Hey Friend!
Welcome to another Q&A with your friendly neighborhood Resilient Architect.
Each month, I answer the questions about being a Resilient Architect that you want most. I’ve curated 4 of your questions from Architects of all different experience levels. Emerging Professionals, Mid-Career, and Firm Leaders.
If you’d like to participate, please fill out the Google Form by clicking the button below. I’ll pick a few questions (3 to 5 each month) and write about them here for the benefit of everyone who reads The Resilient Architect.
Chances are if you’re thinking about something, so is someone else out there. So don’t be shy!
This Month’s Questions:
- How do I transition to Mid Career with only a few years of experience?
- How do I grow my firm without sacrificing the quality of work or team wellbeing?
- Should I stay at a firm where I’m learning but unhappy, or move on?
- What do I do when I’m given tasks way above my experience level?
Q1: How do I transition to Mid Career with only a few years of experience when our industry places such a strong emphasis on the number of years you’ve worked?
It’s impossible to accelerate literal time, but you can absolutely accelerate the quality of your experience.
Architecture firms love asking for everything from new hires, especially early in your career.
Here’s the reality:
You can’t magically add years to your resume, but you have complete control over what types of projects and experiences you pursue—both in and outside the office.
If you’re not getting the experience you want at your current job but still want to move up, focus on proving to leadership that you’re ready for the next level.
This happens in two ways:
- building a portfolio of projects that backs up your capabilities
- having direct conversations with leadership about your future and setting concrete goals together.
Get them on your side by showing initiative. Enter design competitions, create side projects that develop skills in typologies you want to pursue, or join organizations that get you into the community.
The reality is that advancing in architecture requires getting better with people, constructability, and money.
Don’t worry about time—worry about gaining the right kinds of experiences and tracking them well.
Q2: How do I grow my firm without sacrificing the quality of work or team wellbeing?
Add quality talent as you grow, and choose processes over hiring more bodies.
Having managed teams of various sizes, the best way to scale without burning out is to focus on hiring high-talent individuals who elevate everyone around them.
- Star players make everyone want to perform better—they learn from them, work harder to not let the team down, and raise the overall standard.
- Too few quality players and morale drops, along with the effort to get things right.
Build your team slowly.
Don’t rush to hire just for the sake of hiring.
Every new person requires time from someone else to onboard and train, which can actually slow down current work.
Instead, do a QA/QC check on your current operations.
- Are there ways to make existing work more efficient?
- Do you have processes that make bringing in new team members seamless?
When in doubt, choose improving processes over adding headcount. Check in with your team and ask where they think they need help.
Understanding where you currently are prevents you from blindly guessing and making things worse.
Q3:Should I stay at a firm where I’m learning but unhappy, or move on?
First, identify exactly why you’re unhappy—sometimes perspective is all you need.
This comes down to understanding the root cause.
- Are you unhappy because you’re not getting interesting projects?
- Lack of recognition?
- Being pulled in too many directions?
- Or are you in a genuinely toxic environment?
Sometimes switching from “unhappy” to “content” just requires a perspective shift about what this phase of your career is actually about.
Architecture is a slow-burn profession that takes years to master.
During that time, life happens—relationships, kids, struggles.
I suggest staying at a position for at least a year to gain as much experience as possible, especially early in your career. You don’t know what you don’t know yet, and sometimes taking some blows makes you more resilient and helps you appreciate better opportunities later.
If you’re truly in a toxic workplace, there’s often little one person can do to change the environment overnight. But if you’re learning, you’re getting something valuable—and sometimes a “bad” job teaches you more about what you want from architecture than a “great” one.
Q4: What do I do when I’m given tasks way above my experience level?
Raise your hand immediately and say you don’t know—it’s okay not to know, but not okay to hide it.
Architecture is one of the most complex professions out there.
I have over 17 years of experience and still don’t know everything, so it would be crazy to expect someone with half that experience to know everything either. The moment you get a task beyond your level, tell whoever assigned it that you’re not sure how to proceed, but you’re eager to learn.
Honestly, that’s half the battle.
Sometimes when I assign tasks, I forget the person receiving it might not know how to execute it.
- If they just brute-force the problem without telling me, we might spend double the time getting to the same result anyway.
- If your supervisor knows you don’t know but sees you’re excited to learn, the process becomes much smoother.
- If you’re not comfortable telling your direct supervisor, ask a mentor outside your office or reach out to architect friends.
So often we forget how many of us are struggling with the same challenges. Have the humility to raise your hand and ask for help—it’s way better than letting something linger or blow up later.
Final Thoughts
The architecture profession will try to convince you that career advancement follows a predictable timeline with predetermined milestones.
This is a comfortable lie that keeps people passive and prevents them from reaching their potential.
The truth is that careers are built through value creation, not time accumulation. Whether you’re trying to advance faster than expected, grow a firm sustainably, make difficult career transitions, or tackle overwhelming projects, the solution is the same: focus on results, not rules.
Here’s what you learned today:
- Experience requirements are often arbitrary—demonstrate impact instead of counting years
- Sustainable growth requires building systems before you need them
- Learning without fulfillment is a trap that slows your actual development
- Being challenged beyond your comfort zone is where real career acceleration happens
Stop waiting for permission to advance your career.
The industry’s gatekeepers benefit from your hesitation, but you don’t have to play by their timeline.