I’ve been thinking about ways of working. A few months ago, I had a chat with a career counsellor ^[1]. She was a pretty cool customer, not easily impressed, not easily excitable.  It’s not like she was distanced or disengaged, but she’s somebody you could tell had seen a lot of stuff in her time. She looked at you as if you weren’t going to throw her something she hadn’t already dealt with before. Anyhow, we had a good conversation and it loosened up pretty quickly. During our talk she pulled out this stat that has since stuck in my head: she said that there are roughly 300,000 very general kinds of jobs in Canada and the US. She added, as if she weren’t already clear, that Architecture would be just one.

Huh, a second later the snowball of thought in my head starts rolling: I said, but even in this one single category, “Architecture,” there’s a broad spectrum of how people actually practice. Huge. From the academics and writers on one end to those that get in their on site and actually “grab a hammer” and build their own designs. And of course even in typical practice, you’ve got firms as small as one person or as big as multinationals. Within firms, you’ve also got a huge spectrum of experiences: from folks who never even draw a line like partners out drumming up new business, giving presentations, making deals or like programmers who document clients’ spacial requirements. You’ve got the contract admin (construction) architects who like to get out on site and spar with the contractor, operating on the fly, sketching stuff up just before the concrete is poured. Even amongst CAD staffers, you’ve got folks who love to solve details and you’ve got guys who couldn’t draw a detail to save their life but they can produce your large scale set PDQ. You’ve got guys who are masters at particular specific building systems like stairs or coordinating ceilings; you’ve got CAD nazis and their nemeses, the all too casual CAD standard abusers. Then you’ve got the kids who can crank out the fancy ass renderings, but can’t do anything else, and of course you’ve got the principals who love to parachute into the project just before a major deadline, and pull out their big black marker to make a bunch of last second nonsensical changes, often reversing their decisions made on their previous drive-by assault, sometimes just because they can.

Then you’ve got firms doing all kinds of work: from the fine scale of  building envelope consulting to the massive scale, urban planning. And then all the areas of practice (kinds of projects to design): house renos, hospitals, retail & restaurant, institutional, interior design, heritage restoration;  you’ve got the guys producing world class innovative supercool stuff on one hand and thedeveloper’s bitch on the other, cranking out formula condo towers, it goes on and on.

And in all the kinds of firms, in all the types of projects, you’ve got a massive range of attitudes and personalities in their the approach of the practice: you’ve got folks who aim for fame, you’ve got the natural BS’ers, you’ve got the “most for the least” hacks who recycle designs, and do as few drawings as possible, producing lean and sparse drawing sets, leaving a lot of room for the contractor’s  artistic license. And on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the perfectionists who put an incredible amount of care an attention into every detail of the building, to anticipate all conditions before they’re built, and obsess about the quality of drawings, something that few clients have the eye to evaluate.

But for all the diversity in the way the profession is practised, for all the personality types, talents, temperaments, preferences, proclivities, obsessions, ambitions, motives, and general attitudes to life and work, architecture still represents just one of 300,000 kinds of jobs.  Just one. Of 300,000.

How does this relate to me?

So. Back to ways of working. What I’m talking about is the experience of how you actually work, and I am including anything that affects your state of mind and general happiness with your job: how many people are around you at any given time, how many unimportant phone calls are you fielding, how many “emergency” situations you have to attend to; do you work alone or in a tight team, or are you scattered; do you sit at a desk or can you take your laptop to Starbucks to get things done; are you in control of your workflow; do you have people popping in to your office to chit chat; are you working for an organization that aligns with your own personal beliefs; is your work time spent crafting something special or are you producing garbage for the lowest common denominator; how many hot girls are you in contact with throughout a day; how many politicking conniving little weasels are quietly working against you; how’s your pay; how much time to get away from work; can you wear jeans to work; how about flip flops.

Funny how much we focus on the general: which general field are you in, when I would argue that your satisfaction in your work is just as much a function of the ways of working. It also makes me think that if you get into the right “way of working,” you could be equally satisfied in an number of fields.

1. ^ Partly because I’ve always been curious, partly out of current dissatisfaction.