Most architects I know who have a job right now are desperately trying to hang on to it for dear life. This recession has been brutal for architecture firms in Phoenix and all over the country. Large firms in town that employed over a hundred people have either closed their doors or downsized to a fraction of the size. The unlucky few who are left with jobs have had to take deep pay cuts and are doing the work of two or three people. Not to mention, they go into work everyday scared as all hell that this might be the day that THEY get laid off.
Here are 10 reasons these people should face their worse fears and QUIT their jobs.
1. Chances are you’re going to lose your job anyway. Why not embrace this and take control of your own life?
2. Do you really want to hang on to this job? Is it really worth sacrificing forty plus hours a week for this firm you work for? Do you share the values and mission with your firm or are you just there to get a pay check? Or half your paycheck I should say.
3. When you quit, you can devote forty plus hours of your life creating a job for yourself that fits YOU perfectly. You can spend this forty plus hours creating ways to make enough money to make ends meet and eventually more money than you would make as a Project Manager or Associate at your old firm.
4. You’ll meet interesting people who share your passion. Working at a firm usually limits your social interaction to your work colleagues and that’s it. When was the last time you met someone new and interesting that doesn’t work with you?
5. You’ll have time to participate in events and seminars that promote your development without worrying about what your boss thinks.
6. You don’t have to impress your bosses who have no design sense and don’t care about anything else but surviving this stupid recession.
7. You’ll actually have time to pursue your real passions and create wonderful things instead of plopping down on your desk and answering RFIs or working on those EIFS details on the ugly building designed by committee.
8. You can make up your own design process and stick to your design ethics instead of having to follow archaic methods thought up by the old men in your firm in the seventies.
9. You can do great work with very little overhead cost and a great deal of flexibility. You will weather this recession so much better than the big lumbering firms of yore.
10. You can make being an architect fun again!
So take a moment and ask yourself, why the hell am clinging on to this corporate architecture job so desperately? It’s like you’re clasping on to the cage when the door is wide open all along. Let go of the bars, fly away and be free. You will be ok. You will be more than ok, you will thrive and succeed and be happy! Go for it, write that resignation letter and embrace life again.
This is great advice for everybody in the corporate or gov’t/bureaucratic rat race. I’ve done more interesting things, met more cool people and learned a lot more about myself in the 4 months since I lost my lost than in the 8 years working for ‘the man.’