NUSWhispers – Confession #101735

tldr; architects need to be paid more for the work they do I believe that many have seen the recent reports of young lawyers leaving the industry, and I would like to shed some light about my own profession that is similarly toxic in so many ways. I have chosen to post here cos there aren’t many (neutral) avenues of speech that can allow this post to potentially garner as much attention, so please bear with me, and may this also serve as a source of information to students who are still pursuing architecture in NUS, or for the younger ones who are thinking of doing so. The architectural profession is toxic to the core, and I would think that many have heard of the insane working hours that architects endure for a ridiculous per-hour pay rate. The starting pay for grads from architecture school (with a Master’s degree and after 5 years of slogging, by the way), has not increased from 10 years ago. It’s like inflation doesn’t exist. Our job scope is unforgiving, and trust me, those working hours actually are required for us to really get the work done. A very simple break down of our work is something like this: —- A PROJECT Design Stage: design the thing, go through rounds and rounds of reviews with the client, client decides to change the brief on one day’s notice, redesign to comply with the regulations from URA, BCA, FSSD, NParks, NEA, PUB, LTA etc, then rush out plans, sections, elevations & 3d renderings and a whole deck of presentation slides in 24 hours; while doing so, deal with super slow office computers that aren’t equipped with the necessary specs to handle modern softwares because the boss decided to cheap out on them Authorities’ Clearances: coordinate among your entire consultants team (engineers, acoustic consultants, traffic consultants, landscape architect, quantity surveyor, environmental scientists…etc), and make submissions to each stat board for approval. receive many written directions from the various departments; some take forever to reply and the officers don’t pick up the phone and don’t reply emails. redesign to address these directions. Tender Stage: draw and draw and draw (on CAD softwares, not by hand thank goodness) because somehow many offices do not have draftsmen/draftswomen anymore. client decides to further improve the design, so redesign & redraw. also be chasing the entire consultants’ team for their own drawings, so that you don’t end up diverting pipes in strange directions because the m&e engineer didn’t realize that there’s a beam up there (yes, that’s also our job). then actually prepare for contractors to attach a price tag to your work Construction Stage: the design is gonna be built! but oh no, the tender drawings were not properly coordinated (because it was impossible, honestly), so there are going to be 100 contractual variations to the design over the next few months. redesign to comply (again), go for site meetings to tell off the contractors for not following your drawings, be really tired from walking in the sun on ground that is not paved (and risk falling into a pothole) while having to actually use your entire brain Post-Construction Stage: defects, maintenance……..blah blah blah —- I’m tired even from typing out all of the above, but yes we get paid peanuts for doing ALL of that. Most architects I know have more than 1 project on their plate at once, more often than not these projects are at different stages. Hence it is not uncommon for a single person to be working on ALL of that at once. How then can anyone afford to only work for 8 hours a day?! Anyone in the design field would also understand how it feels to handle softwares that crash often due to the scale of the drawings, and that in itself is also many working hours gone. You may find it ridiculous that some architects/architectural students wear their long working hours like a badge, but the industry is so toxic to the point that the more you work, the more you can get done before the (often ridiculous) deadlines and the better your work will be. I’ve had bosses who scheduled meetings at 9am on saturday morning and made an entire project team go back to office on National Day (with no compensation) because they would rather do so than to tell the client that the deadline was unrealistic. I’ve also stayed in the office for more than 24h straight just to meet deadlines. I was depressed, very sleep deprived and extremely demoralised at the thought of having to work like this for the rest of my life. Architecture school prepared me for none of the above, and many architects i’ve spoken to would agree that our education was really quite pointless. We learn many things on the job just because of the nature of it; building projects are massive, and it is not possible to learn to handle things on your own until you step into the workforce and learn from an actual supervisor. Even after 5 years in architecture school, a practicing license still has to be obtained for us to be a Qualified Person (QP) which requires minimally 2 years of practice, a written exam (that consists construction law, contracts, the architect’s act, SOP act, all the building regulations from every department i.e. LTA PUB URA FSSD NEA NParks younametherest etc) and an interview. And truth is, it is rare for anyone to be a QP after just 2 years of practice. Many do not get their license at all throughout their career, and most who wish to pursue it only get their licenses between 4 to 8 years from the day they started work. One of my biggest regrets in life is not leaving architecture school when I actually considered it. It all started with a keen interest in design in general, but who knew that things would turn out this way? Information was never this accessible back then, and the industry is too small for word to really get around. You may think that it is not too late for me to leave now, but trust me, it really is not easy trying to pick up other skills while trying to make ends meet (I tried). I have little free time outside of work, and I have bills to pay. Anyone I speak to about my job looks at me in dismay, and yes, I feel appalled at what I tell them too. But that is the reality of what we do. Our jobs as architects is highly stressful, because a large number of lives can be on the line if we do not do our jobs well. Yet it gets more and more unrewarding as the years go by, especially since Singapore was never a great place to get creative to begin with (we really have a lot of regulations, even for small houses). Many of us chose to stay in this line of work, thinking that things will change over time, but it has been years and things have honestly only gotten worse. Our pay is ridiculously low for the amount of work we do, and I believe that a large part of this can be attributed to the architectural fees getting lower and lower over the years, since companies lowball to get jobs. Many of my younger colleagues are thinking of jumping to other industries, and I don’t even blame them. Who would?