You know what the climate is like.

You have a job that thousands would be happy to take. Fasten your seatbelt.

My suggestion:

Step 1: Re-read the first three words of your post's title
Step 2: Be very grateful

yeah i would just wait it out
keep your eyes open obviously, but right now, starting over somewhere else doesnt seem like the most stable thing to do in this job climate

if you have a job where you have some kind of seniority right now, and you are stable, going somewhere else to be the new guy seems risky


what kind of suggestions are you looking for?

You should quit right now, and look for a new job.

Let us know how it goes.

Yeah specially since Architects are the hottest thing right now. Every firm is out there eagerly awaiting your resume.

Are you currently enrolled in IDP? Have you talked to your boss about someday getting registered? These days a lot of staff at architecture firms are racking up downtime thanks to lack of work. If you aren't busy with the graphics work I think most employers would allow you to "tag along" on other projects just to get some exposure. Non-billable hours are non-billable regardless of what you're doing. However, if you are busy doing the graphics stuff, suck it up and be happy. That's job security a lot of us don't exactly have right now.

thanks everyone.

aquapura, majority of time i'm not busy. the problem is project managers don't want extra people in their project even if i'm not busy coz i've to bill my hours to their project, and i'm not experienced in terms of tech stuff.

so what they did was pull me to their project during schematic and after i finish graphics, pull me to another new project. i'd talked to them before, no use, esp. there's not that much project to work on later on.

maybe i should be happy coz i'm having a job regardless of how i hated it.

definitely be happy you have a job now

but if you are not busy the majority of the time, and you are not billing to projects anyway, i dont see why they wouldnt let you at least sit in on team meetings or something for projects going on
you wouldnt have to bill the project, it would just give you something to do when you dont have actual billable work to do

if you have nothing to do, i would think they should let you at least look at a project, look at the shop drawings, or anything
it helps you gain experience that doesnt cost the project any billable time

if you are really really really hate what you've been doing, start sending out your resume before you even think about quitting. I suggest you to enter some competition to release your creative energy, so when the market picks up, you'll have something nice to put in your portfolio.

but for now, be happy you have a job.

^^ yikes, look at my grammar; I must be losing it. These days we are up against the wall... we have to dance if we are asked to to keep the job. (hard to keep typing between the windows... get back to work).

right . celebrate!
but really i don't know how long i'm going to keep the job too, i think i've offended one of the three project managers before, complicated guanxi in the office. he's a very mean person. i'm lucky to stick here this long~~ lol

best luck to everyone!

are you doing IDP? there's no real incentive for management to give you more diverse project experience if you aren't making it known you are working for your registration. If you approach them as wanting to be able to be able to better contribute to other aspects of the project - to be able to take on more responsibility, they'd better have a good reason for keeping you only on presentation materials (i.e. lack of maturity, reliability, thoroughness, etc...).

I'd take a moment to try to see things from their perspective - do you always show up late? do you dress and act a bit more informally than your bosses? do you ask questions about what you are drawing? do you ask questions about other aspects of the project? do you go above and beyond what is asked? many project managers aren't going to reach out to you, so you really have to be the one who is proactive in trying to figure out how things are run and to do all you can to make it appear that you are serious about this profession. even after all this and they still refuse to allow you to gain more experience, you might as well start looking for someplace else a little more supportive and intelligent about management.

yeah, English is not my first language, I understand their concern is. and they had tried to fulfill my need too, but since last year, they simply don't have that much projects for me to chip in, and I'm not the managers' favorite people either, so...

I know when I just graduate, I should have gone to a smaller firm, where work is not this much categorized, and office relationship is much easier to deal with. but now I'm stuck in this situation in this doom economy.

to be honest, I'll be really ecstactic when I get a rendering assignment now, hey, no one wants to be jobless... but I'm worried after one or two years, I'll be lagging really behind.

I don't know what kind of advice i'm looking for here... I can't leave my job now, and after talking to them a few times, I can't find my way out either.

thanks to the office, I started to question my dreams and ability to be a good architect.

seriously, i might go back to school to get an accountant degree, I think young accountants are much happier than young architects

I think you have discovered why IDP usually takes way longer than 3 years.

i think what he said about trying to go for a smaller firm is valid also. i know a few people who have worked in smaller firms after graduation and they have said gained much more experience in many ways. one of my profs does work with smaller firms only because he claims to be "hardcore".

could just be the area tho

Hang on to your job, be thankful you have it. You need to be proactive and "invest in yourself" by being more observant and learning anything technical that interests you while you're there - take advantage of your position, i know a lot of folks who want your job if you decide to leave.

yeah - the language thing might be your biggest barrier - they probably feel like you won't be able to learn things as quickly (people tend to think non-native speakers aren't as bright for some reason) or communicate effectively (which is a big part of other aspects of the job) so they give you something you are good at that doesn't require as much writing.

take this opportunity to improve your skills. Just because you don't get invited to participate in a project doesn't mean you can't take the initiative to pro-actively get involved. If you know that they are doing some renderings, there is nothing that stops you from using the project files to generate your own. or study bim/other software/LEED on the companies dime. take the effort to improve and eventually you will get rewarded. Just don't sit there whining.

One of the most rewarding projects I've worked on actually was not initially given to me. I heard that we were awarded a project, and I basically said "please let me know if I can help out with this, I am very interested." Even though you've said generally that you'd like to get more involved, they still need that extra reminder with a specific project and task in mind. The important thing here is that you have to be genuinely interested - not just appear to be.

Another rewarding project I've worked on was a pro-bono project. Yeah, you don't get paid, but its so much more rewarding and gets you experience you wouldn't normally get. And the people I met during this process was fantastic.

I disagree with those that are saying "be happy with what you got since its horrible out there." Of course, I'm not saying you should go in Monday and quit. What I'm trying to say is, recession or no recession, the burden of a good employee/employer relationship is on both sides. You might find a suitable solution from having an honest discussion about whats going on. They just simply might not have enough for you to do, or maybe they really don't think you're up to it for specific reasons. Either way, negative or positive, knowing for sure instead of speculating how they feel is a huge step.

thanks everyone for the truly great advices. i'm learning BIM myself now.

to be honest, i don't really know how bldgs are put together; a lot of times i don't get what "subtle meaning" people had in their conversations; i don't have a big tech vocabulary, don't have great "people skills" and can't ever compete with native speakers in terms of communication.

my strength is i'm a good designer and is good at presentations. i'm a hard worker.

i'm wondering whether i've chosen the wrong profession? i'd love to hear your opinions. thanks a lot!

well... build your vocabulary, then. I've found the easiest way to remember things is to make flash cards with the term and a picture. try to visit a construction site with a sympathetic Project Manager, ask lots of questions and take lots of pictures. go through a set of CDs and pick out terms you don't understand - try to figure out what these words mean and add these to your list.

This might sound silly to some people, but I'd recommend watching "this old house" on PBS - you'll learn a lot about building systems through this show - at least general information to put you in a better position to learn more specifics in the office - and you'll have an image in your mind to associate with a technical term you hear from your coworkers or see on the drawings.

phase, I think that everyone has their strenths and weeknesses.

I know that I've never been accused of being good with CAD drawings. But my design, presentation, and 3d skills are pretty solid I'd say.

And I know people who ar the total oposite. The biggest learning curve I've seen in the profession is knowing that there are so many diffent types of architects out there. And each kind have their success stories and people who are totally happy doing what they're doing.

you're getting more experience than i am being a cashier

Normally I would say be thankful you have a job, etc...

However, lately I have come to find I would rather be rigorously tested for STD's than go to work everyday. For me it has come down to realizing that I will never be happy at the firm I am at and that it really isn't fair to my coworkers to have to deal with me on a daily basis. I can only put on the "Minnesota Nice" so much. In my case, which is similar to yours, I am in a rut and do not see a way to get out of it. The problem with many offices is that once they find you are good at doing something, they tend to use that as an easy crutch.

I think what you need to ask yourself is a series of questions:

1: Am I willing to/can I afford to take a risk by leaving a stable position and going to a new one? Given the economy is still a rollercoaster, a new job could potentially lead to a layoff in 3-6 months.

2: Could I ever be satisfied working at this office? This is a pretty complex question. It really stems from, what am I looking for in a job? For some people it will be career growth (completing IPD, moving up the corporate ladder). For other people it do more with the nature of the work (i.e. could care less about IPD, would rather do projects they are more interested in.) Not saying those are mutually exclusive, but rather you usually end up choosing between the office that will allow to grow professionally but does boring work and the office that does better design but you will probably be an intern for a long time.

3: The second part of that question is, Will this office ever allow me the career growth I am hoping for? On more than one occasion, I have seen people leave one job for another, only to come back 4-5 years later because that was the only way they could move up (in career and money). It all depends on how much your willing to play the game.

4: Am I satisfied with the office culture... including things like coworkers, project managers, etc? That said, you also need to use that as a way to self-evaluate. Is the project manager your working for an ass, or are you not making a solid effort? Different offices have different structures- some are more open and "studio" like, some are a caste system.

5: What exactly do you want to be doing? This relates to the above post in that different people are good at/interested in different things. A good architect is not defined by a specific criteria. That's easy to see when you start looking at various professional architects. So you might want to ask yourself what in Architecture do you find interesting? Are you just trying to get more technical experience when in fact that is not something you want to be doing?

I think if you take the time to really critically evaluate you will find that either your current job is not and will never provide you with what you are looking for OR that with a little effort and a conversation with the right people in the office (may not always be the principal, could be one of the PM's or HR) you could make it work.

That said, it would be stupid to quit one job before you have something else locked down. Spend the downtime either learning new skills or working on a portfolio so that you will be ready to go when the time comes. If you are offered a new position somewhere else, I am a firm believer in making a pro/con list of each office and including any and everything on it, regardless of how trivial (like office A is 7-4, office B is 10-7...I like to sleep late, so...).

if you feel that stuck or unhappy at your current job, definitely look and see what options you have for leaving

I am not quite sure about the attitude of trying to figure out if you should look for another job when you are unhappy
Why exactly wouldnt you?
if you are unhappy, why would you continue to go to work every day miserable, yet not look for another job?

if you look and see there are no other options out there, that alone should help with your attitude, at least in that you wont be thinking that you are missing out on something else someplace else



even if you are only mildly unhappy at your job, take a look and see if there are any other options out there for you. you might be missing on a great opportunity