government work.

it's what my mother has done with her architecture license for the past 20 years.
8-4:30 with very very very very few late days.

The amount of overtime required at the average architecture firm tends to be overstated. There are plenty of people in the industry (perhaps the majority) who typically work 40-45 hour weeks and pull overtime beyond that only occasionally. The trade off may be fewer promotions and raises, or at least a slower road to those things.

Not everyone in architecture feels they need to work 12 hour days. Although having said that, more than 50% probably do. You just have to find the right place to work, and that ain't easy. Or like someone said above, go guvment, if you can, and that ain't easy either. I worked for a small design/build firm for a while who had a great work and family values philosophy.

And I do honestly believe that if you are working 12 plus hours in a day one of two things is wrong. You either do not know what you are doing or the team leaders and firm owners do not know how to set actual workable deadlines. There is a third option which is that management just does not give a rats ass about you in which case you need to move on as soon as possible.

In my experience the long hours often has much more to do with culture than work load or competence. Some offices (typically ones that fancy themselves high end or design firms) have a culture that puts work above all else. Time off is frowned on, people who dont work 10+ hours a day at min are considered lazy and less dedicated.

Its a very difficult cycle. New kids at the office pick this culture up immediately and are not quickly weened off.

That being said, i know some at more corporate offices who almost never work over time. They leave reliably at 5pm on the dot.

oh and dont do 3d modeling....

i dont even remember the last time we sent out for rendings when it wasnt a desperate rush job requiring some poor kid to pull an all nighter just to make sure things were done on time...

and if you do 3d modeling, make sure you work somewhere that specializes in marketing materials and not competition entries...

just my .02$

management is key to keeping this sane - except for the "occasional" push for a big deadline, I have always beelived you should be able to work 40-45 hours each week and meet your contractual obligations to your clients and still stay profitable - remember - good working conditions and good pay should equal happy (long-term) employees

Many larger corporate offices are very 9-5. I worked in an office where you could set your watch to. They paid overtime past 40 hours which had to get approved by the project manager so hours were always kept in check.
Depends on the type of work the firm is doing. Some firms really like to operate as a production house as the architect of record versus the front end design. They can roughly calculate the hours each drawing set should take and budget for this where as the front end design can be too open ended in terms of hours, and seem risky. Whether or not that's true there are lots of firms that operate this way.

Thanks a lot for all the replies!
So I see that most of you suggest working at a large corporation . (And government work of course fits the bill in terms of working hours. But government work is more like paperwork, right?)

What about working in a small firm that don't consider themselves "starchitects", but rather design simplier stuff for simplier clients? Are there small firms like that where you can work normal hours (and the firm founder is not your family member :)) ?

I am actually from Latvia (Europe) and I think we don't have big corporations here. I think the biggest architecture firm here is about 50 people. And the biggest firms definitely consider themselves "starchitects" and don't offer 9-5 working schedule.

be sure to ask for a really big salary to go with those short hours ... that'll make your life perfect.

Find another career if you can't handle the long hours. I'm serious! Whether you like it or now you will have long hours!

I work for a VERY large corprate firm and I work almost 80 hours per week.

most professional jobs involve long hours, just a pity the actual salary isn't so fab as other professions.

digger: like I said, I'd be ok with a modest salary. That's a price to pay for short hours. Looks reasonable to me.

med.: I see most of people working long hours in this profession, hence my question. But I want to be sure that there is no other way, before "finding another career" :)

med... id hang myself or quit... 80 hours a week at a large corporate office sounds intolerable and inhumane... you might have the worst job on earth, congratulations

and also important - if you do have a desire to work in very good 'design' based offices, or well know offices - working long hours is more or less a certainty.

p2an: "most professional jobs involve long hours" is a myth used to justify those long hours.
My grandmother was a dentist, she worked 6 hours a day. If she worked the morning shift, she was at home after 2pm, because she worked from 8 to 2.
There are many other professional fields that don't require long hours.

Most people in architecture say: "we work long hours, we make sacrifices. give us the great money that we deserve." This is something like what you say here. I say: "I enjoy the work and I don't think that what I do is a sacrifice. Then please let me stay healthy and enjoy my work by providing me with suitable hours, is it too much to ask?"

80 hours = some sort of incompetence somewhere in the office. Or you like feeling like a doormat.

Find it and cut it out like the cancer it is.

p2an: I don't have a desire to work in "very good design offices". I have had 2 summer internships so far and both have been at such firms. I did not like the working atmosphere there at all.

Also, anybody telling me they work 80 hours per week is a liar.

80 hours/6 days = 13.5 hours/day.
The average person travels 30 minutes to/from work. = 1 hour
You need 8 hours sleep and if not for the sleep thing the other 3 S's
(Shit, Shower, Shave)
So 14.5 plus 8 = 22.5 hours.
The other 1.5 hours left in your day is for cleaning your house, paying bills, getting the car gassed up, laundry, eating breakfast/dinner, and everything else a person needs to do in his/her life.

Good luck with that 1.5 hours per day personal time, and of course Sunday, your day off.

i have had times when i have worked 80hrs/week for nearly month stretches...but it would hard to keep it going for much longer, and not mentally healthy.

A suggestion: consider thinking a little more deeply about what you'd like to do with all that free time leftover from your 40 hour week, and try to find a career that lets you do that for 80 hours a week instead, and get paid for it.

Sure, when pushing a deadline it can happen that it's necessary to work 70, 80, 90 or 100 hours a week. But that's in extreme cases.
If you do that on a regular base, it'll wear you out rather fast.

Other than that: why? a) because your boss isn't capable of planning? b)because you have a messiah-complex? c) you can't manage the job and need double the time of a normal employer for the same kind of job d)because people don't give a shit about working all the spirit out of their employees?

Basically, people tend to be more productive if there's a better balance between private time, relaxation and work efforts. Long hours isn't very productive. But sometimes, in deadline-situations, it needs to be done.

So, pretty much, chikipiki: most offices require that you work hard. Sometimes, there's a heavy amount of extra hours. But don't believe the "woah, I work 100 hours every week"-kinda bullshit.

And, as one said above: rather more pleasant hours are to be found in government.

i tend to think that people who work intelligently and efficiently ultimately go further in this profession (which is not an excuse for laziness or lack of ambition). in order to complete a project, you have to put in the time that the project requires - sometimes that will be 40 hours per week, sometimes that will be 60 hours per week. in either case, if you're not enjoying what you do, the profession probably isn't for you. unfortunately, for someone just starting out, you probably won't know if it's right for you for a few years.

We're pushing a deadline so things are pretty insane right now. Even before this deadline we were working on a project pulling a lot of hours.

Contrary to all this, I actally like my job, like the people, and like the projects. AND f course .... it's a JOB.

sevensixfive there is a thing called balance in life. if you're focusing on one aspect of your life for 80 hours a week, you really need to broaden your horizons.

the problem with small firms and extra hours is this: if they are small and fine and happy with bread and butter work, OK. but do you really want to be working there? ambition for the next big, new project is always there, and the principal(s) can't do everything.

I actually love 765's suggestion. When you love what you do, long hours aren't a big deal ( I say as I head into my third night in a row working til midnight - and I'm my own boss!).

That said, there are plenty of jobs and plenty of firms that don't require the long hours that have become mythic in our field. There will typically be longer hours before a deadline, but that should be short term (couple-few weeks).

go into architectural product sales! you get free lunches, meet lots of architects, and get to travel...

If you love what you're doing, and you're able to earn money doing it, then that's all the balance you need. But some people aren't looking for a 'career', they're looking for a 'job'. Nothing wrong with that, of course, just an entirely different thing.

chikipiki - I work for in an office of about 35 ppl. Only when we travel and/or have a deadline do we work more than 40 hours a week. The bosses have a great philosophy that you work to live not live to work. Although I do agree with LB and sevensixfive, if you love it, long hours aren't a big deal and don't bother you. In the end, those long hours usually pay off with great rewards (at least for me).

i very rarely worked that much overtime when it wasn't a deadline or my fault...(ie too much archinecting)
stay away from cities that seem to promote it...look at the culture of the workplace you are interviewing at. it makes sense that you are NOT working more than 40 hrs. so you can meet people to actually develop clients and more work!!
(hey is that working?!?)

Who is working OT in this economy? Seriously, aside from a deadline here and there I don't know of any firm right now that is so busy they have people working week after week of heavy overtime.

Back when things were busy I rarely worked more than a 45 hour week unless I was traveling. It's amazing how much you can get done in 40 hours if you stay focused. Of my co-workers, the ones that consistently worked a lot of OT were also the ones that consistently were busy spreading office gossip, taking extended lunch breaks, etc. Truthfully I think a good portion of the overtime perception in this buiz is thanks to procrastination. That and understaffing, although right now there is no excuse for an understaffed office.

Aqua, we're pretty busy and plan to stay that way for quite some time. Right now the word around the hallways is that we'll be staffing up very soon. It wasn't always this peachy though -- we did have a limited round of layoffs mid summer but that was it from what I guaged.

We thank our good friends, the GSA, the military, and the higher education commitee for helping us weather the storm.

Good discussion.

I think long hours in this profession stem primarily from two major influences: 1) culture, and; 2) economics.

We all know that a culture of long hours is established in school. We are taught that the "genius" of creativity can not be confined to a set number of hours or a set time during the day or night. Students leave school completely convinced that any number of hours is acceptable and that arriving at THE right solution is the only worthy goal, regardless of what other sacrafices have to be made. While I happen to agree that this is true to a certain extent (primarily that a particularly good design idea might come to you at any hour of the day or night and running with it at that moment will typically yield better results than filing it away to work on later), I also think this idea becomes very problematic in the real world of trying to make a living, have a mate, buy a house, raise children, maintain relationships with a group of friends, etc.). A person does need some balance...and that doesn't mean that they aren't committed to great design. It is unfortunate that schools (at least from what I am familiar with) do not do a very good job of teaching any kind of self-discipline in the design process or how to proceed with a design efficiently and budget time wisely. Most students (and young practitioners) assume that any dilemma can be solved by simply staying up all night several days in a row to make up for whatever ineffeciences accrued in the previous process.

Once in practice, economics comes crashing into the picture. Fees for architects are, for the vast majority, simply not at a level that allow employers to pay $1 for $1 of work or for self-employed firm owners and principals to earn $1 for $1 of work. The only way to make any money, in most cases, is to pay $1 for $3 of work. Thus, 60-hour weeks for 40 hours of pay become a formula for providing some small measure of profit for the firm. Don't mistake this for the firm owners being the devil, either (although we all know of cases where that is certainly true). They are trying to keep the business alive and give themselves some sort of return on investment. Most of them are not getting rich and they are, in fact, paying as much as they can possibly afford to pay. Long hours are the only way to make the formula work.

So, a culture of long hours in school combined with persistently low fees in practice make it very difficult in most cases to break out of the trap.

chikipiki...long hours aside, your original post mentions: "But I don't want to make sacrifices." i believe you can find jobs in many offices that won't require long hous, but architecture will always require sacrifices...

but as mentioned above, if you love it, you won't consider it a sacrifice (there is another discussion on whether this last statement actually promotes or harms our profession)

But what if he also loves his family, hobby, going to religious functions and helping with the needy?

"and I don't need to boost my ego or maximize my creativity"

If you are getting into a creative profession (as such), why would you not want to maximize your creativity? Can you really be satisfied this way?

its all about finding the right firm. i worked at a firm where 4:30 everyone leaves the office at once, set the alarm, and go home. no one was left behind.

then ive worked at firms where the principal thinks 40 hours a week is the bare minimum (which he told me to my face) of hours you should be working.

obviously that was a salary job, and the later was hourly.

pick you poison wisely.

i don't necessarily think my architect friends work any longer than anyone else. i know a lot of people in sales, in marketing, in engineering and in law, and they all work long hours too. i've had jobs where i worked a base of 50 hours a week or more as an architect, but i've also had jobs where i struggled to put 40 hours in. most of it stems from where most architects live, which is usually in big cities, and people in big cities tend to work longer hours no matter what they do. go work for an architecture firm in a smaller town and it is less less likely you will work long hours.