THE REA SONS One of the questions of the survey is: why are you working there (in that office)? Seemingly a naive question, it instead addresses one of the most impalpable, unwritten disputes on practicing Architecture: The hidden agenda. It concerns one’s plan for the future. It is, in a way, the: “what do you want to be as a grown up?” kind of question. A young architect, freshly out of university, is faced with the choice of thousands of offices to apply to. The scale is global, and so is the ambition. Participants were offered 5 possible answers to the question: - reputation of the office 17 - clear future career opportunity 9 - learning opportunity 55 - no other choice 11 - other (specify) 23 55 respondents indicated learning opportunities as the reason behind their choice. Together with the second biggest group1, reputation of the office, they form a vast majority. The average income of those who applied and work at an office for learning opportunities is the lowest, as they signed, willingly or not, an internship agreement for a temporary contract. The results of this response imply the statement: I am willing to sacrifice my income, if at least I can do an interesting job. Or if that job will look extremely prestigious on my CV. And for all we can assume an undeclared motivation: After graduation, I wasn’t ready to work in a permanent job. The very few that, instead, responded with future career opportunities, based their choice on a stable and reliable working environment, and they form the group whose income is, by far, the highest.
1: Those who answered other, often specified the reason were both reputation and learning opportunities, or a rather contradictory all of the above.