#451 - THE VALUE OF DIVERSE PROJECT EXPERIENCE
SUMMARY
This week David and Marina of FAME Architecture & Design discuss the value of having different project experiences. They touched on working in different offices; project types in architecture school; how long to stay at an office; office fit & alignment; diverse project experiences; large vs small offices; the ideal first 10 years of an architecture career; changing office & pay raise; and more. Enjoy!
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Working in different offices.
(01:44) Project types in architecture school.
(07:56) How long to stay at an office.
(13:37) When to leave an office.
“How would I know when I should leave an office? Knowing when to trust your gut, I think that's hard to do when you're young. When you're working at your first office, you probably have a lot of feelings and thoughts about what is right and wrong in the office, but do you trust yourself and your opinions when it's your first job? Not as much as if you were an experienced person. Young architects think, “What do I know? Maybe all offices function this way. Maybe this is normal. Maybe it's okay that we're working late hours all the time. Maybe it's standard that the design quality is not there.” Architecture students are smart, and I think they should trust themselves more often because their intuition is right. When you're that young, though, the difficulty is knowing at what point is it enough wrongness to leave an office.” (13:39)
(20:13) Office fit & alignment.
“Everyone, even if you've just graduated or you're still in school, needs to think about what your larger career goals are. I'm not saying you must have those goals written in stone, and they're never going to change. But having those in the back of your mind and always thinking about them and tinkering on them as you move forward is important. Because it's very easy to let years go by and you realize, “I've never actually done the thing that I was first interested in, or I'd never have completed this learning objective I had.” So always having that career goal in the back of your mind is important.” (20:50)
(29:03) Diverse project experience.
“Seeing all the different colors of project types is super helpful for your own creative skills to be able to problem solve and create. It stimulates things a bit more than if you're always playing in the same field with the same tools, because that's when repetition happens. Getting curveballs thrown at you all the time just makes you more resilient and potentially more desirable for clients and offices because you have a broader understanding and approach to things. It doesn't mean that you can't be an expert at things if you know multiple of them. I feel like there is more creativity in someone who has more diverse experience than someone who doesn't.” (29:40)
“It's good to have a taste of all the different people and processes out there. It tells you what is right and what is wrong in a way that is more truthful, because you've seen a big sampling of how it's done. The danger for people who have only worked at one place is that they think that's how it's done, and that is the way. Oftentimes, that is not the only way, and that might not be the way at all it should be done.” (38:48)
(41:48) Large vs small scale design.
(50:44) Large vs small office.
“I love and hate big offices. I love it because I love the energy and the complexity. I just love the idea of things being productive. An office with 100 people and everybody's working on creating, building, and solving things, it’s just super exciting. At the same time, I hate all the politics that come with big offices. The initiatives, promotions…let's call it ‘bullshit’ that needs to be there. If the office is composed of different studios and everybody has their team, you're all working for the same company but you're all competing against each other. I don't like that at all.” (52:12)
(57:17) Ideal 10 years of architecture career.
(59:07) Changing office impact on pay.
“Switching around offices when you're younger is a good way to jump up in the pay rate a little bit quicker than if you are staying at the same place for a few years. Once you stay at the same office for a few years, your promotion rate is only a few percent of your pay, so that never really makes up for the difference if you were to switch offices. Changing offices is the fastest way to get a decent pay rise.” (59:46)
