In the midst of all these layoff's what are the prospects for young just-out-of-school ,, or still-in-school architects?
I can;t compete with someone who's had ten years experience at a firm and is out on the hunt for a job again ... but am I even competing with them ? or am i filling a different job ?
As 'unfair' as the implications may be , to what extent can a firm take advantage of the lower pay for less experienced employees by firing more senior incumbents , then hiring less expensive younger ones , thereby still saving money .. . ?
It happens. But before you get too excited, realize that you go from "young architect" to "old architect" quicker than you might think... And "old architects" often have much larger financial responsibilities like families, mortgages, etc.
I'm quickly souring on architecture as a long-term career. I've worked on projects that would make most architects jealous, but am starting to worry about financial stability over the course of decades, and this field sucks for that.
i am hoping i get an unexpected inheritance - then i can actually be an architect.
for now, i am blissfully/naively living the student life, assuming everything will be alright once i get into the real world (i.e. reasonable salaries and reasonable hours and awesomely interesting projects).
btw, i hope the hire young thing is true - i want a job this summer!
re. arch as a viable long-term carreer ... makes me think the discipline will eventually be blatently divided between 'architects' and 'designers' or 'branders' ... and the future rem koolhaasi will study to be designers the technitians will be 'architects' .... sort of like the engineering / architecture split a few hundred yrs ago .
Don't worry, a fresh graduate and an architect with about 5 years experience are very different hiring categories. (Actually the split happens probably closer to 3-4 years out, maybe even 2 years out if you've managed to get any CA experience during that 2 years). Firms may have need for one type of hire and not the other; in my experience they are not at all interchangeable. One may be a project manager (albeit a young one), the other is useful for basic redlining tasks, support staff on project teams led by project managers, and for (of course) rendering and other presentation tasks. You aren't really competing with the more experienced lay-offs. You are, however, probably competing with any laid off grads from '08. Good luck.
you don't need to compete to anyone else. you just need to be the lucky one in the job-hunting.
and i think architecture firms are more about their day-to-day needs rather than simply firing someone for no reason and get a new guy and five years later fire this guy again and get a new one.
Probably their is a way to keep this profession renewed from generation to generations. I guess that should be the retirement for letting people out and graduations for letting people in, in the macro-scope.
(it's tough time now for this profession. probably you will see some ugly things happened as i saw for how the older generations passed their stress and desperation on younger generations. but just ignore it and focus on the bright side.)
would think that salary (perhaps w/ "hourly") reduction for experienced architects/pms would be favored by an employer over the idea of laying off a mid-career architect and hiring a couple of entry level staff. seems like the latter thinking would play out as a liability issue for a firm -that is getting rid of one mentor and hiring two interns.
I was previously at a firm that would regularly hire young architects (0-2yrs experience) and then when they would lose a project or have a significant delay, they would fire them. Then within a few months, when projects picked up, or they landed a new project, they would hire a new group of similar young architects. I don't think it was specifically a company strategy, just they did a poor job of managing their resources, and were quick to let people go instead of riding out the rough spots for awhile.
Overall I think it was a very poor strategy, given that they regularly had to train new people, and many of the remaining employees who survived the cuts, didn't feel particularly loyal and were quick to leave when an opportunity presented itself to them. I survived, but I left.
A strategy of firing someone who knows what they are doing and hiring someone who doesn't just on the basis of reducing expenses is ridiculous. As much as interns don't like to hear this. . .they cost the business money. The investment in an intern is big (adding salary, training, my time, etc) and it takes a while just for that new employee to break even, much less start to produce a return on the investment.
To get rid of someone who is making you money in order to hire someone that will cost you money is no strategy at all.
And, the quality of resumes that are coming into my office are drastically improved and the salary requests are more competitive. So, as a business owner, I can hire an intern for a certain salary, or someone with 3 to 4 years with a great resume for around 50% more? As much as we like to hire interns (we consider ourselves a teaching office), that is an easy decision.
What I've seen lately is firms are keeping their staff that can be very flexible. They want people that can handle the more experienced stuff like project management/client interaction but also jump into CAD and finish up the CD's in a pinch. So far I've seen this not bode well for older people that specalized in one task and couldn't adapt, as well bad for support staff (admins, CAD techs, interns). In a pinch someone with 5 years experience can type their own memos and do their own CAD, but an intern can't pull years of experience out when needed.
I've have not seen any other profession where the time to learn the way any office does things takes so much time as architects - loss of fee due to training kills firms with high overturn unless they are too regimented to change. If you think you can walk in the first day and start to bill, you are too inexperienced.
The firms that practice the fire the old and hire the young must be very regimented in production and building types to stay profitable. They are by nature inflexible - and when their specialty building type slumps they are up a creek. Aqua is right that flexibility is of extraordinary value to employers, but its also true that flexibility of project types and scales are good for survivability in a volatile market.
Dec 17, 08 11:25 pm ·
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Fire one ..then hire young ?
In the midst of all these layoff's what are the prospects for young just-out-of-school ,, or still-in-school architects?
I can;t compete with someone who's had ten years experience at a firm and is out on the hunt for a job again ... but am I even competing with them ? or am i filling a different job ?
As 'unfair' as the implications may be , to what extent can a firm take advantage of the lower pay for less experienced employees by firing more senior incumbents , then hiring less expensive younger ones , thereby still saving money .. . ?
It happens. But before you get too excited, realize that you go from "young architect" to "old architect" quicker than you might think... And "old architects" often have much larger financial responsibilities like families, mortgages, etc.
I'm quickly souring on architecture as a long-term career. I've worked on projects that would make most architects jealous, but am starting to worry about financial stability over the course of decades, and this field sucks for that.
i am hoping i get an unexpected inheritance - then i can actually be an architect.
for now, i am blissfully/naively living the student life, assuming everything will be alright once i get into the real world (i.e. reasonable salaries and reasonable hours and awesomely interesting projects).
btw, i hope the hire young thing is true - i want a job this summer!
re. arch as a viable long-term carreer ... makes me think the discipline will eventually be blatently divided between 'architects' and 'designers' or 'branders' ... and the future rem koolhaasi will study to be designers the technitians will be 'architects' .... sort of like the engineering / architecture split a few hundred yrs ago .
Don't worry, a fresh graduate and an architect with about 5 years experience are very different hiring categories. (Actually the split happens probably closer to 3-4 years out, maybe even 2 years out if you've managed to get any CA experience during that 2 years). Firms may have need for one type of hire and not the other; in my experience they are not at all interchangeable. One may be a project manager (albeit a young one), the other is useful for basic redlining tasks, support staff on project teams led by project managers, and for (of course) rendering and other presentation tasks. You aren't really competing with the more experienced lay-offs. You are, however, probably competing with any laid off grads from '08. Good luck.
don't expect too much that experience is not worth its fee.
you don't need to compete to anyone else. you just need to be the lucky one in the job-hunting.
and i think architecture firms are more about their day-to-day needs rather than simply firing someone for no reason and get a new guy and five years later fire this guy again and get a new one.
Probably their is a way to keep this profession renewed from generation to generations. I guess that should be the retirement for letting people out and graduations for letting people in, in the macro-scope.
(it's tough time now for this profession. probably you will see some ugly things happened as i saw for how the older generations passed their stress and desperation on younger generations. but just ignore it and focus on the bright side.)
would think that salary (perhaps w/ "hourly") reduction for experienced architects/pms would be favored by an employer over the idea of laying off a mid-career architect and hiring a couple of entry level staff. seems like the latter thinking would play out as a liability issue for a firm -that is getting rid of one mentor and hiring two interns.
I was previously at a firm that would regularly hire young architects (0-2yrs experience) and then when they would lose a project or have a significant delay, they would fire them. Then within a few months, when projects picked up, or they landed a new project, they would hire a new group of similar young architects. I don't think it was specifically a company strategy, just they did a poor job of managing their resources, and were quick to let people go instead of riding out the rough spots for awhile.
Overall I think it was a very poor strategy, given that they regularly had to train new people, and many of the remaining employees who survived the cuts, didn't feel particularly loyal and were quick to leave when an opportunity presented itself to them. I survived, but I left.
A strategy of firing someone who knows what they are doing and hiring someone who doesn't just on the basis of reducing expenses is ridiculous. As much as interns don't like to hear this. . .they cost the business money. The investment in an intern is big (adding salary, training, my time, etc) and it takes a while just for that new employee to break even, much less start to produce a return on the investment.
To get rid of someone who is making you money in order to hire someone that will cost you money is no strategy at all.
And, the quality of resumes that are coming into my office are drastically improved and the salary requests are more competitive. So, as a business owner, I can hire an intern for a certain salary, or someone with 3 to 4 years with a great resume for around 50% more? As much as we like to hire interns (we consider ourselves a teaching office), that is an easy decision.
What I've seen lately is firms are keeping their staff that can be very flexible. They want people that can handle the more experienced stuff like project management/client interaction but also jump into CAD and finish up the CD's in a pinch. So far I've seen this not bode well for older people that specalized in one task and couldn't adapt, as well bad for support staff (admins, CAD techs, interns). In a pinch someone with 5 years experience can type their own memos and do their own CAD, but an intern can't pull years of experience out when needed.
thank you tyvek, that's a much clearer way of explaining what i was thinking.
i thought this thread was about girl friends^^
I've have not seen any other profession where the time to learn the way any office does things takes so much time as architects - loss of fee due to training kills firms with high overturn unless they are too regimented to change. If you think you can walk in the first day and start to bill, you are too inexperienced.
The firms that practice the fire the old and hire the young must be very regimented in production and building types to stay profitable. They are by nature inflexible - and when their specialty building type slumps they are up a creek. Aqua is right that flexibility is of extraordinary value to employers, but its also true that flexibility of project types and scales are good for survivability in a volatile market.
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