It’s not just staying up late and working overtime... Let an experienced professional tell you what pitfalls exist when working in a design firm

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Back in the day, the design institutes were places that those of us studying architecture desperately wanted to get into. Especially those under the jurisdiction of the state or various provincial governments—getting hired there was a great honor and meant having a secure job for life. When people say you’re an architect from such and such design institute, it’s synonymous with high salaries. However, as times have changed, the construction industry has dropped out of the top 5 highest-paying fields at the undergraduate and graduate levels; it used to be in first place for many years in a row. In 2018, the architecture major ranked seventh with a monthly salary of 8,359. However, I seriously doubt this average monthly salary, because many people around me don’t earn that amount. It seems pretty impressive, but... when you calculate the hourly wage, you might not even be able to outearn your housekeeper. 996 is the norm for internet companies these days, but 9127 is the norm in architecture. We’ve noticed that in recent years many graduates around us have received offers from design firms as a safety net; once they come across a better job, they reject those offers immediately and either go into real estate, academia, or switch careers altogether. Then, a large number of architects from the design institutes left, as many of the key members born in the 1980s were unable to continue working due to health issues. Today, design firms are short of staff everywhere, yet it’s still difficult to find suitable candidates. For some positions, it may even take 100,000 to 150,000 yuan in bribes just to get hired, and the industry is starting to decline. Come on, in order to make up for the shortage of staff, design firms naturally recruit a large number of interns to take on the work, but that leads to awkward situations. Young people born in the second half of the 1990s actually refuse such jobs at first-class design institutes with monthly salaries of 1,000–2,000, showing the ability to think calmly. Just imagine, if this had happened in the residential compounds of Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen back in the past, what would it have been like? That’s an honor – even if there’s no real salary and one has to pay out of pocket, we’ll all go. Being able to draw diagrams in such a design institute was a great honor; but now... maybe we were too naive back then. This is when there is a imbalance between supply and demand. Do many people give up working in design firms? Why? 1. The collapse of career planning and promotion pathways. Aren’t there many positions in design firms? So many people. But promotion? Endure it, endure it to the death. A long, long road. People with strong capabilities can serve as project leaders for a few years, but what about the chief engineer? Director? The dean... haha. Taking a design institute in the north as an example, such a large institute has many branch offices. As for the directors of these branches, it goes without saying that they are all people who helped build up the institution together with its leader. And then, the directors below them—they’re all people appointed by the boss. Needless to say, they keep an eye on those deans. So since you’re not from the direct line, you have no chance of becoming the head at all. Of course, this may be the case only in some design institutes. How can one quickly become a dean? It’s very simple: you set up a new studio, pay fees to the boss every year, and solicit your own clients. This is the fastest way to become a studio head. Whoever has the work is the boss~~; so those who pursue a technical career, even if they are doctors from top universities with various qualifications, are merely diagram artists. It’s those who persevere until they become chief engineers that truly succeed. 2. Pitiful salaries: It’s common to see that internet companies offer year-end bonuses equivalent to 14 months’ salary, or bonuses of 500,000 yuan or so. If converted into terms of drawing, how many years would it take to earn such a large amount of bonuses? “Don’t ask me how much I can earn. When you ask that question, your mindset is still at the level of working for others; as for how much you can earn, you need to ask yourself how much you want to earn! ”These words definitely weren’t said by my colleagues at the design institute; they must have been said by someone else. We are architects; we have principles, and we cannot engage in such low-quality work. Just for money. But you can’t survive without money... It seems that no matter how much work I do each year and how much value I create, by the end of the year I still end up with so little. Just like programmers, everyone stays up late. But compared to programmers, we really… have tons of tears. Putting aside the fact that the design fees charged by design firms haven’t increased or whatever the overall situation is, it’s the larger portion of those design fees that is usually taken away. As for how to distribute it, it’s not up to you to decide whether it should be transparent or not, and the boss won’t let you see clearly either. Many design institutes still use the distribution methods from the last century; do you accept that, or else leave! One reason for the lower bonus is also the Party A’ s failure to pay the design fees on time. Many well-known clients in the country start by paying only 50% of the design fee, and then offer to pay another 50% of that amount for the next project. In this way, they keep delaying payment of the design fee; if you don’t provide good service, there will be no further work for you. Party A has many shameless ways... As a design firm in the service industry, there’s no choice; if you don’t kowtow, you won’t get any work. Party A truly lives up to its reputation; from what can be seen online, some companies pay undergraduates 70–80 yuan per day, while design firms pay 40–65 yuan. As for the work intensity… you’ll know once you ask. Then you’ll know just how pitiful your hourly wage is. If an architect’s basic salary is 3,000 yuan per month, then the actual monthly salary they receive accounts for 30–60% of the basic salary of full-time employees. After all, the biggest cost for a design institute is labor. 3. Pitiful networking: People in design firms always have an illusion. I think I’m really great; being an architect is a profession with high status. But if you ask someone who is not familiar with your industry, you’ll find that they confuse you with interior designers, renovation teams, contractors, and project managers. Moreover, the head of a design institute is in charge of many people; they are part of the leadership itself. But once we left the design firm, we realized that our network consisted of people from other design firms, those who create renderings, some clients, and people from the real estate industry; the rest were probably just print shops that handle printing tasks. There’s nothing that can be done about it. In design firms, architects are constantly interacting with computers; if they’re not reporting to their clients, they end up spending their days in front of the computer. Moreover, design firms enforce strict rules – they don’t allow employees to use Taobao or watch videos, and the IT department keeps monitoring their internet usage to ensure that they don’t get distracted from their work. This is reality. The outside world is fascinating, but what does it have to do with me? Communication in a design firm involves architects, as well as structural engineers, plumbing specialists, electrical engineers, and 3D modelers… This is probably the most common type of interaction one comes across. One day, your son needs to go for an interview at a kindergarten... You realize that you don’t know anyone there; when you ask around, everyone you meet is part of those same networks. And then one day, you fall ill and want to find a doctor you know to help you, but... you don’t even know any nurses. No matter how advanced rhino parametrization is, it can’t capture your helplessness. 4. It’s the positioning in the service industry. Before, we thought that clients were stupid and easy to deceive, and not very professional at all; but over the years we’ve realized that these clients are actually former members of design firms – it’s no longer possible to fool them. And design institutes, being the downstream party in the industrial chain, are restricted in every aspect. When I was in school, I thought architectural masters were amazing – they could design whatever they wanted; I would draw whatever I wanted, and it was my decision. But once you go to a design firm, you realize that the client has countless demands; they say NO to your suggestions and opinions, thinking that you’re not professional and that your skills are inferior. I remember when I was working at a design firm on a project to design a shopping mall; we developed many concepts and conducted various analyses regarding the business models. But then the client came and said that the entire proposal needed to be redone, claiming that all those analyses we had done were nonsense. The client hired a team from Japan specifically to handle the business model aspects. When you discussed space planning with them, they would ask how much money that space could help them make in sales… If it couldn’t generate enough revenue, then it wasn’t good enough. If the client were a contractor, they might still take your work into consideration, but the client’s executives didn’t care at all; they thought it was just a few drawings – why take so long to create them? It’s just a few pictures, right? Do we need that much money? Since money has been paid, let’s make the change. Change it to this today; tomorrow I think the day before yesterday would be better, so change it back... Let’s make the change. For Party A, everything is centered around money; efforts are made to meet users’ needs, and plans are developed right from the stage of acquiring land. After those plans are prepared, a report is submitted, followed by the acquisition of land – and then the process starts over again. Revising and editing over and over again is all for maximizing profits. But by kowtowing like this, have we earned the respect of the client? Well, if the client is polite, they might say you’re a good person… the “good person card”. After saying a lot of things... the final result is “change”! Respect? It’s a myth… In the eyes of our clients, we are just their hands, merely putting into practice the ideas in their minds. So... sigh. 5. Personal emotions: When working in a design firm, does your partner always question you? How much work do you have? Working overtime every day? Either working overtime or on the way to work overtime. Maybe they just went on a date, were about to order food, and then were pulled away to work overtime. This is normal. And what is even more common than this norm is that the majority are single. Who do you think websites like Zhenai.com, Baihe.com, and Shiji Jiayuan were created for? Later on, I realized that it’s us… Most architects lead a life that consists of going back and forth between home and the workplace; they spend most of their time thinking about how to complete their work. As mentioned above, this nature makes it impossible to reach more people. If both spouses work in design firms, then well, for you, home is nothing more than a bed; home is just like a hotel. I usually get home around 10 or 11. If there are children, then fine. It’s not yet dawn, and you need to go out; the child isn’t awake yet. Then, at night, when the child fell asleep, you just got back. This is the norm in work at design institutes. If you don’t believe it, you can ask your colleagues who have children around you. There is another situation: due to high work pressure, working long hours alongside the opposite sex, many people experience emotional crises. If you indulge in a bit of gossiping, you’ll find that design firms are full of it. Then there are those who work overtime abroad for long periods of time, working outside every day, which leads to divorces; there are countless such cases. If one was single before joining a design firm, it is very likely that this single status will continue for a long time. 6. Staying up late and working overtime: Actually, our greatest wish is to avoid working overtime and staying up late. But once you go to the design institute, you’ll realize that it’s a joke, an illusion. We always wonder why we have to stay up late and work overtime Design firms in a period of growth need to take on a large number of projects, but many of these projects are pointless and result in no real outcome; for example, designing projects to assist clients in acquiring land, only for it to be unlikely that they will actually obtain that land after completing such work. There are also bids to make, and a desire to become famous. Then go all out with the bidding – bid hard. No overtime? Just by working 8 hours? Dream on. We often encounter this situation: we give you a task assignment tonight, and ask you to submit two proposals by tomorrow for the boss to choose from... So what do you do? The boss often says, “There’s never enough work to do; take care of your health.” ”Then the next day, “I want a plan”... Think about it – isn’t that a phrase everyone is familiar with? Changes in requirements, reviews by design institutes, reports from clients, and so on all require continuous revisions to the design drawings, making staying up late and working overtime the norm. Many things have a ripple effect throughout the whole system, but others think it’s just a simple matter of making some changes. There are many more things. Knowing full well that the client hasn’t yet determined exactly what the requirements are, the supervisor still asks you to make changes, thinking that this is a good approach. By the time the actual requirements from Party A come in, they are completely opposite, and you have to make changes again. Many diagrams are worse off after being modified rather than being redrawn; such pointless tasks consume a lot of overtime time. What colleagues in the design office fear the most is the time just before Friday’s end of work; usually, there are meetings held right before then, after which tasks are assigned to be reviewed on Monday. Hehe. That means working overtime on Saturdays and Sundays; you then have to choose between working from home or going to the office. Many employees still work overtime at the office just to let their bosses know that they are working, in order to demonstrate their diligence. There are also many shameless bosses in design firms who call on wonderful Saturday evenings to see who is working overtime. If all of the above has already left you exhausted, then there are also the various intrigues that occur in offices. Some say that where there are people, there are intrigues, and that’s true. But we just want to quietly draw some pictures and create beautiful men and women; however, that’s not possible. Wherever you are, there’s a vortex. If you don’t join, you’re the enemy. Having heard so many experienced professionals talk about the shortcomings of design institutes, are there no advantages at all? There definitely are, but it still depends on your choice; this is an objective reality. For reference only. The final decision is still up to you.