Should I work for the ultra-wealthy?

I've experienced similar feelings and when a character on Mad Men uttered the following line this season, it really struck a chord with me: "Just cash the checks. You're gonna die one day."

Maybe you can use it to get the credibility to convince the 1% to let you build greener buildings. Or someday go start a socially-minded firm that builds better housing for the middle class and get all your old clients to invest in you.

My dad does the engineering on these kinds of houses. It hurts him a little bit to be making sure that someone's fifth or sixth 5,000+ square foot home will stand up, but it pays the bills. It is also really the only place that interesting design work is happening- at the very highest end, which has been the case forever.

You can laugh at me if you want, but I've cried over this issue. Money is always a way more complicated and highly emotionally charged issue than I first think..... I guess I want all that 1% wealth to magically go to where it is needed - schools, kids who don't have enough to eat right now in the US, net zero and better buildings. In reading your wonderful and much appreciated responses, I'm recognizing that the idealism I'm battling in myself is a kind of child-like thing - wants magic and fairytale endings, without recognizing the nitty-gritty, dirty work. That's not the person I want to be. So I think as Admira suggests, reframing the question: taking the money, doing the work, making my life better by not having to constantly worry over money, and using that freedom to constantly ask myself how to make the world better in whatever ways I can. And have a better, more far-sighted plan to do that...Growing up, being an adult.

The tone of your question sounds like you think all "1%ers" are morally bankrupt asshole evildoers. That is absolutely not true. Take the job and think a little about whether it's fair to stereotype.

How do I get my head in the right place to take this job? A job taking from the rich and giving to yourself - and they voluntarily give it to you? Now, if you were doing this for them for free, or doing something that just makes them richer, or increases the disparity, then I could see having some well-deserved internal conflict. But what you're talking about is helping them find a way to redistribute their wealth voluntarily by wasting in on conspicuous consumption. They want to part with their money in exchange for some expensive material stuff? Help them, man.

I've worked for a firm very much like this. You know Mitt Romney's elevator car house? My firm worked on that, and the place next door, that used to owned by Cliff Robertson. The car elevator did not come as a surprise to me - it happens all the time in that area. First off - people commenting in this thread should not assume that you'll necessarily be making a lot more money with this firm than you would somewhere else. I made more money working on strip malls than I did doing ultra-high end houses. I made plenty enough to live on, but not megabucks. Second, I think you've overly romanticized the Promethean aspect of architecture. There's a billion workaday buildings out there, and they have to be designed by somebody. No one gets to do works for the greater public good all the time. If you're not doing rich people's houses, you'll be doing some kind of building for the corporations where they're major shareholders, or building cultural institutions funded by their donations. It's not something that would really worry me. Third, I'd worry much more about what your role will be in this firm rather than the kinds of buildings you're working on or who your clients are. Will working here give you experience that you wouldn't be able to get as easily elsewhere? Will you be intimately involved in the permitting process, either for discretionary or building permits? Will you be the primary point of contact for consultants? What will your role be during construction administration? Will you get to design stuff? If all this is minimal at first, will the position give you the opportunity to grow into those roles? Does the firm have a history of letting their employees do that? Those are the kinds of things that will actually further your career, not so much doing CAD monkey stuff on a notable building. So, I worked for a firm where we did ridiculous houses. Clients included Tony Robbins, Ted Waite (founder of Gateway computers), the owner of a chain of stores in Mexico, the one-time-not-W owner of the Texas Rangers, and one of the founders of Qualcomm. The houses I worked on were generally over 10,000 square feet; the largest one I did was 21,000. Most of our clients wanted traditional work, but I did luck out and get a couple modern projects. However, the traditional work we did do was generally pretty good - not too exciting to work on, but our finished product ended up looking decent and "correct". A lot of traditional stuff gets done really poorly, so it was nice to work for a place that really tried to get it right. This was my second job out of school, and I took it mostly to get out of the horrible environment where I was working previously. I got a lot of benefit from the job - almost all those questions I asked above would have been answered in the affirmative there, other than the design one (and I still contributed, I just didn't get to do the big stuff at the beginning of a project), and that was all very valuable experience for me to get, especially so at age 25. By the end of my time there I was handling just about everything other than project budgeting - I ran the permits, I did all the drawings, I met with the consultants and reviewed and coordinated their work, I reviewed all the construction shop drawings, and I led the jobsite construction meetings. There are not many firms where I could get all that experience less than 10 years out of school. Ultimately, I left because the only place I had to go there was a promotion to "project manager", which would barely increase my responsibilities, so I left to get into commercial work. I should note that most of our clients were pretty decent people, just not very adventurous in their desire for a living environment. They're not sitting around twiddling their mustaches and looking for damsels to tie to railroads, and building a house for them wouldn't really help them do that anyway.

I find it so interesting that you have chosen to go into architecture, a profession – unlike many others – that relies on the direct patronage and major, major investment of people and institutions and organizations with money. It literally does not get done without someone saying, yes, I will spend a minimum of several million dollars for this thing to get designed and built. It’s not like you’re treating everyone who comes in the emergency room doors or teaching every child who lives in the bounds of the school district. The job is, by definition, designing things for people who want to and can pay for them to be built. What you are kind of saying is that you only want to build some kinds of buildings, for only some kinds of people, who have some significant amount of money - certainly enough to afford a whole building – but not too much money, because that suddenly that turns gross and evil! You are well entitled to only want to do what you want for the people you want. But I would sit with it and think about what, in this case, money is a proxy for in your anxiety here because it will continue to be an issue, particularly if you are an architect but have a problem with people who have money to spend. You are in an industry where you will live and die by cultivating clientele. Of course it is up to you to pick and choose your clients as much as you can and as you see fit but think about why it is you are pre-rejecting the biggest clients before you even try.

It sounds interesting! Almost every interesting architectural work was done for a rich person -- even Frank Lloyd Wright's "cheap" houses were going to the 1% of that time. Poor people can't afford to take risks on doing something new or different. Also, laughing at rich people is fun. A lot of them are secretly bankrupt, have screwed up family relationships, or have addictions that would simply be impossible on a lower budget.