Getting my Hopes Up

As you all know, my current supervisor... hmm... nicely put, he's senile. (Yes, that is nicely put. I could say a lot worse!) His job is "Studio Manager," which means he is in charge of running the schedule, making sure the work goes to the right people, and checking our work before it goes to the department head. He fails at all three. Instead, typically, he tries to do my job, either leaving me nothing to do or assigning me work I would have assigned to someone less expensive. I feel I could do his job better than he does it, and I'm an Aspie! (We're not too good at the inter-relations part of management.) This is the same guy who kept threatening me with taking away a promotion to my current job.

I know it's hard for firms to hire experienced architects these days. The recession in the early 90's followed by the silicon boom means there are precious few architects in their 40s at the moment. As entry level architects, many lost their jobs in the recession and then went into a different line of work, leaving those of us carrying on in the third millenium with few architects who have 15-20 years of experience. We are importing many from other states, but California's licensing process is both a deterrent and a roadblock. Intellectually, I know these things. My emotions, however, are simply annoyed that my company could manage to hire such an incapable bufoon.

The lack of mid-level architects is a large part of the reason there are so few female architects I can model myself after. Although schools of architecture have been graduating roughly equal numbers of male and female architecture students for around 20 years, very few stayed in the discipline. Because architects, once licensed, may remain licensed until they are dead, it leaves us looking at the older generation for the m/f architect statistics, which makes things decidedly uneven.

Fortunately, my department finally hired a new project architect, who starts next Monday. Project Architect is the title of the position between the Studio Manager and me. Now, I'm a couple months away from getting my license, so eventually she and I will be on the same level, but for now, she will be a buffer between my current supervisor and me. (Please? I'm begging here!) Yes, that's right, I said SHE. This will be my first female boss in the architecture profession! I've met a few female architects before. There were 2 at my last company, fighting against that firm's glass ceiling. There was one that I met through the girl scouts while in high school. I'm so pleased to finally have a role model. She even has 2 small children! I can model how she balances work and family life!

I hope I am not getting my expectations up too high. I want so much from this woman: a decent technical architect, a personable manager, a buffer to take the crap from mister senile, a role model for an architecture mother, and a mentor. That would be a hard enough combination to live up to, without also having to report to a senile studio manager!