Cash flow crisis - Lawyers, prostitutes, and architects | Hacker News Reader

Cash flow crisis - Lawyers, prostitutes, and architects

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18 pointsswombat12 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Okay, that could be true. I admit my assumption was based on the fact they don't learn construction mechanics (i.e. calculating if structures are strong enough). And from a few Master thesis presentations I generally got the idea people just make what they think is nice, instead of giving solid reasoning for their choices.

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

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.

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.

The reason most architects don't reach prominence until their later years (NY Times Architecture critic Ada Huxtable pegs the age at close to 60) is not due to a disconnect with the education and actual profession, but moreso because clients are less willing to trust and untried architect with a multimillion dollar project. It's similar in almost any industry, you need to slowly climb your way up the experience ladder, except a single architectural project will take years to complete, thus lengthening the amount of actual time it takes to get a "trustworthy" amount of projects under your belt before you can win big deals.

The exception to this rule are open competitions, as this give young architects the opportunity to vie on a level playing field (e.g, the Pompidou)

Being an architect is very much like (if not outright identical) to being an artist. Sure, anyone can put paint on a canvas but very few do great work.

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 :-)

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