What is a good firm?
What makes every firm so unique?
How do I know what I want in a firm culture?
How do I know if a firm has a good culture?
Firm culture for me, means that there is a sense of belonging between me, coworkers, firm leadership, and overall values. It is deeper than having happy hours, fun things in the office, award-winning work, and/or a cool office space. Each firm is as unique as you are. One step in understanding what type of firm works best for you is to understand yourself first. You need to know yourself, define your own values, what inspires you, and what excites you. This will be your guide as you grow and develop in your career.
Define your values and goals
When you go in for a job interview, there are specific terms that apply to every job: compensation, benefits, paid time off, typical hours per week expected, project types, etc. But what factors do you consider for firm culture? What do you need/want? When you graduate from college, it is hard to know what direction you want to take your career. There is so much to learn! In starting your career, you should take your best stab on understanding:
- The people you are working with: types of roles in the firm, team size, firm size, firm diversity, number of registered professionals, number of professionals pursuing licensure.
- The projects you could be potentially be working on: Project type, Project scale, your role within a team, will you see a project from start to finish,
- The “other” activities. Understand what the firm does besides straight project work. Are there technology/research initiatives, social gatherings, volunteer work, committees/groups, design competition participation, is joining professional organizational groups encouraged, etc. This can be a variety of things that can help you grow as a professional outside of project work.
For those questions above, each person has their own value scale for each. You may be someone that values professional organization and technology/research initiatives over all others. If you are pursuing licensure, you may want to have others in the office also pursuing licensure as a possible study group, or if you have questions regarding the process.
Once you have a few years of experience, you will gain more of an understanding of what you want in an office beyond what is listed above. As mentioned in the beginning of the post, firm culture is about having a sense of belonging. Just because your firm has a weekly/monthly happy hour and does some fun things does not always mean that you feel a sense of belonging. But the sense of belonging also has to do with a firm’s influence. What does the firm do to engender a sense of cohesion, that all are a team? How does it support individual passions and goals within a group framework?
Start taking the time to recognize what motivates you to come to work, what inspires you to push the boundaries, what energizes you during the day, what drains you, and what passions look the most interesting over the horizon. Then create short, medium, and long-term goals for yourself purely on those items. Do this without thinking about your current firm’s capabilities. Sometimes you can redirect your career within your current firm, and sometimes it is beyond their abilities.
Don’t forget those initial more certain factors of compensation, benefits, paid time off, typical hours per week expected, and project types. Those will always come into play in your career and may influence firm culture. Are you okay with working an expected/typical 55-60–hour work week, or do you need to maintain closer to 40 hours per week? Do you need a minimum amount of PTO for mental/physical health, family, and travel? Do you need certain benefits to be covered for yourself and maybe now others?
Experience
Why does it take experience to understand work culture? When starting at a new firm it takes time to learn the ropes. For some this is the first experience working every day in a professional office. An architectural firm is a professional office and therefore different from most work environments. There tends to be less rules and rigor, and it’s not 9-5 and leave your work behind. Along with a less draconian environment comes greater expectation, responsibility, and a level of professional conduct.
You deal with other outside professionals, and clients. You get the work done no matter what it takes; it’s not defined by the time on the clock. From first impressions to insight into the firm dynamics, it doesn’t happen overnight. Giving yourself time to get adjusted to the change in environment is important to know your perception of the organization and how you work as a design professional.
Your work experience also is a huge factor. Some organizations may use similar software programs and the design/construction process is similar so adjusting to a new company is typically easier than when you first graduate from school. It is your experiences that help to define what you enjoy doing and what is just part of the job. It also takes experience to realize what inspires you, what you value, and what you could do without. (for projects and firm organization)
It is rare to have the first firm you work for be the perfect culture for you. It takes experiences from a variety of places to help define who you are as an architect, person, and what you want. As you move through your career, you will notice certain things are better in one firm over another, but it is important to note that there is no perfect firm. There is not one firm that is the ideal place for everyone, that wins every design award, that is perfect in the design/construction realms, and immune to recessions. By being a person who can learn from their experiences, identify their goals/values, and remain agile as they grow will find that “ideal” firm for them.
Life Changes
The goals, wants, and needs as a young professional straight out of college are a lot different 5-10 years down the road. A firm may be the perfect choice for what you want at the time of being hired, but it is natural to have your goals change. Sometimes that same firm can be the right spot for ever changing future goals and sometimes it does not. You may find yourself fascinated with scripting technically but are at a small firm that can’t afford to accommodate the time and funds towards those needs.
That may be a case to seek a new firm that is already implementing that technology to learn from others, grow as a professional, and grow the firm. It may be hard to leave a company that you love most of the facets of the firm’s culture. But if it’s not pushing you to be the best you can be and/or fostering growth in your passions, it may be time to move on.
Boomerangs: a simple term I learned for those that leave Firm A for Firm B, and years later return to Firm A. It is never impossible to return to a previous firm. It all depends on how you leave the previous employer and to not burn any bridges. The architecture community is relatively small, and your network often includes individuals in multiple other firms. When you leave a company, it is important to leave with honesty, respect, and to not burn down any bridges. Leaving on good terms with your project teams, leadership, and the firm is crucial for your career. You never know what the future holds. You may end up returning to Firm A. You could be coworkers again with previous colleagues from Firm A. It is important to acknowledge that the world is constantly changing, change is good, and you never know what lies ahead.
Work culture can always be a tricky thing to grasp. What works for one person may not work for another. One place where someone succeeds may be the same place where someone else is ignored. It is not a simple process. It often takes time working in other offices and finding the right place for you. Do not feel you need to “settle” for something. It’s a simple fact that although a firm maybe a good fit for 40 other people it may not be a good fit for you. There is no reason to beat yourself up because of that. But it is valuable to try and get a handle on why.
I have been to career fairs where a student didn’t like the firm they were interning at but accepted a job offer there without interviewing at other firms. You should always see what options are out there and be able to compare. Stay in touch with classmates and former colleagues. That is a great way to understand what is going on at other firms and get a glimpse inside their culture. It is up to you to discover what you want in a company, what challenges you to succeed, and ultimately a place where you feel that you belong. Last, don’t get caught up in someone else’s definition of success. You have control over your values, goals, and definition of success. How you reach all of those in your career is up to you.
Written by
Katelyn Rossier, AIA, LSSBB