

Cash flow crisis - Lawyers, prostitutes, and architects - swombat
http://www.woobius.com/scribbles/posts/0011-cash-flow-crisis.html

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gibsonf1
Cash flow is definitely an issue these days. My policy now is to stop all work
earlier rather than later. If the client has the ability to pay, they will to
keep the project moving. If not, they can't, so stopping makes sense.

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Tichy
Isn't it also a matter of ego? There probably are not many competitions for
designing small family houses, but they don't add much to an architect's fame,
so instead they compete for the big, prestigious projects.

I don't think there are different economic rules for architects than for the
rest of the world.

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gibsonf1
I've never seen a competition for a small family house. The competitions are
usually for larger projects as organizing and running a competition is not
inexpensive and requires jurors, marketing and prizes.

I try to never do competitions as you are right on point 2, the economic rules
are the same.

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rjprins
My experience at my university; there are simply too many architects. It's fun
to study it and in essence it's a fun job, but the needed skills are not very
sophisticated (although they will tell you otherwise).

A good recipe for a poor job market.

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gibsonf1
As far as the skill argument, you are quite wrong. Most architects don't
really get good until they're about 50 years old, as there is an insane amount
to learn.

I tend to try very hard not to hire people right out of school as they are so
unable to add value to a project because of an intense lack of needed
knowledge. In fact, the usual experience when I waver and take an intern is
that we spend more time fixing the mistakes than the time made making them.

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jeremyawon
sounds like there's something wrong with the relationship between architecture
schools and real-world practices, if they aren't graduating with needed
knowledge.

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saturdayplace
I'll second that. Having dropped out of an undergraduate architecture program
a few years ago (for unrelated reasons) and having worked (until recently,
laid off) at an architecture firm, I can attest to the gap between education
and professional competence. I felt the program I was in focused almost
entirely on things that were subjective (aesthetics), and prided itself on
driving students into the ground by rewarding those students who were there in
the wee hours of the morning. (I knew a professor who'd stroll through the
studio at 3am just to see who was there toiling away).

In the US, The Intern Development Program (IDP) is the industry's attempt to
'educate' architecture graduates, but the training you get depends entirely on
the nature of the firm you work for out of school. Graduates can either get
real experience working on and solving architectural problems, or they can
become CAD monkeys, becoming the stenographer for another architect; draftsmen
gaining little in their professional development. The difference in assignment
is obviously decided by the guys at the top of the firm, so you're essentially
at their mercy.

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gibsonf1
The mandated IDP program is yet another reason not to hire and take a chance
on beginners. It really is a sad situation, especially for those students
unlucky enough to get stuck in Architecture programs that are truly useless.

A good program mush have very solid engineering in addition to everything
else. Students should be able to do the structural engineering for their own
projects coming out of school (I did on my second house in the mountains), and
have solid knowledge of mechanical and electrical engineering as well. This is
a distant and impossible dream, it seems, for most programs these days.

And it makes perfect sense: the standard trendy philosophy in most schools is
deconstructivism. And one of the tenets of that philosophy is that the real
world is in flux and nothing really is knowable, etc etc. My experience is
that Reality wins every argument put up against it.

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zcrar70
Developers (in consultancies) usually charge by the hour too, but thankfully
we don't tend to get screwed over that often.

My GF works in advertising/design, and things are pretty much the same there;
work on pitches for free, then get paid to do the actual work if you win the
pitch (pitches happen more often than architectural competitions, and involve
less work and less competition, and as such are less risky to do, but the
basic principle of working for nothing to get a job is still there.)

In any case, lawyers, architects and prostitutes are definitely not the only
professionals with clients :-)

