I'm curious for opinions and experiences. My firm (40 people, I'm a PA) has purchased a Revit training program and all employees are required to complete it. It's twelve classes, 60 minutes long each. We take it on our desk computers.
We have been asked to categorize half of each hour on our timesheet to "REVIT training" time and not put the other half hour on our timesheet at all. So we have to either have a shorter lunch hour or stay late or come in early.
Is this normal? Is this fair? Anyone else experience similar situations?
I don't know how I feel about this but I like where I work so I'm not complaining. But I wonder if it's normal business?
GridBubbles
Oct 24, 19 6:53 pm
Assign it to the project?
atelier nobody
Oct 24, 19 7:06 pm
If it's required training, then it's probably illegal for them to make you do (half of) it on your own time. On the other hand, if it were me, I'd probably bring lunch to my desk, grin, and bear it, for a few reasons:
Almost no architecture firm I've ever worked at or know of is actually in full compliance with the NRLA;
At many firms I've worked at or know of, speaking up about NRLA violations would not be conducive to job security;
Many, many firms would simply expect you to already know Revit or learn it entirely on your own - paying for half your time is actually kind of generous for an architecture firm.
OddArchitect
Oct 25, 19 9:39 am
It's completely illegal to make someone take required training and not pay them for it.
tduds
Oct 24, 19 7:08 pm
"...speaking up about NRLA violations would not be conducive to job security."
If I was a lawyer I'd be frothing at the mouth over this admission.
atelier nobody
Oct 24, 19 7:14 pm
Heh, heh. I just keep a file documenting all the violations (as well as software licensing violations) for mutual assured destruction in case management ever turns on me in an unacceptable way - so far every job I've left has been on good enough terms that I've never felt like using that information, but it's always in my back pocket.
wurdan freo
Oct 25, 19 11:55 am
tduds... you froth at the mouth over everything... maybe you should have been a lawyer... Hey... what do you call a bunch of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean... a good start... ba dump!
Non Sequitur
Oct 24, 19 7:20 pm
our offices covers 100% of revit training.
midlander
Oct 24, 19 8:51 pm
watch the videos closed captioned at 2x speed. honestly these training videos aren't worth even half the time they take. a good reference book and a smart mentor are 50x more effective. 12 hours isn't much time to get more than basic familiarity tbh.
your firm is being both petty in the time reporting and ineffectual in the strategy for implementing this. good luck!
Non Sequitur
Oct 24, 19 8:58 pm
We send specific staff out for formal training. Cost a few thousand per head plus a week's salary, but it was 7hr per day, for 5 days. I was the first, something like 7y ago, and we've sent a few more. I do the in-house training, after hours and for pay, when new staff require it.
midlander
Oct 24, 19 10:59 pm
right. asking everyone in an office regardless of role or experience to spend a day and a half watching online videos is basically just saying "we don't care if this effort succeeds, but at least we can say we tried."
athensarch
Oct 24, 19 8:55 pm
My prior firm <10 staff offered an online training course. We set aside time to learn it separate from lunch during office hours.
Your situation sounds unusual.
Fivescore
Oct 24, 19 10:30 pm
If you're in the US it depends on whether you're classified as hourly, or exempt professional (salaried). If the training is required and you're classified as hourly/not exempt then you must be paid for that time - it's illegal for them to require it and not pay for it. But if you're salaried and classified as exempt (which you usually can be if you have a professional degree and more than about a year of full time experience) then they can require you to complete this training as part of your job duties and not compensate the extra time, even if it means that you need to come in early or stay late to get it done. Salaried exempt people have no guaranties that their job duties must fit into a 40-hour workweek, and no requirements to be compensated beyond their agreed-upon salary.
OddArchitect
Oct 25, 19 9:44 am
Depending on the state I believe if you are an intern you cannot be considered exempt regardless of how much experience you have.
Bloopox
Oct 25, 19 10:13 am
It can depend on the state, but in most places/cases when the DOL comes into architecture firms in response to complaints they end up ruling that a person with a professional degree can be considered exempt once they have 1-2 years of experience post-graduation. So a part-time or student intern would pretty much never be exempt, an "intern" in the old IDP/AXP sense of someone past graduation but not licensed - now usually known as "designer" or "associate" or something - often can be legitimately exempt once they get that year or two under their belts. It's much more difficult for firms to defend classifying people without professional degrees as exempt - for them the DOL usually wants 8+ years of experience plus managerial responsibilities.
OddArchitect
Oct 25, 19 10:38 am
Interesting. I had a 'discussion' about this several years ago with a firms management. They had their lawyer explain to me that because I had a professional degree I was exempt from OT pay regardless if I was unlicensed. A 1 1/2 years later, after I was licensed the firm gave back pay to our two interns for past unpaid OT. Apparently they where wrong that anyone with a professional degree was exempt. In Colorado an intern architect, regardless of experience cannot be considered a professional in regards to OT as they legally are not able to manage others. This seems to be a combination of the states interpretation on what's considered exempt and an architect.
Bloopox
Oct 25, 19 10:50 am
As I said, it does depend somewhat on the state. Many years ago I worked for a large firm that has offices in several different states, and when a former employee there filed a complaint the federal and state DOLs came in and did interviews and audits in all of the offices, and the results were somewhat different in each. But the general summary is that a professional degree alone is not enough in any state, but 1-2 years experience is in most.
OddArchitect
Oct 25, 19 11:45 am
Good information, thanks! I wonder how / if firms in those states will simply stop paying people OT after 1-2 of their architectural internship? Tricky stuff.
Bloopox
Oct 25, 19 1:24 pm
It's more often the case that firms will just try not to hire someone with less experience than the minimum for their state, so that they can classify them as exempt from the start, and not have any issues raised about a transition later. That's one of the many reasons that a lot of firms don't want to hire the brand new person with no experience at all. And it's exactly why a lot of firms will ask leading questions about experience to fairly entry-level applicants, especially in emails or recorded interviews, like "so you have about a year and a half of experience now?" even if they know that's stretching it. It's to document that the applicant represented themselves as having that level of experience, so that if the firm later gets investigated they can point to that as how they determined exempt status. Applicants tend to assume it's better to stretch their answers toward more experience (and it probably is, in the sense that they're more likely to get the job in the first place.)
atelier nobody
Oct 29, 19 4:11 pm
U.S. Code § 152.Definitions
(12)The term “professional employee” means—
(a)any employee engaged in work (i) predominantly intellectual and varied in character as opposed to routine mental, manual, mechanical, or physical work; (ii) involving the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment in its performance; (iii) of such a character that the output produced or the result accomplished cannot be standardized in relation to a given period of time; (iv) requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study in an institution of higher learning or a hospital, as distinguished from a general academic education or from an apprenticeship or from training in the performance of routine mental, manual, or physical processes; or
(b)any employee, who (i) has completed the courses of specialized intellectual instruction and study described in clause (iv) of paragraph (a), and (ii) is performing related work under the supervision of a professional person to qualify himself to become a professional employee as defined in paragraph (a).
OddArchitect
Oct 25, 19 9:42 am
Our office tests potential hires to assess their competency in Revit. If the person is hired and doesn't have the level of Revit skills we would like we send them to a three (or is it four?) day class in Denver. The firm pays for everything, class, hotel, travel. Food is up to you.
auninja91
Oct 29, 19 3:19 pm
Is it to be expected that a firm would test your software knowledge? Is the job offer based on how well you do on this test? How long does your firm give this person to get up to speed on the software-is it a probationary period?
auninja91
Oct 29, 19 3:21 pm
I'm curious because i've been at a firm that uses archi/soft for a few years and after another year here, I'll hopefully end up at a firm that uses revit and i'm rusty.
OddArchitect
Oct 29, 19 4:32 pm
I don't know if it's expected. This is the only firm I've ever worked at with a Revit test. Then again I've only worked for five offices in my career.
The firm uses the Revit test to figure out how much you know and if we need to send a person to additional training. We only give the test to candidates we want to hire.
Getting a job offer can be decided on how well you do on the Revit test but it depends on what your responsibilities are. If you're only going to be drafting then yes, knowing Revit is very important. If you're going for an architectural position, not so much.
I'm curious for opinions and experiences. My firm (40 people, I'm a PA) has purchased a Revit training program and all employees are required to complete it. It's twelve classes, 60 minutes long each. We take it on our desk computers.
We have been asked to categorize half of each hour on our timesheet to "REVIT training" time and not put the other half hour on our timesheet at all. So we have to either have a shorter lunch hour or stay late or come in early.
Is this normal? Is this fair? Anyone else experience similar situations?
I don't know how I feel about this but I like where I work so I'm not complaining. But I wonder if it's normal business?
Assign it to the project?
If it's required training, then it's probably illegal for them to make you do (half of) it on your own time. On the other hand, if it were me, I'd probably bring lunch to my desk, grin, and bear it, for a few reasons:
It's completely illegal to make someone take required training and not pay them for it.
"...speaking up about NRLA violations would not be conducive to job security."
If I was a lawyer I'd be frothing at the mouth over this admission.
Heh, heh. I just keep a file documenting all the violations (as well as software licensing violations) for mutual assured destruction in case management ever turns on me in an unacceptable way - so far every job I've left has been on good enough terms that I've never felt like using that information, but it's always in my back pocket.
tduds... you froth at the mouth over everything... maybe you should have been a lawyer... Hey... what do you call a bunch of lawyers at the bottom of the ocean... a good start... ba dump!
our offices covers 100% of revit training.
watch the videos closed captioned at 2x speed. honestly these training videos aren't worth even half the time they take. a good reference book and a smart mentor are 50x more effective. 12 hours isn't much time to get more than basic familiarity tbh.
your firm is being both petty in the time reporting and ineffectual in the strategy for implementing this. good luck!
We send specific staff out for formal training. Cost a few thousand per head plus a week's salary, but it was 7hr per day, for 5 days. I was the first, something like 7y ago, and we've sent a few more. I do the in-house training, after hours and for pay, when new staff require it.
right. asking everyone in an office regardless of role or experience to spend a day and a half watching online videos is basically just saying "we don't care if this effort succeeds, but at least we can say we tried."
My prior firm <10 staff offered an online training course. We set aside time to learn it separate from lunch during office hours.
Your situation sounds unusual.
If you're in the US it depends on whether you're classified as hourly, or exempt professional (salaried). If the training is required and you're classified as hourly/not exempt then you must be paid for that time - it's illegal for them to require it and not pay for it. But if you're salaried and classified as exempt (which you usually can be if you have a professional degree and more than about a year of full time experience) then they can require you to complete this training as part of your job duties and not compensate the extra time, even if it means that you need to come in early or stay late to get it done. Salaried exempt people have no guaranties that their job duties must fit into a 40-hour workweek, and no requirements to be compensated beyond their agreed-upon salary.
Depending on the state I believe if you are an intern you cannot be considered exempt regardless of how much experience you have.
It can depend on the state, but in most places/cases when the DOL comes into architecture firms in response to complaints they end up ruling that a person with a professional degree can be considered exempt once they have 1-2 years of experience post-graduation. So a part-time or student intern would pretty much never be exempt, an "intern" in the old IDP/AXP sense of someone past graduation but not licensed - now usually known as "designer" or "associate" or something - often can be legitimately exempt once they get that year or two under their belts. It's much more difficult for firms to defend classifying people without professional degrees as exempt - for them the DOL usually wants 8+ years of experience plus managerial responsibilities.
Interesting. I had a 'discussion' about this several years ago with a firms management. They had their lawyer explain to me that because I had a professional degree I was exempt from OT pay regardless if I was unlicensed. A 1 1/2 years later, after I was licensed the firm gave back pay to our two interns for past unpaid OT. Apparently they where wrong that anyone with a professional degree was exempt. In Colorado an intern architect, regardless of experience cannot be considered a professional in regards to OT as they legally are not able to manage others. This seems to be a combination of the states interpretation on what's considered exempt and an architect.
As I said, it does depend somewhat on the state. Many years ago I worked for a large firm that has offices in several different states, and when a former employee there filed a complaint the federal and state DOLs came in and did interviews and audits in all of the offices, and the results were somewhat different in each. But the general summary is that a professional degree alone is not enough in any state, but 1-2 years experience is in most.
Good information, thanks! I wonder how / if firms in those states will simply stop paying people OT after 1-2 of their architectural internship? Tricky stuff.
It's more often the case that firms will just try not to hire someone with less experience than the minimum for their state, so that they can classify them as exempt from the start, and not have any issues raised about a transition later. That's one of the many reasons that a lot of firms don't want to hire the brand new person with no experience at all. And it's exactly why a lot of firms will ask leading questions about experience to fairly entry-level applicants, especially in emails or recorded interviews, like "so you have about a year and a half of experience now?" even if they know that's stretching it. It's to document that the applicant represented themselves as having that level of experience, so that if the firm later gets investigated they can point to that as how they determined exempt status. Applicants tend to assume it's better to stretch their answers toward more experience (and it probably is, in the sense that they're more likely to get the job in the first place.)
U.S. Code § 152.Definitions
(12)The term “professional employee” means—
(a)any employee engaged in work (i) predominantly intellectual and varied in character as opposed to routine mental, manual, mechanical, or physical work; (ii) involving the consistent exercise of discretion and judgment in its performance; (iii) of such a character that the output produced or the result accomplished cannot be standardized in relation to a given period of time; (iv) requiring knowledge of an advanced type in a field of science or learning customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction and study in an institution of higher learning or a hospital, as distinguished from a general academic education or from an apprenticeship or from training in the performance of routine mental, manual, or physical processes; or
(b)any employee, who (i) has completed the courses of specialized intellectual instruction and study described in clause (iv) of paragraph (a), and (ii) is performing related work under the supervision of a professional person to qualify himself to become a professional employee as defined in paragraph (a).
Our office tests potential hires to assess their competency in Revit. If the person is hired and doesn't have the level of Revit skills we would like we send them to a three (or is it four?) day class in Denver. The firm pays for everything, class, hotel, travel. Food is up to you.
Is it to be expected that a firm would test your software knowledge? Is the job offer based on how well you do on this test? How long does your firm give this person to get up to speed on the software-is it a probationary period?
I'm curious because i've been at a firm that uses archi/soft for a few years and after another year here, I'll hopefully end up at a firm that uses revit and i'm rusty.
I don't know if it's expected. This is the only firm I've ever worked at with a Revit test. Then again I've only worked for five offices in my career.
The firm uses the Revit test to figure out how much you know and if we need to send a person to additional training. We only give the test to candidates we want to hire.
Getting a job offer can be decided on how well you do on the Revit test but it depends on what your responsibilities are. If you're only going to be drafting then yes, knowing Revit is very important. If you're going for an architectural position, not so much.
Ohh makes sense, thanks for the insight!