Zero Post
I'm an architect with about 20 years of experience and tomorrow I'm doing something that I haven't done in almost 15 years - I'm starting a job at a new firm.
It's a change that I've been needing for a long time; a few years ago my family moved to a location that was good for my children and close to my wife's work, but further from mine. On paper it's a distance that seems like it would be a reasonable commute, but realistically it started out long and has gotten longer each year that I've done it. My work hours were flexible in the way that means if traffic makes you arrive late then you can stay late to make up for it. Of course there are parts of my day that are inflexible; morning meetings, kid drop-off times, spontaneous meetings with my bosses, and bedtimes. So if traffic made me late to the staffing meeting it looked, and was, bad. If I stayed late to make up for missed time then I missed what little time I had with my kids in the day. That commute made me a bad employee, a bad parent, and a bad spouse.
Even before the move I had another problem growing inside me: a feeling of inadequacy in my work environment. There are a lot of reasons for that, some of which are my own to work out with myself, but some come from my employers. When I started this job I was in my 20s and very much felt like a kid with a lot to learn. It made sense that my bosses would see me that way as well, and that I would have to work my way out of it to be seen as something other than that kid who started there. I'm in my 40s now and I've seen people come into the firm in their 30s and be treated as though they could provide value to the firm that I couldn't even though we had similar experience levels. I don't begrudge them for that, it's the nature of things to see someone from outside your organization as offering something more and taking your current staff for granted. It's tough, but it's a real thing.
Also the firm had built a great reputation and had a great body of work to its name, which is a great thing to be a part of, but there's a weird kind of prison with that as well. Architecture is a creative pursuit and requires practitioners of it to think of new and different ways to solve problems, but those solutions will be viewed in the context of the portfolio of the firm that they come out of, which creates a pressure to get things right. I'm a person who is plagued by self-doubt and so the weight of previous success, partially by myself, but mostly by others, stifled me. I became afraid to suggest ideas for fear of them being seen as not well thought-out, mundane or just plain stupid. I use the companies Instagram feed as an example of this, scrolling through it, it's all winners. Every shot is professionally taken, professionally edited, cropped, photoshopped, and adjusted to be as close to a perfect representation of the project as possible. There are no duds in that feed, there are also no candids, no selfies, no employee news announcements, in fact, there are very few people at all. The feed is about the work and not the people behind it. The awareness of this creeped into my own IG feed and made me second guess what I was putting there, made me take my personal touch out of my own work.
So, in addition to needing a commute that allowed me to be a good architect, a good father, and a good husband, I need to get out of range of how that firm made me feel. I've been in therapy long enough to know that my own happiness is not just a matter of getting away from questionable influences, but after working on myself for a long time it was clear that my problems weren't only internal and that I would need to make external changes as well.
So here I am, I've left a successful firm of 40 or so people that I've worked for years to create a space for myself in, that I'm recognized as a leader of by people both within and without the organization, in order to go to a firm of 4 people that I know little about, but is closer to home, is run by people that I have good feelings about and will most likely be able to have dinner with my kids most nights. I'm not sure how this looks from the outside, and there's room to question the decision, but I think it's worth it so that I can get myself back again.
That's what this blog will be about, me figuring out how to be a good dad while also discovering what kind of architect I can be. I hope you enjoy it.
It's a change that I've been needing for a long time; a few years ago my family moved to a location that was good for my children and close to my wife's work, but further from mine. On paper it's a distance that seems like it would be a reasonable commute, but realistically it started out long and has gotten longer each year that I've done it. My work hours were flexible in the way that means if traffic makes you arrive late then you can stay late to make up for it. Of course there are parts of my day that are inflexible; morning meetings, kid drop-off times, spontaneous meetings with my bosses, and bedtimes. So if traffic made me late to the staffing meeting it looked, and was, bad. If I stayed late to make up for missed time then I missed what little time I had with my kids in the day. That commute made me a bad employee, a bad parent, and a bad spouse.
Even before the move I had another problem growing inside me: a feeling of inadequacy in my work environment. There are a lot of reasons for that, some of which are my own to work out with myself, but some come from my employers. When I started this job I was in my 20s and very much felt like a kid with a lot to learn. It made sense that my bosses would see me that way as well, and that I would have to work my way out of it to be seen as something other than that kid who started there. I'm in my 40s now and I've seen people come into the firm in their 30s and be treated as though they could provide value to the firm that I couldn't even though we had similar experience levels. I don't begrudge them for that, it's the nature of things to see someone from outside your organization as offering something more and taking your current staff for granted. It's tough, but it's a real thing.
Also the firm had built a great reputation and had a great body of work to its name, which is a great thing to be a part of, but there's a weird kind of prison with that as well. Architecture is a creative pursuit and requires practitioners of it to think of new and different ways to solve problems, but those solutions will be viewed in the context of the portfolio of the firm that they come out of, which creates a pressure to get things right. I'm a person who is plagued by self-doubt and so the weight of previous success, partially by myself, but mostly by others, stifled me. I became afraid to suggest ideas for fear of them being seen as not well thought-out, mundane or just plain stupid. I use the companies Instagram feed as an example of this, scrolling through it, it's all winners. Every shot is professionally taken, professionally edited, cropped, photoshopped, and adjusted to be as close to a perfect representation of the project as possible. There are no duds in that feed, there are also no candids, no selfies, no employee news announcements, in fact, there are very few people at all. The feed is about the work and not the people behind it. The awareness of this creeped into my own IG feed and made me second guess what I was putting there, made me take my personal touch out of my own work.
So, in addition to needing a commute that allowed me to be a good architect, a good father, and a good husband, I need to get out of range of how that firm made me feel. I've been in therapy long enough to know that my own happiness is not just a matter of getting away from questionable influences, but after working on myself for a long time it was clear that my problems weren't only internal and that I would need to make external changes as well.
So here I am, I've left a successful firm of 40 or so people that I've worked for years to create a space for myself in, that I'm recognized as a leader of by people both within and without the organization, in order to go to a firm of 4 people that I know little about, but is closer to home, is run by people that I have good feelings about and will most likely be able to have dinner with my kids most nights. I'm not sure how this looks from the outside, and there's room to question the decision, but I think it's worth it so that I can get myself back again.
That's what this blog will be about, me figuring out how to be a good dad while also discovering what kind of architect I can be. I hope you enjoy it.
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