturn. Your partners could have paid the taxes but left the money in the business instead of moving it to personal accounts. They could have put it in personal accounts knowing they would need to shift it back (adding equity back in the firm). You could set up an entity like a limited partnership, with the corporation as a general partner so that there is no additional tax burden, etc etc.
We left over six months salaries in our accounts at the beginning of 09 just in case, so we would not have to lay anyone off, and we have not laid off anyone. What the younger people do not realize though is that the money I left in and paid out in salaries, is money that I am consciously deciding not to take out as profit as the owner of the business, and put back in to keep people employed. It is a business decision not every firm owner is willing to make. If you just looked at it as maximizing profits, there would be no way you would continue to pay people who are not working to capacity. But it is a lot different in a small or medium firm when you chat over lunch with those people every day- it becomes about more than money.
Archie, you are truly an 'enlightend' being. Thanks for what you do, how you think, and holding the 'ethical' standard this profession claims we all uphold.
Ok, let me get this straight. It's now considered "unethical" if a firm doesn't build up a large stash of money during good times (paying considerable unnecessary taxes - and diminished employee bonuses - in the process) so that firm can continue paying the salaries of redundant employees when there's a recession?
What planet are you people living on?
Oh, wait ... I know ... it's the planet of "oh crap, I've got $90k of student loans I ran up carelessly and now I want someone else to keep paying me even though there's no work for me to do".
Doesn't it make much more sense to share profits generously with the people who helped earn those profits, with the reasonable expectation that those people will set aside a reasonable portion of those bonuses in a "rainy day" fund?
Layoffs....layoffs......
I heard from a friend that CORE DC laid off 3 people here in Washington DC.
Core is a place I would not recommend anybody to work there. Their management is bad, and structure of studio is unhealthy. They used to be a good company, but they are going down the hill.
;(
Harvey Gant was mayor of Charlotte, and ran for US Senate in '92
qizz - whoops. totally wrong on that one, eh? got the 'starts with a c' part right....
maurice cox was the mayor of charlottesville.
My friend is a 3D Renderer, he says, arch-firms are getting more work these days, and are actually outsourcing less to china and india because the prices for renderings dropped like 10 times in USA.
So this is my second week working for the census and I got a promotion on the third day. It is the third highest hourly rate I have ever made in my 15 years of working since high school. Has anyone else out there found census work?
Also sub teaching will probably not be a good option In Illinois due to the 18 Billion cut in education funding resulting in thousands if not hundreds of thousands of teachers getting laid off. 300 were given notice in Urbana a city of 37K. If we look on the bright side the deterioration of public education will lead to more private schools and possibly some construction work in the future.
The Census is a huge life-preserver for me financially and I imagine it is just the kind of economic aid many other out of work people need right now, not a hand out but a job.
http://www.census.gov/hrd/www/index.html
I am also learning more about REVIT at a class offered by the local community college.
Those of you landing interviews and Jobs or who are searching for candidates, please share what sort of skills are most in demand or impressive so the rest of us can find some way to get those skills or enhance them.
The other thing that has started to irk me is with all the freelancers out there finding a name for a start up design firms is hard, all the good ones are taken or recently went out of business. But I am starting a loose confederation of designers and artist to try and share any work we can scrounge up. As one friend’s tweet said “Due to the lack of job openings I have decided to make my own job”
Any suggestions for book keeping software or other busyness essentials?
Anyone working on taking the GRE to get into a masters or PHD in a related or other field?
"Apparently, firms are now doing "Strategic" hires - where they lay off people who aren't 'perfect' and hire others who are 'just right' for specific jobs (mostly quick turn-around small stuff)."
That does seem to be the case these days. I can't even remember how many job posts lately that have read something like:
Looking for Architectural Designer with 5+ years of experience design and documenting LEED-certified single-family residential home additions using MicroStation and Form-Z in the Random City, USA Area. Must be well versed in Random City, USA building codes, esp Form 34x-57.13.
ONLY LOCAL APPLICATIONS WITH EXACT QUALIFICATIONS SHOULD APPLY. AutoCad experience WILL NOT be counted. No other drafting, rendering or modeling programs acceptable. Must be able to provide a minimum of 5 construction document sets that demonstrate single-family home additions ONLY (commercial, education and hospitality work will not be considered). LEED certification mandatory and must demonstrate previous experience with LEED projects. LOCAL APPLICATIONS ONLY. License preferred.
Exactly!!! That's for the (ironic) chuckle, uh... mr/ms dot-dash....
It shows just how many of 'us' are out there looking for work...
PJN26,
Where are you taking Revit?
Congrats on the raise. It's really amazing to hear the salaries that others in different professions make.
More unemployed architects I fear (took from BDOnline):
Viñoly cuts staff at London office
23 April, 2010
Rafael Viñoly’s British presence has suffered a blow after the office confirmed it was cutting around a quarter of its staff
The firm, whose UK projects include the masterplan for Battersea power station and the Walkie Talkie building in the City, said it was cutting around half a dozen staff at its Ladbrooke Grove office but added it was still in consultation with those affected over exactly how many jobs will go.
The losses are likely to leave the New York-based architect with 16 staff in the UK, down from 22.
A spokeswoman added the firm had no intention of closing the office, which has been running for 10 years.
I’m taking Revit classes and soon 3d printing at my local community college, Parkland, in Champaign IL, It cost $300 plus $50 for the book and DVD. It has been good and I highly recommend the book by Daniel John Stine Commercial design using Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010 the complex program and huge array of options are broken down into small easy to digest concepts.
Any other books or online video lessons for REVIT people would like to recommend?
So are there any other census workers out there?
It seems that the census has become sort of an economic aid program along the same lines as a WPA. Unfortunately the work will not last the whole year but I will be able to pay off some debt and I have actually made some contacts. 3 out of the 12 people on my crew were involved the construction industry one held a design draftsman position designing high end equestrian facilities. Her firm employed 50 people.
Any plans to help rebuild from Katrina this summer? If so you will probably run into my Dad who is devoting his retirement rebuilding the Mississippi gulf coast.
What about starting your own firm? Has anyone taken the plunge recently? I wonder if long standing firms will be outmaneuvered by new practices that have low overhead and lower paid partners and or stockholders.
That's the thing with the Census jobs... it's only temporary which means here in a few months all of those people will be unemployed again. It made me really annoyed when the media/govt. was celebrating how the census helped curb unemployment numbers.
It gets even more complicated for those of us still receiving unemployment benefits. Taking a temporary job will push me off unemployment and I may not get back so in some ways it makes more sense NOT to take temp. jobs.
It depends on your state but in Illinois you can reopen a claim if you worked less than a year without losing benefits if you work for an employer and then get laid off again a week or a month or a year or two. Most states don’t want you to give up a temp job since your earnings help replenish the unemployment trust funds with your employers unemployment insurance taxes. So you are most likely extending your government support instead of cutting it short, and it is not double dipping since you are actually working not just sitting around. So go for it if you can. Many of us are actually out of unemployment benefits so this is not even an issue but I would look up the rules about reporting income while on benefits to see if you can actually come out ahead.
^ I think in NM once your out, your out. Doesn't really matter anyway. Census jobs only pay $1 more an hour than unemployment so to me it's not even worth it.
Well your unemployment is really a fixed pot of money you can dig into, so taking a job means you are saving your unemployment for when you need it... you're postponing digging into your unemployment benefits, and it will help you ride out the downturn a little while longer until recovery picks up and you find another job... So working is always better than not, think of it like your unemployment is a pot of savings paid for over time by your company's taxes and which is available to you... Better to not dig into your savings and save it for future rainy days...
After Vinoly, another massive lay-off in the UK
Arup to slash 100 jobs
26 April, 2010
By David Rogers
Arup is looking to make close to 100 job cuts in the UK by the end of the month.
The engineering consultant, which employs more than 4,000 people in the UK including 115 architects, said concerns about future workloads had prompted the decision.
In a statement, it said the groups affected include Arup Bristol, its North-west arm, which has offices in Manchester and Liverpool, and ‘Buildings London’, which includes part of Arup’s property arm.
It added: “Arup needs to ensure its long-term business health and it is essential that we match our resources to our anticipated workload.
“While we will endeavour to redeploy staff within the firm where possible, we anticipate up to 99 people will be made redundant.”
A 30 day consultation period is due to run out later this week.
A spokeswoman confirmed that any architects working at the affected businesses would be under threat.
(source Building Design).
Do firms in the UK use loans or cash to make payroll? A few big firms in the US recently failed due to their use of loans to cover payroll.
I wish I could hibernate.
i posted on the employment thread a few minutes ago. i have two interviews this week- for actual positions, not "informational interviews". one is at a small firm in DC, the other at a mid-size firm in Richmond. i'm excited... the first interview was yesterday and went very well. the second is tomorrow. i feel very positive. unfortunately, positivity and good interviews mean nothing in this economy without an actual job offer in hand.
just curious to know how you found about the positions? I am finding more and more that offices are not posting to any of the various job boards out there.
I second more info to the above comment. I am looking for work in Richmond and DC. I have in the works massive amounts of emails to apply to firms in both of these areas. Just emailing everyone cold. I did have one interview in DC for a small condo job for a 6-8 project. Nothing full time yet. Been laid off since last August.
The funniest listing I have seen yet is for a admin assistant with cad exp. req.
Even though firms aren't advertising jobs, they might still be hiring someone. There have been many cases where firms had laid off too many people and now that some firms are experiencing a slight pickup in inquiries and work in general, the idea is to send your stuff in anywhere. +i has said numerous times in this thread how many resumes she has sent out and still got limited responses. You just have to be persistent.
Change your annoying screen name too.
i didnt just look at job boards. and i have to say ive had a total of four interviews after sending out a TON of resumes. i've never had this much difficulty ever before. in one day i was called for two interviews and in the same day received four denials from other places (three gov jobs and one planning job). it's a crapshoot.
i loved the firm in DC i interviewed with and i was insulted by the salary of the interview in richmond. firms are capitalizing on peoples' despair- trying to get a great person for next to nothing. and that's just pathetic and not a firm i want to work for. but that's my own opinion.
uh...thanks med. for that amazing advice. Trust me, I've been sending out my fair share of resumes. You can only shoot some many blanks though before it starts to seem like a fruitless effort. I was just interested to see if people were having luck with any particular methods other than the standard job boards or just blankly sending out resumes.
While I understand, and appreciate, where the frustration underlying the above post originates, I think the sweeping generalization conveyed must be challenged.
While I don't doubt that some abuses might be taking place, I personally don't believe that many firms are deliberately setting out to take unfair advantage of the situation. What the poster may not realize is the absolutely brutal decline in design fees that has accompanied this recession.
My partners and I have fairly frequent discussions about how dramatically the economics of professional practice have changed in the past 24 months. At times, we're inclined to think it may be years before we experience again a "normal" relationship between income and expenses.
I can tell you for certain that were we hiring right now, we simply would not be able to pay wage levels comparable to what we were paying during the summer of 2008. It's not a ploy on our part - it's simple arithmetic.
^ I appreciate that but there is a limit and I think some offices have really exceeded that. Someone with a masters degree and years of experience should reasonable expect to make more than a fast-food employee, recession or not.
Hey dots & dashs, would you really expect some .._. .._ _._. _._
to get paid more than a fast food employee?
dot / dash: I appreciate your point of view -- however, this conversation leaves employers with the following delimma:
a) we can offer someone a job at low pay, or
b) we can offer no jobs at all.
Those are the facts. I'm not making this up. When there's no money to pay salaries, there's no money.
Like you, I also have "a masters degree and [considerable] years of experience" -- I understand your point of view. My understanding doesn't change one iota my capacity to pay higher salaries or increase my staffing levels.
There is the obvious battle with supply & demand. Also the willingness of some architects to work for free (or nearly so) holds fees down for the moment. The economy is slowly picking up, but I imagine a lag for fees to catch up.
Quizzical, if you are in need of hiring people, that would mean the level of work has picked up at your firm, meaning that your organizatrion is reporting profitiability, meaning that you need to pay your staff accordingly for the hard work they are doing. that's just the way it works. So it's only fair.
This is all the only "arithmetics" we care about. Even prior to the recession, our pay was shitty enough.
We are NOT being melodramatic when we say that some of the salaries are insulting -- we are only beign honest. Since many of these firms are in impossibly expensive cities (i.e. New York, DC, LA, Boston, San Fran, etc) we are not exaggerating when we say that we cannot afford to work at your firm by getting glorified full-time McDonnald paychecks.
This are NOT getting cheaper despite the recession. It's only becoming more and more impossible to make a living as an architect. So if this is what you want for the future of the profession, than this is what you will get.
"we cannot afford to work at your firm by getting glorified full-time McDonnald paychecks'
Well, since neither of those outrageous statements are even remotely accurate representations of "my firm" I'm not quite sure how to respond.
As has been mentioned by others earlier, just because workload increases doesn't mean revenues have followed. In our case, we're extremely busy doing two different types of work -- neither of which is generating much in the way of billiings. We're doing a lot of CA work, which fees don't come close to covering our costs. We're also doing a lot of work associated with business development to find new fees to cover the cost of those staff members who won't have much to do when their current projects finish.
Since we can't afford to pay our current staff and pay salaries to a few new people who would be helpful to have around, we are not doing any hiring.
Med - you are well known here for that enormous log you carry around on your shoulder. It will be interesting to see how you manage these sorts of decisions when you become a firm principal and no longer have the luxury of viewing these complex, daunting issues from your ivory tower.
At least for me, my rant is more geared at offices that are paying less than $10 an hour for positions way beyond newbie internship. That is less than I am collecting sitting on unemployment. I know times are tough, but rent/food/etc hasn't exactly gotten any cheaper.
Now, I don't just look for salary when I look for a position. Being interested in the work of the firm as well as having a good relationship with the other staff members are equally important. I want the job to be satisfying and enjoyable to attend on a M-F basis. But if I am sitting at work stressed about how I am going to make even the most basic of ends meet, well then all of the other aspects of the job are no longer as satisfying... goodbye productivity (since I will now be forced to work 2, possibly 3 jobs).
See, that's the point! Don't hire new staff if you can't even afford to pay for your current staff!
I know of firms that laid off a shitload of people only to realize that none of their existing projects were anywhere near completion -- only their bugets were! So in turn, they decided to ask a bunch of suckers to work for free (all under the idea of get IDP credits) or give people with 10 years of experience wages where full-time taco-bell employees with no education enjoy better wages and better pay.
An citizen, if you are suggesting that your staff is working for free, I think you are going to have your own problems to deal with down the road.
Most firms are not at all efficient. Ive worked in too many places where there's 2 or 3 managing principles and too many staff. This model is a leftover from the old days of large project hierarchy. That coupled with severely expensive benefits and radically increased amounts of bureaucracy in all types of form, of which we are partially to blame for relying on in the past to justify our fees, have eroded the profitability of the old model. The old guard expanded the fluff of the paper pushing side of the business to justify their large organizations - the architect as lawyer model where the architect navigates the complexities of codes and zoning boards is a huge part of the contemporary fee structure versus 50 years ago. After all, an insurance company wants to do business with companies that resemble their corporate structure right? But now it simply cant be sustained. Theres just not enough money sloshing around. Its not just the Architects either. This is happening all over as the old structure topples. A small firm who knows what they are doing and can leverage their technology and is willing to work HARD can beat a large firm any day of the week. Honestly, how many of you at large firms are really busting ass? Spending a week on spandrel panel studies all dolled up for presentations is a luxury few in the rest of the economy have.
I'm rather excited about what this recession will bring. It may be our biggest saving grace.
Govman - if an architect is willing to work for as you say nearly free, but at that price is making 2 or 3 times as much as at their former job working for a larger firm, and can deliver the product, then isnt that a good thing? The individual architect makes more, the client gets a better price and if this spreads there will be more work for small firms versus the trend towards mega-firms currently dominating the market.
Mega firmss will continue dominating the market ... that ship has sailed and will not return. Small firm will survive, but will not necessarily prosper. It's the firms in the middle that will suffer the most.
ManBearPig - Unfortunately the way architectural services are usually procured here is through "on-call" contracts that specify a need for a dozen different specialties that favor the jack-of all-trades mega firm over the small company. We usually only perform plain vanilla work that most firms could handle, but ask for the capability to perform specialized work "just in case". If more small firms would team together in a way responsive to our request for services, perhaps a different outcome would result.
Just a thought for quizzical, if you offer a service like CA and you lose money on it and it makes up most of your busines that means that something is wrong with your business model. Either you need to stop offering CA services or you need to adjust your pricing model so that CA services can make you money.
This is the problem with Architecture offices today, so many of the services and projects are structured so that the profit all shows up in the beginning and by then end the office is borrowing from the profit of another project to make ends meet. Most offices I've worked at were structured this way, project managers see the profit margin during the deisgn and documentation phases and bill too much against that, nto realising that the project will need some of that profit to off set cut rate CA hours.
There is no excuse for a non-profitable commercial service. If you can't make money from it, don't offer it to your clients.
: well, it's not quite that simple ... in the overall context of the firm, we make money on our projects, or at least break even. While we're often given the opportunity to avoid CA services, we want to do CA - both to ensure the project comes out close to what we designed, but also to protect ourselves from an E&O standpoint.
The main confusion here is between "profitability" and "cash flow". Most of our projects are for developer clients. We actually want to collect as much of our money as early in the project as possible because developers are notorious for getting into trouble and not wanting to fund design and CA services late in the project.
While we recognize the difficulty you discuss above, we'd still rather collect the bulk of our money early - before CA starts - in order to protect our profitability. But yes, you're right, that decision does sometimes cause cash flow issues when there's a disproportionate amount of CA work in the office and not so many new projects coming in.
From an overall firm management standpoint, there's another problem as well. When you layer on the difficulty of retaining earnings because of the structure of the tax laws, cash flow becomes even more complicated. We'd love to sock away a ton of money to use as a 'rainy day fund' for times like these. But, the corporate income tax bite is just too large for that to make sense, so we end up bonusing out most of our profits to our employees. Once that money's out the door in that fashion, it's pretty hard to get it back.
I think the traditional practice will slowly fade out of fashion but will probably be around for a long time. Freelancers and consultants adrift in the digital wilderness will come together for projects in digital or semi digital offices and split up when that project is done. Architecture will be ruled by self-employed freelancers, employment at firms may no longer be the norm especially for interns or specialist. The licensing system in the US will need to change as there will be a huge issue of credibility not to mention a two to three year drought in eligible Interns to take the ARE. A tiered system will probably emerge as a means to shelter the mega firms from digital freelancer drift colonies of epic proportions. Architects will be joining the ranks of graphic designers and artist, freelancing, starving and free to innovate again. I also see the big acronym firms folding one by one as Dubai and other Middle Eastern monarchies default on their national debts and can no longer pay the fees they owe on the numerous projects they have completed or are in design development right now. It would be interesting to see how much HOK SOM, KPF and other big firms have leveraged against owed fees from Middle Eastern and Chinese projects.
Just my predictions for the next few years maybe some of it will happen or maybe not. I think some of it is happening right now.
Over and OUT
PJN26
Construction Administration CA has in the past, where I worked, actually taken a project from a small net loss to a large profit. Not sure how that happened but it did. I think we got into trouble due to a lot of design changes to the structural system as a means of value engineering during the CD phase.
I believe the best way to lose money on CA is to have terrible construction documents prepared by poorly trained interns who are spewed forth from institutions of higher learning not vocational trade schools. It is a sad state of affairs when a student with a community college associates degree in construction management know more about masonry details than a masters of architecture graduate from a top tier school. The graduate schools are surrendering the future market share their graduates can handle. Most architecture graduate schools are not doing a good job at teaching software and building technology, they rather hold seminars on theory or some other interesting subject. Architecture students have to seek out cad and drafting classes if they are even offered.
^
I could see that model working for projects that come from private money and maybe large, international competitions - basic project types that rely more on actual design merit and that also can operate with a more flexible office structure.
I don't see that model working with state and government work which is largely controlled by very specific and finite rules and regulations that really necessitate the structure many corporate "acronym" offices currently have. Considering that state and government work, in many areas of the country, is the only consistent jobs coming in the door, I don't really foresee that the entire industry is going to change that dramatically.
The "graphic designer/artisit" freelancer sounds good in theory... being able to move from job to job, working only when you need to and on projects that you are interested in, the freedom to "innovate"... but you also have to keep in mind that those are all industries that work at a much faster pace than we do. It's not uncommon for a project to last upwards of 5 years in our industry, something I don't think happens very frequently with graphic design. Even film productions, which can take several years, don't require many of the staff, esp. the creative staff, to be involved the entire time. Usually people are brought in a various times in the process, hired to perform one singular task, and then eliminated as soon as that job or task is finished.
PJN26 - Its easy to lose money on CA when you don't account for [b]enough hours, and its easy to make a lot of money in CA when you charge for CA services hourly. No matter how "good" your documents are you will always spend considerable time in CA, partial due to oversights and partially due to the fact that nothing is ever built exactly as drawn. CA is where construction tolerances and problems with finishes selections get worked out.
Quizzical - At my last office we followed a similar billing system of frontloading projects, but instead of doing ti because of worry over developer longevitiy, they did it because they did a lot of educational and governmental porjects which ahve a habit of stopping midstream and delaying payment by very long periods of time (years, not months). The issue we were discussing which became moot becuase we ran into cash flow problems (hence why i was laid off) was how to integrate BIM into their billing model (because their institutional clients wanted BIM for future projects).
Unlike traditional design BIM really front loads much of the time and decision making, and if that was to happen then they would lose much of their built in padding in the beginning of the job. If they asked for a greater percentage upfront they would have to explain how they were overbilling in the beginning and underbilling in the end which would erode the client's confidence in tehir billing model. In the end no decision was made because technology purchases were frozen.
But I really think that this is where practice will be changing. Architect's billing models for BIM projects may push through a new way of looking at office cash flow.
This is something that has always intrigued me, and not being a tax accountant I just have not idea why it's true. On top of that, going into this downturn my employers have at least claimed that they "socked" away spare cash to ride out the dip. Does that mean that much of it was lost to taxes? A bigger bonus in 2008 would have helped a lot for what happened in 2009.
My partners and I have fairly frequent discussions about how dramatically the economics of professional practice have changed in the past 24 months. At times, we're inclined to think it may be years before we experience again a "normal" relationship between income and expenses.
I don't disagree with this at all, however I DO want to be in your shoes because at very least partners/principals have some power over their own destiny in this economy. So called "production staff" are helpless to the decisions of management which can have huge life changing implications as many of us know all too well. I know everyone has been Monday Morning Quarterbacking for y-e-a-r-s now, but who would say they wouldn't have handled it any differently?
That said, from my lowly position as a Project Architect, I do wonder how to advance my career in a multi-year downturn? I've done the professional development part (arch registration/LEED/etc) and I do my job effectively and efficiently. Always been told that I make the company money, am a leader and so on. Heck, I've even brought in some small clients over the past year. Yet any kind of advancement seems 100% out of the question given the economy.
As a partner, would you promote in the current economic environment? If so, would pay and benefit increases for said promotion be put on hold? Any advise on what those of us mid-career can do given the greater economic situation out there?
What works for one firm doesn't work for all... that being said-
I will not go into debt to accept a job.
I agree with most of you- and have seen my share of fluff in both large and medium sized firms. I don't mean to offend anyone here, but I really could never understand the need for a dozen graphics/marketing staff who must be walked through a project to "showcase" it in order for us to get another project of similar type\size/budget. I have actually had to spell out word for word what they should say in the proposal AND had to create special graphics for them- and for what- to plop it into InDesign?! And then I'M the one who is presenting it! Well, sh*t, I can do that- so why is the firm paying for these staff?!! It's waste and I just did their job while doing my own... yet benefits have been cut, I'm working overtime and don't charge it, and I constantly had to worry when I would be laid off. All I'm saying is, maybe some smarter hiring/staffing strategies should be used so that employees are earning what they deserve. By the way... the market will turn around eventually, and that person you got for next to nothing will inevitably leave your firm to earn a better wage elsewhere- it happened in 2001 and it'll happen again.
And perhaps if more firms were realistic about timelines and deliverables and quit "fast-tracking" every project you would have less mistakes, a more quality design, and a budget that works.
Just my experience.
quizzical;
There are ways to stockpile cash to be able to weather a downturn. Your partners could have paid the taxes but left the money in the business instead of moving it to personal accounts. They could have put it in personal accounts knowing they would need to shift it back (adding equity back in the firm). You could set up an entity like a limited partnership, with the corporation as a general partner so that there is no additional tax burden, etc etc.
We left over six months salaries in our accounts at the beginning of 09 just in case, so we would not have to lay anyone off, and we have not laid off anyone. What the younger people do not realize though is that the money I left in and paid out in salaries, is money that I am consciously deciding not to take out as profit as the owner of the business, and put back in to keep people employed. It is a business decision not every firm owner is willing to make. If you just looked at it as maximizing profits, there would be no way you would continue to pay people who are not working to capacity. But it is a lot different in a small or medium firm when you chat over lunch with those people every day- it becomes about more than money.
Archie, you are truly an 'enlightend' being. Thanks for what you do, how you think, and holding the 'ethical' standard this profession claims we all uphold.
backing up roobqt, and agreeing with archie.
Ok, let me get this straight. It's now considered "unethical" if a firm doesn't build up a large stash of money during good times (paying considerable unnecessary taxes - and diminished employee bonuses - in the process) so that firm can continue paying the salaries of redundant employees when there's a recession?
What planet are you people living on?
Oh, wait ... I know ... it's the planet of "oh crap, I've got $90k of student loans I ran up carelessly and now I want someone else to keep paying me even though there's no work for me to do".
Doesn't it make much more sense to share profits generously with the people who helped earn those profits, with the reasonable expectation that those people will set aside a reasonable portion of those bonuses in a "rainy day" fund?
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