<p>I will add my experience as it gives a possible career path that some architects fall into. After beating my head against the profession for many years and not able to tolerate the instability, I ended up in government (NYC). There are many qualified (and unqualified) architects who end up here. It is not a very satisfying existence as far as creativity goes but it is stable. When you have a family and a mortgage and you are over 40 and have gone through two brutal recessions (late 70s and early 90s), stability and a decent wage look pretty good. It was not the career I planned but I know people who are doing worse and with a working spouse I have afforded to live in NYC in what most would consider a large apartment by Manhattan standards and send one child to private school.</p>
<p>I was told before I entered the profession that I would not make much money and they were right. The advice I give to those in architecture school is look around and see what other allied fields there are. I believe that 50% of graduating architects leave the profession in the first five years. With that, there is still an oversupply most years. So in those first five years, see what the other possibilities are. It might be construction, law, banking (construction lending), real estate development and finance (an area I tried to get into but my timing was never good. I got an MBA in 1992, the depths of the recession that did not abate in NYC until 1996). </p>
<p>No offense to Cheers but she is looking at the profession from the top down and those considering the profession need to know what the view is from the bottom. What she says is what you can aspire to but very few actually reach. I give her all the credit in the world for attaining what she has but it is certainly not typical.</p>