Starting a career in architecture means figuring out where you fit while discovering how much you still need to learn. Experience helps you recognize your strengths and find work that suits you, although it would be convenient if your interests would then agree to stay put. Your abilities develop, your priorities change, and success can start looking different than you expected. Apparently, figuring out what you want to be when you grow up requires periodic updates. Welcome to Episode 213: What do You Want to Be This Decade.
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Today we are going to be discussing four stages of an architecture career, from the early years of trying to understand the profession and find your place within it to the later questions of what you want to pass along and how you might eventually step away. Andrew organized these stages into roughly ten-year increments, which gives us a useful structure without suggesting that your career is supposed to arrive somewhere specific on an anniversary. We’ll talk about how learning turns into application, how experience changes your contribution, and what happens when helping other people do the work becomes a larger part of your own job. Those changes can involve deliberate choices, discoveries about abilities you hadn’t recognized, and opportunities that turn out to suit you better than whatever you originally had planned. The idea is to consider what each stage asks of you and how your interests and priorities develop along the way. You may recognize where you are, remember how you got there, or hear something that makes the next stage feel a little less mysterious.
Early Career – Understanding the Profession jump to 02:50
Approximately 0-10 Years After Graduation
The early years of an architecture career involve learning how the profession works while trying to figure out where you fit within it. You arrive with ideas about the work you want to do and a fairly confident assessment of what you are good at, then someone hands you an assignment that seems to have very little connection to either. The assignment still needs to get finished, and understanding why it matters is part of your education. Your first office gives you a view of architecture, but it takes some time to recognize how much of the profession exists beyond the work on your desk. Deciding what you enjoy is difficult when you are still discovering what there is to do.
My own experience during this period involved trying to marry what I thought I was good at with what the job needed me to do. I started recognizing that critical thinking and communication were strengths, although my assessment of where those abilities should place me was ahead of the supporting evidence. My ego needed some adjustment, and I had not earned the position I was giving myself. Being able to identify a problem or explain an idea clearly gave me something useful to contribute, but I still needed to learn how to develop a solution and take responsibility for it. The complication was that discovering actual strengths gave me additional reasons to trust my judgment, including on subjects where I had very little experience. Confidence can make it difficult to appreciate that distinction, particularly when you have prepared an excellent explanation for why you are right. Individual assignments gradually helped me understand how decisions connected, what other people contributed, and why an idea that looked reasonable on paper could become difficult to build. Learning when to contribute and when to listen was as important as recognizing the abilities I wanted to develop.
Andrew’s observation, investigation, and filtration ideas describe much of what happens during these years, although I doubt many of us recognize the process while it is happening. Certain lessons resonate, particular problems hold your attention, and you start noticing the work you want to understand better. Looking back, those responses were shaping my career before I was consciously choosing its direction. The same assignment might introduce one person to a lasting interest and convince someone else to investigate other options. Both have learned something useful, provided they have enough context to understand what influenced their reaction. You might finish your first decade with a different assessment of your abilities and interests than the one you brought into it, which seems like a reasonable return on ten years of paying attention.
The post I referenced during this section was “Perception is Reality” and as far as lessons learned, this lesson was foundational to the trajectory of my career.
Mid career – Applying What You Know jump to 22:31
Approximately 10-20 Years After Graduation
The midcareer years allow you to apply what you have learned with greater independence and a better understanding of the consequences. People begin trusting you with decisions because you’ve shown you can handle them, and that recognition can be satisfying. You can look back at a difficult project, recognize your part in what happened, and approach the next one with some idea of what you would change. Knowing when to ask a question is as useful as knowing the answer, especially if the alternative is someone spending three days drawing the wrong thing. Catching that problem early might never produce anything you can put in your portfolio, but the people working alongside you will appreciate it.
Application and refinement happen together because doing the work reveals where your abilities still need attention. You may understand a technical issue perfectly well and discover that explaining it to a client requires an entirely different set of skills. Leading a project might expose weaknesses in how you organize information or how long you wait before asking someone for help. Those discoveries give you specific things to improve, and repeated experience lets you see whether your adjustments are working. Specialization can develop through that process as certain building types, technical challenges, or responsibilities hold your interest. Other people notice your abilities, opportunities follow, and you have a chance to pursue work that suits you. That is worth taking seriously, particularly when you enjoy the subject enough to keep learning about it. Your growing experience also gives you a better basis for deciding whether you want that expertise to become a larger part of your career or whether you would like to explore something else. The decision deserves more thought than simply accepting the next assignment because it resembles the last one.
Andrew’s inclusion of equalization, or balance, acknowledges that professional development has to coexist with the rest of your life. Greater responsibility can be welcome while still requiring time and energy that are already committed elsewhere. Your ability to estimate the effort involved becomes more useful here, although knowing exactly how much work you have accepted does not create additional hours to finish it. I think this period calls for a more deliberate assessment of what an opportunity offers and what you can reasonably give it. That might mean having a conversation about support, adjusting expectations, or accepting that something you would like to pursue needs to wait. You can care about your work and want to advance while also expecting your career to leave enough room for the people and interests that make the effort worthwhile.
Prime Career – Making Experience Count jump to 35:09
Approximately 20-30 Years After Graduation
The third decade of an architecture career gives you considerable experience to draw upon and, hopefully, a better sense of where it is useful. Andrew calls this the prime stage, which raises a reasonable question about what we mean by being at our best. You can recognize patterns, anticipate problems, and explain why something that appears minor deserves attention before it becomes expensive. Some of that judgment will be visible in the work, while some will show up as a problem the team never has to solve. That can make your contribution difficult to measure, although avoiding a week of unnecessary effort seems like a perfectly respectable accomplishment.
Prioritization becomes important because you are probably capable of handling more of the work than you have time to do yourself. You might enjoy developing a plan or working through a detail, but you also understand where the team needs a decision, a conversation, or a clearer explanation of what everyone is trying to accomplish. Choosing where to get involved takes judgment, particularly when doing the assignment yourself feels easier than explaining it to someone else. The deadline provides a convincing argument for taking over, and you can usually find enough reasons to make that seem like the responsible choice. Doing it every time, however, leaves you with the same problem on the next project and gives the other person very little opportunity to improve. Helping someone develop judgment means allowing time for questions and decisions while accepting that their approach may differ from yours. Your involvement should help them understand the work well enough to take responsibility for it. Administration and facilitation can be satisfying when they make that possible, but neither becomes easy simply because you have practiced architecture for twenty years. Learning how to guide people deserves the same attention you once gave to learning how a building goes together.
The idea of a professional prime also needs to accommodate architects whose ambitions do not involve managing an office or supervising a large team. Design ability, technical expertise, project leadership, and strong professional relationships can each become the basis of a rewarding career. A title might recognize your contribution, but the work you actually spend your days doing tells you more about whether the role suits you. I think this is a useful point to consider what experience has made easier and what you still enjoy enough to keep pursuing. Some responsibilities may deserve more of your attention, while others could become opportunities for someone else. Your priorities have probably changed since graduation, and the definition of success you started with may no longer be particularly helpful. You have spent years developing judgment that other people depend on; using some of it to evaluate your own career seems appropriate.
Late Career – Passing it Along and Stepping Away jump to 45:09
Approximately 30+ Years After Graduation
The later stage of an architecture career brings questions about how you want to use your experience and what you want your continued involvement to look like. Thirty years of practice does not automatically mean retirement is approaching or that your most interesting work is behind you. You might be pursuing new projects, developing an expertise, or becoming more selective about commitments now that you understand what they require. Andrew’s ideas about preparation, dissemination, and separation allow for that continued work while asking what you want to pass along. Your experience has value to other people, and your own plans deserve consideration before the office helpfully fills in the blanks.
Preparing others requires more than being available when someone needs an answer. Experience can make decisions feel obvious, which becomes a problem when you are trying to explain them to someone who has not spent decades learning what deserves attention. You might recognize a concern, consider several consequences, and recommend a direction without mentioning much of the reasoning involved. That reasoning is often the most useful thing you can share, particularly when it helps someone evaluate a different problem later. The story of how you learned the lesson can help, provided the explanation does not require an extended tour of how much harder everything used to be. Passing along knowledge also requires opportunities for people to apply it, including responsibility for decisions and relationships you may have handled for years. This takes some willingness to step back while remaining available, rather than waiting nearby for the first indication that you should take over. Someone can benefit from your experience without adopting every preference you have developed. Seeing them handle the work confidently should be satisfying, even if a small part of you would still like to explain how you would have done it.
Separation is the part of this stage that will look different for everyone. You might hand over an ownership role, reduce your hours, retain a few responsibilities you enjoy, or decide that work no longer gets first claim on your time. Those choices can be welcome and still take some adjustment when being an architect has shaped your routines, relationships, and sense of accomplishment for decades. I think it helps to consider what you want to move toward, whether that includes continued practice or interests that have spent years waiting for your attention. Clear expectations matter if you remain involved, especially for the people who are taking responsibility and need the authority to do their jobs. Your experience can continue to be useful without requiring the same role or schedule you have always maintained. Making room for that change gives you and the people following you a better chance to enjoy what comes next.
Making Ep 213: What Do You Want to Be This Decade
An architecture career gives you plenty of opportunities to reconsider what you want to do and where you can make a useful contribution. The early effort to understand the profession gradually becomes a more informed conversation about your abilities, interests, and the responsibilities you want to accept. Experience helps you make those decisions, even if it never quite delivers the permanent certainty you might have expected. Andrew’s stages give us a way to recognize those changes without treating a particular anniversary as a deadline for having everything sorted out. You may want to deepen an expertise, take on a different role, help someone else develop, or make more room for life outside the office. Those choices deserve consideration throughout your career, especially when the work is going well enough that you could easily keep doing the same thing. What you want to be this decade can build on everything you have learned while leaving room for something you have yet to discover.
Cheers,
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