[Douglas M. Rooney]

Love the photo where you see in the background the old-fashioned drafting board complete with a T-square and circle template. I guess that portraying the way we worked 30 years ago is more “romantic”. At least they don’t have him driving around in his truck with his “mow-n-blow” equipment.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

Take your former salary and reduce it to an hourly rate. Take hourly rate X 1.35 = contract hourly rate( then round up to the nearest $5. Example, if contract hourly billing rate comes to $27.75, round up to $30 per hour). Thirty-five percent is a fair approximation of the value of benefits plus self employment tax. I would not use your former billing rate because it has the firm’s overhead and profit baked into it and will likley be rejected by the firm as “too high”. The firm will likely still be billing you out at that higher rate so as to make a profit off of your work.

Good Luck!

 

 

[Douglas M. Rooney]

I was an organizer for PARK(ing)Day in San Francisco in 2009. Myself and a group of  other unemployed design professionals, designed, constructed, and operated a 3 hole miniature golf course for the day. It was a lot of fun and kept us busy during a very difficult year. I even managed to make it onto Weekend Edition on NPR for my 8 seconds of fame!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113005527

 

 

[Douglas M. Rooney]

Jason, I do not think your statement that you must have Masters degree to become a licensed Architect is correct. The 5 year BArch degree(most commonly found at public state universities) is an accredited professional degree that NCARB accepts for their education requirement. Some states including your state of Maryland do not even require an accredited degree and allow candidates to meet the education requirement with a combination of education and work experience. But reciprocity with other states is not guaranteed.  I do agree however that in the current hiring environment, a 4 year Architecture degree will not even get you an interview.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

What happened to the DOUR photo?? I so enjoyed “bitter Jason”…..

[Douglas M. Rooney]

Jason….I was just joking….I agree with you that safety is an illusion..I was just trying for some levity in an otherwise dour discussion.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

Au contraire Jason, have you not heard of the certainty of Death and Taxes????

Mortician and tax accountant must therefore “be safe”.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

MLCC, that is not how I read CLARB’s transition plan. If you only have section E left to go and you do not pass it before the new exam starts, then you will get credit for Sections 1, 2, and 3, but will have to take section 4 which costs more and repeats part of section D. You will not have to take section 3 as previously passing section C and D will give you credit for section 3. I think the only person that might get really screwed is someone who has passed everything BUT section D. They would lose credit for sections C and E and have to complete BOTH section 3 and 4 to cover the previous section D.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

Obviously that student has never been in a correctional facility. There are too many windows and no barbed wire. I think alien spacecraft meets nuclear power plant is a more fitting description.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

And to prove Nick’s point….here is a gem from SF Bay Area Craiglist today looking for an AutoCAD drafter for an Architect:

Drafter 3-5 years experience in Autocad (SOMA / south beach)

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MWA Architects is looking for a drafter with 3-5 years experience. This position is for a recent graduate, and we will not be looking a resumes with more than 5 years experience. Our firm, which this year celebrates 23 years as a firm, has offices in San Francisco, Oakland, Portland OR, and Detroit, MI. This job is located in our South of Market offices in San Francisco. We are looking for someone with a professional degree, who has AutoCad experience. It would be helpful to be a resident of the Bay Area, and to have an interest in affordable housing, one of our specialties. We look forward to receiving your resume. Please do not send portfolio material; we will ask for that later.

 

Is it just me or are job ads become more hostile?

[Douglas M. Rooney]

You are dead on in your analysis Andrew. Most firms I know currently have a “barbell” structure. They are composed of the partners and the junior production staff. Everyone at the firm has less than 5 years experience or more than 20 years. Middle management need not apply. I still think it is quite hard for young people coming out of school to get hired if they have no experience. This may be directly related to the lack of people in the middle who typically would be managing this most “green” staff. Let this be a lesson for those who are still in school…..do everything in your power to get internship time in a office before graduation (even if it is unpaid). Employers are looking for people who can hit the ground running, and having office experience when you graduate gives you a great advantage over your classmates.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

Alex,

I really must congratulate you. Not everyone could generate nearly 100 posts on a topic like fonts, but you have…..Bravo.

First let me state I do not now, nor have I ever used Papyrus. I actually had to look it up to see what it looked like, because I had no idea. Not the type of font I am likely to use since it has a “visual onomatopoeia” kind of aspect about it. I like Century Gothic myself.  Something about those circles I guess.

That being said, I fear you have confused what is important, with what is IMPRESSIVE. Having just graduated, you are still suffering the cognitive distortion that is a product of you  being  in academia. In school you are working to impress your professors and peers. You are immersed in a soup of design, graphics and presentation. The end all, be all product of all of your efforts is the presentation drawings(or perhaps maybe even a model). Never again will it be like that.

In the REAL world, you will be presenting to clients or even planning departments. They will have have no appreciation of your graphics, nor your fonts. They will likely never actually READ anything on your drawings, though they might look at the pictures. They will never connect with any life changing aesthetic in your drawings, but they will be looking at how to reduce costs, lower maintenance, and speed up schedule. You will quickly realize that the “graphic design” of you presentation drawings is a fleeting thing that will occur momentarily, then you will move on to making your project reality.

How many people walk though Central Park, but lament that Olmsted use of Arial in his drawings? Does anyone really admire the genius of the Thomas Church’s Donnell Gardens Pool, but abhor his use of  Lucinda Sans? Is the experience of the Highline made sublime by the James Corner’s use of Helvetica in his drawings?? In the end…. work speaks for itself…..and no one has any idea what the font was??? What everyone has been trying to communicate to you Alex is that your drawings ARE NOT your work, your finished product is your work.

You should realize that despite your chutzpah that you are some unique, avant garde individualist, you are simply the same trendy conformist, that any other 23 year old is likely to be. Another recent graduate I know is obsessed with helvetica as well. Why? because it is currently very trendy. Like most 50+ year old “things”, this font has gone from popular to out of style to trendy again. Thank you Gary Hustwit…..Trendy, conformity is primarily an adolescent pursuit….those of us who are old enough, have no need to be “cool”.

Your belief that a font can make or break a design is exaggerated.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

I have solved the riddle….. 225,000 jobs were saved because (thanks to the government bailout) GM is still in business, and now that they make an electric car (Chevy Volt), all of those jobs are now counted as GREEN. Jobs created? ZERO

[Douglas M. Rooney]

He is looking for a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute (UK version of ASLA) to mentor him on his “Path to Chartership” (P2C). I blame this on texting…people are now speaking in acronyms.

[Douglas M. Rooney]

So when you say you have been a Landscape Architect for 28 years, you mean you have been licensed for that long, right? Or was there a “rouge unregistered period” in there?

[Author]

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