Episode 3: The Journey from Architectural Design to Product Design with Airtable's Adrianne Ngam
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Intro
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Adrianne: [00:00:00]

Adrianne: As you mature and you get more skills, I think you're able to ask yourself more, like where do I have the most impact?

And that naturally I think becomes what you care about because you can see the ripple effect that all of your hard work has on the people who are using it. And I find that to be the most motivating thing right now.

Silvia: Welcome to Tangents by Out of Architecture.

Out of Architecture is a career consulting firm helping designers apply their incredible talents in untraditional ways. We're highlighting some of our favorite stories from the amazing people we've met along the way. We will hear how they created a unique career path for themselves from the wide variety of skills and talents they developed in and out of architecture.

Our guest today is Adrian Ngam, Product Designer at Air table.

Hear Adrian share her experiences as a designer who transitioned from architecture to tech. I loved hearing Adrian, talk about the respect and admiration she has for the work architects do and how that led [00:01:00] her to her current work with low code tools today.

Adaptable, Discerning, Very Ready To Be Wrong
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Silvia: Welcome to Tangents. I'm very happy to have you here today and to get started. I'd love to hear you describe yourself in three words.

Adrianne: I will answer it. Um, In three words that I think have captured the full arc of the story. So not specific to this time. I would use adaptable, discerning and maybe ready to be wrong, which isn't a word that's multiple words, but very ready to be wrong.

Silvia: These are really great. And actually they're a little different than what I've heard in the past. I'm really excited to hear a little more backstory about them. Where did these words come into play throughout your career path?

Adrianne: my career path, I mean, Anybody who has a career path that originates from architecture is on a very straight and narrow and historied path and getting out of it. Or at least like finding the courage within yourself to try something. That's not along that prescriptive path, I [00:02:00] think. Is very surprising and humbling and requires just like a flexibility to your mindset that your assumptions might be incorrect. And everything that you've learned in school is of like in this very specific canonized framing.

And there's a very big world of design and business surrounding everything. That's helped architecture become what it is today that we frankly just didn't have access to. I think, in our education and is full of surprises.

Silvia: I loved what you said about the courage to be wrong and that you're ready to be wrong. Did that happen over time through different experiences or was that kind of part of your personality throughout, like off the get go?

Adrianne: in design, in general, there's. It's like combination of things that are very subjective and then things that also fit rules and principles of like science and aesthetics that we know to be true. And I think in order to be a good designer, you need to have. [00:03:00] The ability to realize that something you felt very strongly at about, at one point you might not feel strongly about and at another time, and it could be because the world changed it could be because you changed.

But I think being able to let go and also face critique and face change is something that I've just had to build in to who I am as a person in order to keep moving forward with my career. I think ways that I thought that I was actually right, three years ago I don't really see those same values as I do today.

And like ready to be wrong is just this idea that a decision you made yesterday doesn't necessarily have to dictate a decision that you make today.

Getting Into Architecture
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Silvia: I'd love to hear. what were some of the decisions that led you into architecture or how did you decide to get into it?

Adrianne: Sure. Frankly, I think getting into architecture was a little bit naive. I don't even realize looking back on it, how I [00:04:00] came into it. I was a teenager growing up in the Midwest and I didn't have a lot of perspective. I wasn't traveled. I didn't have any formal education training in the arts. Definitely not access to drafting classes or anything like that. But I knew that I loved drawing and I loved crafts.

Like my uncles were wood workers and I was very comfortable, like pulling up somewhere and just like dedicating myself to one idea, one project for a long time. And. I saw that in, in architecture when I was just like, like randomly picking up a major, the way that we do when we're kids of that age.

And I could see the themes, even though I didn't fully understand what they were. And an architect was just like a job that I thought I knew what it was like, everybody knows what an architect is. Nobody knows what I don't know, like a shoe designer at Nike is you don't really make those connections when you're that young, that the field is much broader than these like very specific, almost like [00:05:00] archaic titles.

So that just happened to be what I picked.

Silvia: And what are some of your experiences working in architecture after schooling?

Adrianne: Yeah. After schooling I moved straight to the bay area and I practiced at SOM. It was like a big corporate firm. And frankly I chose it because at the time I knew I had student loans and everybody was like, SOM is sort of like, Master's degree bootcamp.

So if you're not in a position where you can go get your masters you're gonna be well suited to work at this firm and they will work you to the bone and you'll get everything you need out of experience. So that's why I did it. And I was on projects that didn't necessarily align with what I even liked about architecture or what I thought I liked.

I was doing a lot of high-rise towers in China. I did a lot of competitions and I did do a little bit of like residential master planning year in the Bay.

Silvia: And then what are you currently up to now career wise?

Adrianne: Um, Today career wise my, my title is product designer and I'll caveat it because for the listeners, I know [00:06:00] that people in architecture here, the word product designer might associate it with industrial design. I certainly do.

But product designer in this sense is like a product designer at a tech company. So the product I design is always going to be software. So those roles like UX designer, UI designer, Interaction designer, those all sort of roll up to this bigger umbrella title that is product designer.

Recognizing When and Why To Switch
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Silvia: Thank you for that background actually, because I was the same way too, like product didn't mean anything if you're not from a tech company, which I would say architecture operates very differently from. Is there something, from your experiences as an architect, what was the turning point in your mind? That was like, I might want something else for myself?

Adrianne: Yeah, there, there was this very specific moment where I had been working on a competition project for months, and I hadn't been to my apartment on weekends for months. And there was this moment. I was, it was 4:00 AM. And sitting next to me was my [00:07:00] boss, who she was an associate at the time.

And I was like, I just didn't see myself wanting to live that lifestyle when I was at her stage in her career. And I really respected her. And she was an amazing designer and I just pictured myself like enduring what I had been enduring. And I thought there has to be like something different that I can do here.

Silvia: What were the steps that you took after that moment? That after something clicked, I also had a similar moment where it's just like, after all of these long days and nights, and then you see all of your managers above you and you can of see what your next 30 years would look like. So once you made a decision or realized that maybe that you didn't wanna pursue that, what steps would you take.

Adrianne: Oh, yeah, that's a great point. well, at first there were some other things that I noticed too like, in the firm that I was in, there weren't a lot of people who looked like me all the way at the top. And if you're young and you're trying to look towards someone who's [00:08:00] going to like, sort of shepherd a path for you. It's just hard to picture being successful when it isn't modeled for you.

And I happen to be in the bay area. So Silicon valley and there's a ton of people in this city and there's a lot of creative people in this city. And I knew just by making friends and talking to other people that there were other designers, but they weren't designers in the world that I knew like architectural design isn't the esteemed designer title in this city. Like the designer that people think of in the bay area is a product designer. And I saw people who I could picture myself becoming, living like a lifestyle and a career path that was so different to mine. But at the same time, I felt like it was very attainable. Like the way they talked about their work made sense to me, the way they talked about the types of projects they worked on made sense to me.

Yeah. As I learned more about what designers were doing in San Francisco, who weren't designing an architecture, I was exposed to the idea that design was like a bigger industry and a bigger educational realm [00:09:00] than I was exposed to in my education. And I was curious, I just wanted to try it. I really believed that there was something there and, I saw other people living it, so I just felt inspired to wander away.

The Discovery Process
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Silvia: And then what kind of questions did you ask yourself or how did you start to approach this path out of architecture?

Adrianne: Yeah. So I was lucky enough to have friends who had already done it either. They had gone to grad school and pursued a path that was more adjacent to like digital design, art direction.

And then I had friends who full on cold Turkey after architecture school jumped straight into a startup. And did the fake it until you make it. I am a UX designer, but I don't quite know what that means. And like brute force worked their way into, small company that took a chance on them and then raised themselves up.

I think the types of question I asked was well, first of all, I was just very aware of the fact that I knew nothing about what [00:10:00] these people were making all day, like in architecture, it's very obvious. Like you were working on a building and your responsibility for this building, is the curtain wall. It's so tangible.

But here I knew there was like a huge design org, Google, and I think about google.com and the suite of all these group of products. I'm like, I have no idea what these people are working on. So first I think I just wanted to find that out. I talked to people who had a design role or a design title, and I was like, tell me about your job. Tell me about what it is you're building that you are bringing into the world and focusing on every day. And like why that saying that you're building is important to the company and who it's for. And I think through having those types of conversations, which were really discovery it, it wasn't about networking or about trying to find a job and jump into those jobs. I just wanted to know what was there, like what are other people making all day long that isn't buildings.

Silvia: [00:11:00] Yeah, I love the way you frame that because networking has this like feeling that makes people not wanna do it, but discovery is just like searching, researching, which is something as architects we are familiar with, right? If there's a new type of project that we wanna get more information on, we just research and become an expert on it.

Finding Your North Star
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Silvia: What did you do with all of this information from your discoveries?

Adrianne: Right? So I, I sort of triangulated and was, was starting to see themes in each one of the types of projects people were working on in terms of the platform. So like I knew that some people were working on projects that were like mobile apps. So I knew that mobile app sort of thing.

Some people were working on things that were more like campaigns and advertisements and like things that you would see people do in an agency that, that were like very visually attractive to me. But weren't necessarily like products.

And then the other type of thing I was aware of was people who built [00:12:00] And by that, I mean, like, When you're an architect you're exposed to like a plethora of software that you're expected to turn into an expert on. And I was spending all day in some combination of Revit and grasshopper and rhino and 3d S max and like rendering systems. And I was like, oh, this is the type of like digital work that I am excited about because I understand how it works. So I was kind of like, I feel like I've been sitting and tinkering in those types of design environments, my whole life, like that is the north star that I wanna start marching towards because it was familiar to me. I understood it. I didn't know anything about consumer mobile or anything like that. And that felt like a bit of a stretch. So I started shaping my arc to be stepping stones that would get me to. In my head, I was like, maybe I'll work at Rhino someday. Or Autodesk was down the street and I thought that working at Autodesk would be like the most [00:13:00] amazing thing ever.

Shedding Your Identity
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Silvia: And then you did work at Autodesk, correct?

Adrianne: I did work at Autodesk and it, it felt like I was like fulfilling a prophecy. That was, I think that was the moment where I felt like I'm officially not an architect anymore. And I can like shed this architecture student who's transitioned into something identity and like I'm officially working on software.

Silvia: Can you expand a little on the identity, part of that, like identifying as an architecture student, working at an architecture firm and now making this switch, did you have to reinvent yourself in your head?

Adrianne: Yeah. I, you know, I can see people handling it in two different ways.

One way to do it is to embrace the fact that you have a deep a history of working on architectural prob projects and even like proficiency and expertise executing on those types of projects and reframing that in a way that I think is palatable to people who are [00:14:00] not in the profession who say I, I can see like these types of skills and abstractions that translate well into this career, even though you haven't done those things, but I can see where the dots connect.

The other way to do it is like stripping yourself of any sort of history of architect and being like, I'm not an architect, I'm a product designer now. And then tailoring your profile to be all about that.

I've flip flopped over time what the best strategy is. And I think that there just isn't a best strategy. The one that I tried was more the former where I was like, I feel like everything that I've been doing in architecture can apply and I would reframe the story and redesign it in my portfolio. So it felt like more of the way that you would decide or more of the way that you would explain a software product to somebody who was hiring at a tech company. Because I was just like very confident that the skills I had learned both in school and in [00:15:00] practice were translatable and had merit. So I didn't pretend that they didn't exist.

Multitasking as an Architect
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Silvia: Yeah, absolutely. Can you share some of those similarities that you picked up in school that you find very helpful in your current day to day? I'm sure software designers or product designers have all different types of paths, but can you see some things where your experience enriches your day to day?

Adrianne: Yeah, I think in practice. The thing that I didn't realize would influence my path so deeply was just the idea of multitasking and architects have to grapple so many different variables at once that I think is like very unusual compared to other creative jobs. In addition to understanding site and form and design principles. You also have to be an expert on zoning laws. You have to talk to the community and know how to work with community feedback and get approval from the city. You need to understand the constraints of like client feedback and even just like client feelings [00:16:00] and knowing how to frame things in a way that they're going to accept or not accept their program requirements, material structure there's like all of these different systems that have to fit together. And at the center of it, I think is the architect who has to have all this awareness of things that aren't necessarily directly their formal responsibility. And what I thought I saw in product designer roles is that the role was like much more narrow or it could be if you wanted it to be like, you could choose a, a firm or a company or whatever, where your role as a product designer was really about like producing mockups of screens for a piece of software or a mobile app. Or something, but I think that the successful people who choose a career designing in tech they need to have business acumen. They need to understand how to present and pitch things to. Areas that aren't directly inside of design other parts of the org, you need to understand how decisions get made in engineering and what the difference is [00:17:00] between an expensive decision and a cheap decision, and being able to absorb everything that's going around you and stitch it back together is like a very architectural way of operating professionally.

How To Have the Most Impact
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Silvia: That's a really great way to put it. I think maybe not even all architects realize that as well, that your task is not just completing the drawing set, but it's also working with the clients having more projects with clients. So you're saying in a bit that, maybe you don't realize that as quickly or like some people focus on just the projects in a way?

Adrianne: Yes. I think a job description is never going to fully illustrate how much leverage you could get by establishing relationships and even just an understanding with all of the cross-functional parts of your org. And if you choose to put the binders on as a designer and not really engage with what are the latest things on the top of an engineer's mind and like, how are business decisions getting made all the way at the top that determine what falls on the roadmap for everybody else? I [00:18:00] think if you choose to turn a blind eye to that You're just, you're limiting yourself in what's possible for design and how to have the most impact.

Low Code Movement
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Silvia: Can you share some of your day to day and the projects you're working on or the workflows or tools that you use?

Adrianne: Yeah. I'm like part of like a, I wouldn't call it a movement, but like type of tools and softwares or concepts that fall under this umbrella of low code or no code. So the idea is that it's democratizing access to software by letting people or providing a platform where people can build their own tools without having to learn lines of code. I think the reason. I fell into this part of the industry and stayed in it. It's been about four years since I've been working on low code tools is because architects work with low code tools all the time. And don't really realize it like I think grasshopper. Learning grasshopper at a very intermediary proficiency while I was in school, [00:19:00] taught me so much about computation and databases and engineering. And I didn't realize like how powerful and amazing the ability to design an entire dynamic building with parametric constraints, using nothing but boxes and wires.

That was like an, a completely amazing concept to me. But it took me working in another industry and looking back to see how much potential was there. And tools like Revit and grasshopper that sort of combine this like computational lens and basically like deep computer science principles about like arrays and functions and like grouping things together based on logic totally changed our physical landscape.

And it made us build things that like, we didn't, we would've never thought that was possible. Like our ancestors would, 200 years ago an architect would come in and be like, how did you make this? And it's because we had these tools. And I [00:20:00] think. The same, that spirit is captured in, in the type of work I do today.

Instead of building grasshopper, which lets architects build whatever physical form they can imagine. Um, I sort of build a tool that lets people build their own tools. It's an app that builds apps essentially, but It's something that people wouldn't have been able to do. Like even very simple things like building an approval workflow for candidates that are applying to their company. Like being able to build a tool that automates that for themselves. You wouldn't be able to do that if you didn't have some understanding of computer science or even the ability to like hire and pay for a designer. And it's just like giving access to this digital world that is expensive and elitist to teachers and like people who don't consider themselves to be technical at all. And I think that's really exciting, just like lowering the floor of access and bringing it to a whole other wider audience [00:21:00] is really exciting.

Embracing Changing Interests Over Time
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Silvia: Do you see things that in the beginning that excited you about architecture or inspired you? Do you see glimpses of that in your current work as well?

Adrianne: I actually don't. I think what I've been attracted to and excited by has changed over time. And I've really just learned to embrace that. And I think a common thread that comes flowing in between it, I think is like, Any architect who's had like a strong, formal training and did well in their career. Coming out has a very high appreciation for like quality and craft. So there's definitely like a visual integrity that I've carried with me at all times. And I'm probably never going to let go of, but in terms of the way that design fits into the bigger world and the way that it's serving and helping people and how other people who aren't designers look upon the work and how it's affecting their lives.

I think I've cared about that much more over time, or at least in a different way in capacity than I thought, [00:22:00] I think. Going into architecture school. You're like very idealist and you're like, oh, like sustainable architecture is the future. I'm gonna save the world. The built environment is gonna save the world.

And then at some point you realize that's impossible and the architect has no control and you become very formal. And then when you graduate, you're just. Beholden to paying off your loans and you just do whatever. But as you mature and you get more skills, I think you're able to ask yourself more, like where do I have the most impact?

And that naturally I think becomes what you care about because you can see the ripple effect that all of your hard work has on the people who are using it. And I find that to be the most motivating thing right now.

Silvia: Absolutely. That kind of relates to what you were saying when you recognized that you weren't spending your weekends in your apartment. That for me resonates a lot. What am I spending all of my time on? I was like, I. So I, I want, I wanna see what else is out there. So definitely dedicating your [00:23:00] time and energy to something that is meaningful to yourself.

I'm curious to know if along this way of carving out this career path for yourself and life for yourself. What thoughts did you have were there any moments where you questioned your decisions or needed to reconfirm the decisions you made?

Courage to Meander Off the Path
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Adrianne: Yeah I think more than anything, it just took courage.

When you subscribe to an architectural education and then you go down the path getting your hours and getting your licensure I think the more you invest in that, it, the more beholden you feel to that career and that title, because it's your entire world. It is so focused and doesn't really meander off of a very historied path.

So I remember people would ask me when I was doing it. Don't you feel like you just wasted, five years of school and three years of work are you ready to throw that all away? And I didn't really believe in that mindset. It [00:24:00] didn't feel like I was like flushing something down the toilet.

It, it gave me skills or I had the hunch that it provided me with skills and abilities that I could apply elsewhere and still excel at without having to have it be towards buildings.

Respecting and Admiring Architects Still
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Silvia: And then how would you define being an architect in your own words now from these varied experiences and the multiple ways you can apply yourself?

Adrianne: I think that uh, like the word architect and the title architect.

I'm pretty traditionalists in that. I really believe that somebody whose work is dedicated to studying and designing for the built environment. And when I hear somebody say I'm an architect, I assume that their line of work is in architecture. They're designing buildings. There's definitely like some licensure that I assume that they have.

And I think it's because I just, I really respect and admire architects. Like the dedication and [00:25:00] knowledge and effort, it takes to be able to call yourself an architect and have that title and earn it is I just really respect it. And when I see the title stretched into other contexts like, uh, information architect or software architect here, I can't help but to feel, I feel something about that because I know the path that somebody has to take to become an architect and like twisting the title is different to me. I do think studying architecture and being an architect is different. And I've definitely decoupled that in my mind, studying architecture does not make you an architect, but it does make you a great designer.

And I think like the title designer is much looser and more malleable than the title of an architect.

Do you think architects and designers are the same thing?

Adrianne: I think an architect is the type of a designer.

Silvia: Very interesting. Cuz I think sometimes people might nestle designer under an architect.

Adrianne: [00:26:00] Yeah. I could see that The taxonomy is difficult and I think like I've changed my mind a lot about it. I think I like when I see it, I know it when it comes to who is an architect versus who is a designer. But I don't wanna discredit the idea that somebody who does a lot of the same thing that an architect does, but then applies them into a different context that, that isn't any less worthy. It makes them a fantastic and very impactful and high potential designer. But I think outside of the context of the built environment like immediately recontextualizes that role for me.

Silvia: So how would you describe your current work? Without saying a product designer for those of us that are less familiar.

Adrianne: Yeah. Everybody, my mom and dad, I'm sure they still don't know what I do. I guess that the easiest way to say it is. I make software I decide how software [00:27:00] works and how it looks, but mostly how it works.

Silvia: That's very cool because I never realized how much goes into a building.

Like I could just be focused on like coordination with like engineers and consultants and that could consume my entire week or for a very long period of time. But it's such like a small part of what people understand buildings to be and how PE people experience buildings. But it's.

Equally as important and necessary. So I imagine that's how people also understand software. Everyone sees it, knows it, but what actually goes into it and the nuances that get it to be made people also can't really fathom unless you're in it.

Adrianne: Absolutely. There's a lot of differences. I think the biggest differences are just like the idea of materiality. As soon as you strip out the third dimension and everything's digital instead of physical that's what makes software design so iterative and like high impact and able to proliferate so quickly because it's not like [00:28:00] burdened by the laws of physics and all the decisions that come with that.

So in a way, I think that the decision making that goes into architecture, like you described and being able to like negotiate all of these things that aren't, designing the look and the feel of the space. It's a lot harder. There's just so much more decision making, going into it. And those types of negotiations are still in the tech realm, like product design.

But I think the pace and the expectations are what make it different.

The Weight of Decisions in Architect Vs Tech
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Silvia: What are some of the things that you enjoy the most about this tech world being free of all the limitations of like gravity, physics?

Adrianne: Yeah. Oh, I think there's pros and cons and there's also like my creative, there's like a creative lens to it and there's a practical lens to it.

I never shy away from talking about the practical benefits of being a designer in tech versus being a designer in architecture. And it's really just the lifestyle [00:29:00] and like the there's like a material aspect to it, which is definitely architects don't get paid as, as much as you think they would, when you're going through school and see how much they have to deal with and how much they need to know.

And in tech that was just like much more accessible. And I think because you're not burdened by the physics of it and everything that comes along with that. There's this like wild, west, anything goes type of feeling and the risks you can take, don't have the same weight as risks you take in architecture.

If you make a wrong decision in architecture, it is possible that you could kill somebody. And that is like .. That is like a very um, you could argue that could happen and product design too, but it's like way more of a stretch.

I think you could afford to change your mind. You could afford to be very wrong. You could afford to make things that are ugly, and it just has much less of a tangible impact than it would if you were [00:30:00] an architect. So you can learn from your mistakes a lot faster.

When the types of decisions that you're making have much less of a dire impact on like immediate human health and safety. the types types of decisions you make and the rate at which you make them is more and faster.

And. You can afford to make small visual or even functional mistakes. And the impact of those mistakes is going to be so much less dire than affecting how somebody occupies a room for the next 50 or a hundred years or however long it takes for an architecture to like come to fruition.

Like digital space is so ephemeral. It's not a physical place that somebody can occupy. It's much cheaper for it to transform and be bad and then be good again and then be bad again. And like the impact is probably annoying and inconvenient for somebody, but it's not going to risk [00:31:00] their health. And I think that's interesting.

Silvia: Yeah, absolutely. I feel like architects very much operate within a constraint of what you're allowed to do within like zoning. Like you said, building code and budget and just physics. So sometimes I feel like your options while endless are not really endless.

I wonder if that exists in the opposite way as a product designer, where you have a lot of options of things you have to do. And so you have to set your own boundaries for yourself while working.

The Speed at Which Decisions Get Made
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Adrianne: I think that's accurate. So you have to find different ways for constraints to come into play, to give yourself more friction. And I think that's very real.

I think one of the results of that is like in, in product design, because. There is a little bit less friction and you are making decisions faster and things certainly get built and then are out in the wild faster. You constantly have this like never ending IV drip of satisfaction of seeing your work come to [00:32:00] life. It's very fast. You're like on success or failure. And in architecture, it takes like years in order to get that feeling. And I would argue that like the impact of that feeling when it does happen, like the first time I saw a building, I worked on show up on Google maps was like a euphoric wave of pride and satisfaction, "Oh my God" and you don't really have that same feeling in product design, in my opinion, because. It's just coming out at such a different scale and like the impact and the history of how long it's going to be around is much tighter and scoped than architecture.

Silvia: I love that line microdosing on success or failure because yeah, like you have to choose how you define success in any profession, but like in architecture, you can't wait till the building's built. Otherwise you're waiting years in between something or sometimes it never comes to fruition.

How would you define success for yourself? Is [00:33:00] it those little wins? The micro doses or how did you reformulate that for yourself?

Adrianne: I think success for myself is um, you know, the more I learn the more I realize what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I've started to lean very deeply into what the strengths are and let some of the weaknesses go. So I think success to me is understanding how to wield strengths and bring impact to real human problems using those strengths and figuring out where I fit in. I can't really articulate how that will show up cuz I'm not really sure yet, but I think being able to like have a very strong sense of awareness and self about where you can bring value to a problem or a team or a company is special and not just subscribing to any role and trying to execute a good job in that role. Like that's very important too, but if you can aim what your strengths are to the type of problem that you'd like to tackle, because you could take it very far. I think that's where success [00:34:00] happens.

You Don't Know What You Don't Know
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Silvia: I love that. I love the ownership that you imparted into yourself into your success.

And what are you looking forward to in the future?

Adrianne: Oh, gosh. Every time I look into my future and I guess where I'll be in two years or five years or something else like that, I'm so wrong. just very deeply wrong because I dunno what I don't know. And everything feels like it's changing so fast. Probably both in architecture and in the digital world.

I think the thing I'm most looking forward to in the future is just like building sense of more like assuredness and security that comes with age and experience and putting in the reps that you just don't have when you're a junior designer. I think like the first 10 years of your career is very turbulent and at times painful and you sort of. you're better. The older you get, the more better you are and that's very exciting and like soothing.

Imposter System Means You Have the Opportunity to Grow
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Silvia: I also experienced that as well. It's not so bad [00:35:00] growing up and just getting those years under your belt. Do you have any words of advice to your former self or maybe someone who's in that 10 years in position and maybe doesn't have that sense of security yet?

Adrianne: Yeah, I think I'll talk about it like this.

I think like the buzzword for that, like very uncomfortable feeling that you haven't made it yet, You're like in over your head, the term people throw on it is imposter syndrome. And I just don't believe in imposter syndrome. And there's, it, it's sort of masquerading as something that should be like diagnosed and treated. But in a very I think a non-productive way, I feel like if you notice that you feel like you're imposter. Chances are you kind of are. And people are very uncomfortable when they realize that. They have all this past experience. And they've made a lot of assumptions about what they know. when they find themselves in a position where they realize, whoa [00:36:00] I'm not as good as I thought I was. Or like actually the Delta between where I am now and where I thought I, I am or where I should be is actually much higher than I expected. And that's okay. That's that is what it means to grow and be young and be learning.

And if you feel like you're an imposter, because you're in over your head, it means that you're like on the bottom of a ladder that needs to be scaled by you making decisions and absorbing everything around you.

And it shouldn't be something that you're like you have to like brute force out of your mind. It just means you need to work your way out of it. So I think like being an or feeling like an imposter and feeling overwhelmed and like having doubt is a natural part of learning that doesn't need to be framed so negatively. It just needs to be embraced and dealt with.

Silvia: Yeah. That's a really helpful way to look at it. It's not a bad place to be. That means you are in a place where you can grow.

Adrianne: Like it's okay to suck. Sometimes you suck and that's fine. [00:37:00] like the point is like, how are you? How are you going to get better? And how are you going to not suck anymore?

Silvia: I feel like the words you started off this podcast with adaptable, discerning, and ready to be wrong are actually great qualities to have to embody, to get you through that uncomfortable place where it does feel like you suck.

Adrianne: I mean, Maybe that comes from. If I started in architecture and now I'm in this role, I was imposter for a long time or not an imposter, but because I don't believe in the word, I was trying to do something that I wasn't like technically bred to do yet. And being able to succeed at doing those things means you can't fake your way around it. And you can't lie your way through it. The only way to get there is by doing the work. And I think those three words are just reactions of me doing the work.

Silvia: What did doing the work look like for you? Did you take jobs? I think you said some of your friends would take jobs at [00:38:00] companies that who would give them a chance. So what was your experience with those baby steps at the beginning?

Adrianne: Oh, totally. I think the biggest thing was letting go of any ego that I had accumulated over the year. Like I had earned sort of the. I had earned the title of senior in my profession, but I knew that coming into something else that I would have to accept being a junior again, and not having that same clout and title as I had before.

The first job I accepted. I did it because I knew how important it would be for somebody to take a chance on me. So as soon as somebody took a chance on me, I just went right for it. I didn't care at all about the work. And that was like really hard. I went from designing skyscrapers to like designing billboards for a dollar store in LA.

And I was like on my hands and knees, like rearranging bits of candy that were gonna be photographed for this digital campaign. And I definitely had these moments of oh my God, what. I do this is, [00:39:00] it felt like a professional step back because I was in like the slog of it again. And I was in the trenches, but. I was like, ready to feel like I was going backwards a little bit to incrementally move my way up. I also faced a lot of rejection, like I think when you get out of school and architecture, the process of interviewing and getting a job is a lot different. And I think the volume is smaller of the amount of people you talk to. And the volume of people I had to talk to became very big and the amount of No's I got became very normal to me. And I had to be ready for that too.

Silvia: Yeah, that's really helpful to hear about your experiences that, you know, it's hard but thank you for sharing that.

Outro
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Erin: Hey everyone. It's Erin from out of Architecture. If you find these stories inspiring and are looking for guidance, clarity, or just need someone to talk to about where you are in your career, please know that we offer free 30 minute consultations to talk about what may be next for you. [00:40:00] If you're interested, head to out of architecture.com/scheduling to book some time with us.

Jake: Hey everyone. It's Jake from Out of Architecture. We love hearing your stories, but we know there's more out there that we've still yet to experience. If you or someone you know would be a good fit for the podcast and has a story about taking their architecture skills beyond the bounds of traditional practice, we'd love to hear it.

Send us an email at tangents@outofarchitecture.com.

Silvia: Thanks for listening to our podcast, new episodes every two weeks. See you then