P.S. – Not a Motivating Post!!
Architecture in India is like a slowly sinking ship. We have failed the profession. Do you know why? Let me tell you one by one.
1. Because presently most of the architectural employment adverts are like:
Hello folks! Do you need a job post B.Arch.? Great. We also need cheap, experienced employees who will work like a slave and in return – we are going to pay you peanuts. Oh! I only forget to mention – apart from your four-digit pay, you won’t get any form of perks and you will be obliged to work at least 54 hours a week!
I think this situation is adequate to make you understand the current condition of the architectural employment market in India!
2. We compare ourselves with a profession like physicians and lawyers! We feel ourselves to be a great visionary who has the power to construct a better world.
But the fact is we are primarily impoverished and inexpensive labors for the starchitects or the developers. Recent graduates are working for even 10000/per month! We are spending such a big sum for our schooling that is making a hole in our dad’s pocket and at the end – we are working for only 1.2 LPA!
3. We discovered that most of the Indian architects are so pompous and egoistic that they look down upon other sectors.
We have a crazy superlative ego. We perceive IT and Management people as nerds. But look at our own situation! At least they are earning a fair salary to maintain their family. We neither have work fulfilment, nor money.
A bright software developer has the possibility to obtain a big pay if he joins a product-based organization. MBA grads from top 20 b-schools can easily earn a six-digit salary. How much does an architect earn in compared to them? Even most of the seasoned and mid-level architects also earn significantly less than an MBA graduate or software engineer. We just keep blabbering with our empty pockets and this continues on. In the present context, a fresher architect considers himself lucky if he can find a job which pays him around 25-30k/month which is also pretty rare these days. On the other side, this is the bare minimum income which an IT engineer can anticipate. Forget about doctors or MBA grads. Still, architects will brag about their inventiveness and talent. Architects console their poor soul by thinking that we are creators and money does not matter to us. What a brilliant prank it is.
4. Our communities look at COA and IIA. We feel that they can make some modification in the system.
But do you know the truth? Each and every year they are enabling hundreds of new Architecture colleges to open up in India. As a result, the market is being swamped with fresh grads like us! There is a lot more supply than demand!
5. We are such a talented and creative workforce. But we lack marketing expertise.
We lack the basic knowledge of marketing, we lack the basic knowledge of organization structure & design, we lack the basic knowledge of finance, accounting and so on. Still, we are following the age-old syllabus in our architecture schools. Teachers with almost zero professional expertise are training aspiring architects. They will make you a dreamer, but they don’t tell you about the actual world beyond your institution. Your dreams are crushed as soon as you leave your college and begin the profession.
6. We blame common people, we do not listen to our clients, we think they know nothing about design.
What have we done to teach them? What have we done to educate the common people on architecture for the past 70 years? Why practically all the architects are working only in metro cities? You will find a lot of middle-class folks who have an interest in art, sculpting & diverse sorts of art. But seldom they have an interest in architecture. Isn’t this our failure?
7. We are not allowed to make advertisement!
But how can we appeal out the wider population if we are not permitted to sell ourselves! There is scarcely any attention on architecture in major media or newspaper. But still, we do not try to write about our works and obligations in popular magazine/journals! Why architects do not write in regional languages? We are pleased with our little exclusive community and we do not have any form of interest to enlarge our universe!
Still, we are so stubborn that we won’t look towards our inadequacies and keep blaming the people. The system has to alter. We are already sitting in a sinking ship. The quicker we realize that; it will be good for us.
Thoughts? Let us know in the comments!!
What an apt piece of writing. I have just graduated nd have been going through the same thoughts. This market is a sucker plus we freshers are treated as if we don’t know anything plus the kind of experience firms ask from us is like as if we have been handling sites all the 5 years of our college life. And to the best of it the institution such as coa and iia are of no use in uplifting the situation of the community.