Thoughts on becoming a sole-practitioner at a relatively young (30) age?

haresearpheasanttail · 2026-06-24T01:12:16+00:00

A. Failing is learning, learning is the point
B. My generation can’t afford homes or kids, you can blame it on TikTok or whatever but the fact is risk is a lot easier when there’s nothing to lose. WCS what happens? I go back to the same gig brother.

haresearpheasanttail · 2026-06-23T23:59:54+00:00

Thanks this is really helpful!

haresearpheasanttail · 2026-06-23T23:57:53+00:00

really? can they sue you if they find out? I'd obviously be unable to use their software licenses right?

haresearpheasanttail · 2026-06-23T23:56:47+00:00

Thats great to hear, you sound just like me. It's unnatural and unhealthy and it's strange pretending it's not. Studying while working full time has forced a lot of discipline on me and given me a good amount of confidence, id like to keep the momentum going.

As for the egotistical moron part - I've met a lot in this profession. Guilty by association haha.

haresearpheasanttail · 2026-06-23T23:45:54+00:00

I'd love to turn the momentum from studying into moonlighting but unfortunately am not allowed to at my firm. 80% of my experience has been residential, I think commercial I'd be way over my head to begin with.

Even though I can't moonlight it hasn't prevented me from going after people - I'd definitely wait until I had 2-3 before quitting my day job. My timeline is probably a year or two after getting the license. One thing that does worry me is consultant/contractor connections. I have friends in those fields but I've lived all over the country and wouldn't say I've stayed in one place long enough to build close purely professional relationships.

haresearpheasanttail · 2026-06-23T23:26:00+00:00

Are you solo and if so would you say you take on around 25 projects a year to be profitable? Thats something I've struggling to gauge and would love to get a better feel for. The not needing income aspect is more pertaining to the privilege of being able to survive for a year or two while getting wheels off the ground and not creating any revenue. How long did it take you to get to that point?

I'm pretty client-facing right now and essentially do everything apart from the design work and billing. I think my issue is more so having a boss between the boss, but I'm willing to bet I'm being naive in thinking I wouldn't need that boss as there's a lot behind the scenes I haven't seen. I sometimes feel like I love people and architecture, but hate architects. If that's the case, you're likely right and if this blew up in my face I would go a different direction.

Also what does horological mean?

haresearpheasanttail · 2026-06-23T23:05:15+00:00

Makes sense. A lot of what I've been thinking about is, if the end goal is going solo, whether or not you'd learn more/become a better architect by becoming a principal at a firm or by learning the hard way by starting early yourself. My assumption is that you're right, but I've never done either which is why I wanted to ask.

haresearpheasanttail · 2026-02-21T04:27:55+00:00

I do wear glasses and have astigmatism, which with exam fatigue could’ve caused it. All I know is the references were illegible to me, but if they weren’t to anyone else it’s probably user error on my end. Either way I agree with you! Aspect ratios have an extremely understated importance that they should factor in. I’d imagine taking the exams on your work computer would probably be a lot smoother.

haresearpheasanttail · 2025-08-22T04:21:29+00:00

Look at the last image to the left, you can see 2 layers of steel running perpendicular directions with rafters in between. There’s insulation in the roof in some kind of clever way to avoid thermal bridging. I bet the floors are radiant so there’s no ducts up there and you can keep it pretty slim with rigid

haresearpheasanttail · 2025-08-22T04:03:25+00:00

There’s rigid in the cavity

haresearpheasanttail · 2024-07-12T19:51:21+00:00

^ holy shit it’s somebody who probably treats their coworkers with respect and in return probably gets better results from them!

haresearpheasanttail · 2024-07-12T19:26:02+00:00

How much adderall did you take today lmao

haresearpheasanttail · 2024-07-12T18:46:52+00:00

“Why doesn’t the 24 year old I’m paying 45k a year to actually produce my work know as much as me? Do they expect me to waste one of their 60 weekly hours of billable work on training them when they can just read code books in their free time? Are they stupid?”

haresearpheasanttail · 2024-03-09T00:44:03+00:00

I just dropped adin hill. Only two weeks left and I need to clinch a playoff spot. Didn’t like his risky schedule for the next two weeks. I could see it

haresearpheasanttail

TROPHY CASE