Out-Sourced

I always get asked by architects to recommend the best students in the graduating batch for them to hire. Perhaps it is because I'm in the academe and, therefore, would be familiar with the skills of the students. Recently I received a handful of requests. I decided to sit down and write the names of the noteworthy ones, and where they are now. This exercise revealed something very interesting.... I have heard that many architecture graduates went to call centers, but the good ones have also ended up in a similar venture... outsourcing.

Outsourcing is a very lucrative business. You only need to establish a contact abroad, then a computer at home with auto cad, and finally an internet connection so you can chat with your client about the project in real time. The clients pay in dollars and the outsourcing agents always charge a fee much, much lower than the client's hometown market rate.

Architecture graduates, and even full pledged architects, flock to outsourcing companies simply for the pay. The work has its own stress centers... particularly irregular time and the tendency to remain an auto cad encoder the rest of your life. If they're lucky, they might get assigned to a more "architectural" task like designing and supervising construction. The pay, though, is really good.

There are other reasons why they go to outsourcing centers. Some are not confident to practice, others simply want a hassle free work. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is the pay.

With people going to outsourcing companies, I now have a hard time getting good people for my practicing friends. It seems to me that even if all my architect friends would team up and give a chance for new graduates to shine they would eventually get frustrated. That is, of course, unless they match the salary. But here's where the weighing scale tips out of balance...

Outsourcing pays much for low level skills... computer drafting. Many of the people I know who works in outsourcing centers are not even proficient in auto cad when they entered. The architects, however, can not match the salary considering that the new hires would be inexperienced. They have to learn the tricks within the firm and their salary can only increase if they show that they are learning, and improving.

I have nothing against outsourcing centers. I even tried it for a month to see how it operates. And there are outsourcing centers who hire for a notch higher level of skills, like rendering. I just realized that it is getting more difficult to find people to train. The bright side of it is simply this... what is happening right now is a good way to determine who are really determined to practice architecture.