Early Career Advice
Every career begins with a single step forward. With each step in our careers, we learn valuable lessons that shape our path. Those lessons can also help the next in line circumvent the mistakes we’ve made and build their own career more effectively.
Q: What lessons in your early career as an Architect had the greatest impact on you?
In May 2008, I graduated from Syracuse University with a hope, a dream, and a mountain of student loans. It turns out that college at a private school is what some might call expensive.
Nevertheless, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to take on the world.
The road to getting here wasn’t easy. It was paved with lessons both professional and personal that have shaped me into the person I am today.
A Time to Reflect
As a way to reflect on who that person is, I’ve broken down the 10 most important lessons I’ve gleaned from working in the profession and practicing my craft. These aren’t in any particular order (except for #10 - it’s objectively the best because I said so). They may mean more or less to you depending on where you are on your own career path today.
This also isn’t an exhaustive list of everything I’ve learned as an Architect (I mean, geez, I hope not). Rather, this list is geared to help you navigate some of the early stages of your career. At the very least, it should help you do so better than I did.
Enough chit chat! Let’s get started.
1. Fast, Good, Cheap — Pick Two.
You might start an architecture firm in order to change the world through design or to make a name for yourself. But, like any business, you need to make money. If the office isn’t making money, you don’t have a job.
In comes practicality.
I learned early on that there are only three factors that affect any given project—speed, quality, and cost. Depending on who you work with, every project will prioritize those three factors in a different order.
Sometimes you’ll work with the dreamer who wants the highest quality materials and experience. Other times, you’ll work with the pragmatist who needs all decisions to be made based on frugal design. Even the speed demons want their way to get the job done as quickly as humanly possible.
It’s up to you as the Architect to work within parameters given to you and to develop a project that best resonates with the client based on those criteria.
Now, that said, most owners want to prioritize all three, but that isn’t possible.
For example, let’s say you’re making something quick and cheap. For simplicity, let’s say it’s a rocking chair. If I skimp a bit on the materials and purchase some scrap wood with basic nails, I could probably make a chair fairly quickly. There’s no guarantee that it will be good though. To be honest, there’s no guarantee it will even last much longer than a few sittings.
Let’s flip that around and say that we want a chair that’s made well and quick. In that case, I could probably fabricate a great chair and get it done in a compressed timeline, but you better believe it will cost you. I wouldn’t break myself in two in order to quickly assemble a high-quality product without being properly compensated.
You can have something fast, good, or cheap. It’s up to you to decide what matters most. But hey, at least you can pick two.
2. Develop Skills to Make Yourself Invaluable
I started working three months before the world melted in 2008 and the Great Recession wreaked havoc across the globe. I couldn’t have predicted it in my wildest dreams. Few could have.
As entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk sometimes refers to such market dips, it’s like “getting punched in the face.”
In the first few years of the Recession, I caught myself daydreaming what my next moves were. Would I get fired? Would I need to change jobs? When would my next raise be? Would I ever get a raise again?
My anxious mind stopped dwelling on what was clearly out of my control when I realized something simple: I needed to make myself invaluable.
Instead of lamenting all the negative possibilities, I began pouring my energy into skill building, learning, and self-improvement.
When I started in this business, a sustainability program known as LEED was all the rage. And it was the only thing I heard people in my sphere of influence talking about. Certainly they were also discussing equally important topics such as the Christopher Nolan film, The Dark Knight, and its inevitable place in the Pantheon of cinematic masterpieces, but I digress.
LEED was essentially a credentialing system to prove whether or not a building was objectively “sustainable” and respectful of the environment as a result. At the time, I knew few people in the local area had obtained a LEED AP credential to help a design team shepherd a project through the process. I also knew that it was straightforward enough for me to obtain the credential and set myself apart from my peers.
When an opportunity came up to bring a renovation project through the LEED process, I jumped at the chance to help. At the time, you needed direct experience with a LEED project to acquire the LEED AP credential. I took charge and did everything I could to learn more about sustainable design and help move the project forward.
On a cold, dark February morning in 2012 (typical for good old Buffalo, NY), I walked into the credential testing center an eager designer with no credentials or licenses to my name. I walked out three hours later as a LEED Accredited Professional.
The credential today doesn’t mean quite what it did when I got it But for several years, it gave me something that many of my peers didn’t have—a marker that identified me as a professional.
While many of my friends were waiting to get their experience, I took the initiative to go and get some of it myself.
The credential made me more confident in my skills, gave me some insulation from a potential future round of layoffs, and placed me in a better position for success long-term. It fostered a mindset to keep going, to keep trying new things.
3. School Experience Isn’t the Same as Job Experience
When it comes to working in an architecture office, the first thing I always imagined I’d be doing out of school would be almost identical to what I did in studio. Anyone who’s ever actually stepped foot inside an architecture office knows that it’s quite a different experience from the world of academics.
In fact, the two are so at odds with each other sometimes that you have to remind yourself why you decided to go down this path at all. I don’t mean that in a cynical way by any means. I love being an Architect. It would be nice though if an education and a job were better connected.
If I had to guess, I’d say that most educational programs suffer from varying degrees of theory versus practicality.
In school, our professors are trying to teach us methods to analyze problems in a ‘safe’ environment. It may seem like torture sometimes depending on who our professors are, but our decisions in studio are far more likely to kill a stick figure in your drawings than our neighbor in a local development project.
In an architecture office, design decisions have a real impact on cost, schedule, constructability. Most importantly, those choices determine the safety of those who use the buildings you design.
However, I don’t believe that school experience is invalid. Rather, I think the framework you create for yourself can be invaluable in terms of how you approach problem solving and creative thinking.
We need to refocus that creative know-how back into the world. The world has constraints that we can’t fully comprehend while we’re in school. Learning the constraints inside and out is the only way to break them without getting someone killed.
Architecture is not for the faint of heart.
Being an architecture student is not the same as being a practicing Architect.
4. No One Will Tell You How to Shape Your Career
A career is a journey, an adventure.
Your career is unique to you and you will carve the path forward. There will be different modes of transportation, various pit stops, and many milestone destinations worth writing home about.
There are so many choices, in fact, that the journey may seem overwhelming before you even get started. The hard truth though - no one will choose your adventure for you.
Much autonomy is needed to practice architecture. One needs to be confident in their skills to move up and ahead.
It’s easy to wake up after years of drafting only to find yourself still reaching for that license, that promotion, that partnership.
You are in charge of your own journey. You are in charge of the shape it takes with each choice you make.
It’s not that everyone should follow the same path within the profession, not at all. Rather, we each need to carve a path that fits around the life we want for ourselves. You can do that by trying out new skills, keeping an open mind, and sharing your interests with others.
You’re more than likely to find some of your friends are off and running, shaping the paths of their own careers already. You have two choices—watch them as they go, or start running in your own direction.
If you’re unsure of what to do next, ask yourself a simple question, “who do I want to be in 10 years?” Once you have the answer, ask yourself, “how do I become that person?”
Choose the adventure you want to look back on years from now without regret. Leave everything on the table and shape the career you want to live.
5. Get Involved Because Networking is the Most Important Career Trait to Nurture
You know something crazy? At the time I’m writing this, I’ve had four jobs and four firms. One was for a Summer Internship. The others were Full-Time Positions. Okay, not too crazy.
But this may be: none of them came without previously networking with the owners of those firms.
I met my first boss interviewing for the opportunity to go to Cornell University (didn’t end up there). I met my second boss through the Syracuse Alumni Network (did end there, Go, Orange!). I met next two bosses volunteering with my local AIA (American Institute of Architects) Chapter.
I can’t emphasize what networking has done for my career. Whether it was making connections with Alumni or just putting myself out there in the community, I look back and realize that it’s very possible to create your own luck.
A word of caution—had I made a bad impression with any of these gentlemen, I could have had a very different career experience. Networking isn’t something that you do in the short term. Networking is a skill that needs nurturing.
The weirdest, most frustrating thing about Networking is that you have no idea when the connections will matter in your career. To be honest, some won’t in direct ways. Some won’t matter at all.
But networking isn’t just about the jobs. It’s given me good friends and made me more outgoing than I would have been on my own.
My advice—be present with everyone you meet. You never know if that person might just be your next employer or your next friend.
6. You Don't Know, What You Don't Know. If You Don't Know, Ask.
The lesson I see most people around me break— they don’t know what they don’t know. It’s the most difficult rule to recognize you’re breaking because, in the moment, you don’t even realize you’re breaking it.
The way I get around this—assume you know nothing.
Don’t worry about what others think when you’re asking a million questions. Questions are the best!
Would you prefer to make a decision without thinking about it because you’ve just ‘always done it that way’? Or instead, would you rather ask a variety of questions of someone more experienced with a different point of view?
When in doubt, ask a bunch of questions. If you don’t truly know the answer to something you’re working on, you have to ask.
Asking questions isn’t stupid and it doesn’t make you less than. Not asking questions can be dangerous. It may cause us to make careless mistakes or even mistakes that can prove deadly in this line of work.
An Architect’s first and foremost directive is to protect the Health, Safety, and Welfare of those who use and participate with the buildings they design.
7. Work on Your Own Projects Outside the Office
Very early on in my career, I realized that I needed to develop my own portfolio of work outside of the office.
You might ask yourself, “Mike, why would you ever need to do that when you’re working on such great projects in the office?” It’s a fair question, and a good one.
I’ve always seen myself in control of my own career, my own destiny. I treat almost everything I do in my career with that mentality.
Let’s ask ourselves a hypothetical question:
What if you weren’t allowed to use any of the drawings, renderings, sketches, or models in your own portfolio that you created while working at a firm?
It seems a bit odd, but it happens in our industry. Whether it’s an employer’s desire to keep intellectual property (which to be fair, they’re paying you to create) or there’s a contractual clause an employer has with the client (also very fair to recognize), you may not be able to take that awesome work with you wherever you go.
That’s why I don’t worry about it.
I’ve built a solid resume working on a wide-reaching variety of projects in the office. But I also had an early career experience when I could feel the world around me was melting. The Great Recession struck fear into the architecture profession and in me. I knew during those dark days that I needed to make myself invaluable and keep my job. That type of feeling has never really left me and, for the most part, I think it’s served me well.
In my first ten years practicing architecture, I entered almost as many independent design competitions. It may sound a bit odd, but I didn’t care if I won or lost.
Every competition was an opportunity to develop killer projects that both meant something to me and that I could use in any portfolio I chose. They were my designs.
I always have two rules with every competition I enter:
End up with some kind of tangible product (graphic, model, etc) that I could use in the portfolio.
Learn a new technique, program, or building type to advance my skill set.
If you enter a competition with the rules above, you will learn exponentially more and have the proof that you did so.
Also, competitions are really fun.
8. Always Take Responsibility for Your Actions
I’m not perfect. Not even close.
I make mistakes all the time. Sometimes they’re small and sometimes they’re not. But I always glean something from the heartache. I solve the problem and move on a bit wiser. The trick is to take responsibility though for every, single mistake we make.
I can’t emphasize that enough. I mean, I could with bigger, bolder font, but you get my point.
Above the rest, there is one mistake I remember like it was yesterday. It haunts me a little, but I suppose that means the lesson stuck.
When I was working on a renovation project in the earliest years of my career, I was in charge of reviewing potential products for a series of windows. The project was a private development to convert an historic, three-story building into office and residential space. The project was required to obtain a LEED Silver rating (a mid-level of sustainability accreditation for a building).
I reviewed the criteria specified by the project’s sustainability consultant against what the contractor had submitted for the windows.
Side Note: This is common practice during construction. Products are submitted to be approved by the Architect for conformance with the documents provided by the Architect. This is so the contractor purchases the correct materials for a job.
I was able to quickly identify that, of the seven preliminary selections that were made by a supervisor, all except two were acceptable choices based on the sustainability baselines.
Five possible windows.
I discussed the review with my supervisor and he, in turn, told the Construction Manager that any of the five would be acceptable selections for the project. After all, they were all basically the same. Key word, “Basically.”
The contractor ordered about thirty-five of these large, historic, sustainable, super-windows and everything seemed fine.
Just peachy.
That was until I realized that one of the windows didn’t quite match all of the criteria. As it turns out, U-Factor is kind of a big deal. For the uninitiated, it essentially measures how well a window insulates the portion of wall it’s set into.
Can you guess which of the remaining “acceptable” windows the contractor ordered?
Yep. The ONLY one remaining window that didn’t match the criteria we needed to hit to maintain the energy model for the overall building. When I realized the error, I had two options:
Accept the mistake I made and inform my supervisor that I had essentially cost the project thousands of dollars because of one number I missed.
Pretend it never happened and go about my life.
Look, as much as it would have been great to pretend I didn’t know what was going on, that’s just not who I am.
I walked straight into his office, paperwork in hand, and explained what had happened.
I don’t remember what I looked like in that moment, but I imagine there was very little color in my face and a hint of panic.
The most interesting thing happened though—I wasn’t yelled out of the office for being “stupid” or even fired (both of which I assumed were perfectly acceptable scenarios). My supervisor looked at me and simply said, “Thank you, Mike for bringing this to me.”
We both knew what had happened. He could see I was already pretty tormented by it.
Oh, and if I had just “pretended” it away, we wouldn’t have solved the problem. We wouldn’t have found other ways to fix the error without replacing the windows. In fact, it would have become much, much worse once all of the final paperwork had been assembled for review, once the building was done, once everyone had stopped working.
Long story short, if you mess up, own it.
It will suck in the moment, a lot. But if you don’t own up to your mistakes, you could be inadvertently running toward disaster rather than stopping it in its tracks.
9. Master the Art of Communication
Do you know what the most valuable course was that I took in High School?
It wasn’t Math. It wasn’t Physics. It sure wasn’t Biology.
Introduction to Keyboarding. Yep, Keyboarding.
When you start practicing architecture, I don’t think anyone expects the mountain of writing we’ll have to endure.
These days, I write everything from emails to reports, to requests for proposals, to contracts, and all documents in between. Over time, I’ve started to really enjoy it too. I can’t explain why other than to say that writing has become another way for me to express a part of me that I couldn’t otherwise.
I’ve been an introvert for most of my life.
Only in the last few years have I really come out of my shell and put myself out there. In a lot of ways, writing allowed me to share my voice on my own terms.
That said, communication in all forms is the quintessential skill for an Architect to master.
To think about it another way—drawings, specifications, renderings, sketches, emails, phone calls—they’re all just methods to explain your intent and your vision to someone else.
If you were the greatest Architect in the entire world (I have no doubt that you could be), but you couldn’t effectively convey your designs to anyone, your greatness would go unnoticed.
Don’t take for granted the power of your voice in any medium.
10. Keep Learning Always
I’m a real believer that every Architect’s journey on the path of learning never ends. Once you’re in the profession, you’re in for life.
The most profound lesson I’ve learned in the last year or so is that I will never actually learn everything the profession has to offer. In some ways I have to be okay with that.
I have to realize that the profession of architecture is more like a never-ending buffet.
Sure, you need to practice moderation and balance the types of courses you choose to make. Sure, you’re well-rounded, but you have so much knowledge at your fingertips that you also need to try a LOT of different things to stay relevant and strong.
Final Thoughts
I hope you will apply some, if not all, of these lessons to your own career.
Key Takeaways:
Fast, good, cheap—pick two
Develop skills to make yourself invaluable
School experience isn't the same as job experience
No one will tell you how to shape your career
Get involved because Networking is the most important career trait to nurture
You don't know, what you don't know. If you don't know, ask.
Work on your own projects outside the office
Always take responsibility for your actions
Master the art of communication
Keep learning always
Your ten lessons will certainly look different than mine. That’s to be expected. Your experiences will be different and so the lessons you take from them will reflect your experiences accordingly.
Go forth and learn what you can. Pass on what you learn to the next generation of Architects.
Additional Resources
(Article) Important Job Skills for Architects // Alison Doyle
(Video) 57 Minutes of Advice For People Early In Their Career // Gary Vaynerchuk
(Video) How to Succeed as a Young Architect // The Business of Architecture
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