<p>“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”</p>
<p>This is a great point- many students I know who went into architecture shadowed a principal at an office for a couple of days, or visited architecture offices in highschool to see what it would be like. But who did they focus on? The design principal and/or owner. Who did they admire and want to be like and spend time talking to? The person in charge. Not the intern, not the project manager, but the single person out of 5 to 50 in the office who gets real design input. This is a big reason why there is an exodus in the first five years: nobody thinks about what the vast majority of the profession does every day when they get into it, they think only about what the very top, oldest, most experienced people do. Not everybody who leaves does so because they “can’t cut it”, some could have made fine architects eventually, but most people just plain won’t take that stuff. They don’t see the reason, don’t think it’s worth it, feel like they could do better for themselves.</p>
<p>So for those who want to be architects: don’t just look up to the boss. He’ll treat you like his pet when you visit the office, but make sure to notice how he treats his employees, what they do every day, too. Even if you make it to the top someday, it’ll take a lot of years of doing the rest of it before you do.</p>