One of the common complaints among architects is that it pays quite badly. Relative to other state sanctioned professions like Doctors and Lawyers that’s certainly true. Architecture is a good profession, but it isn’t a lucrative one. Part of it is just that there are so many architects in the game, but then again lawyers seem to make a good living in spite of flooding the market.
I suspect it boils down to a risk / reward thing. The architect is buffered by the contractor who really takes the primary responsibility for delivering the physical building. The engineers own all the tangible aspects of the structure. We do the amorphous work of “coordinating”.
That’s a hard sell and we aren’t that good at selling the marginal value of good design. By being unwilling (or unable) to promise the value of good design, the we effectively avoid making a promise we can fail at – shirking risk. Without such a promise, architecting is just a commodity it just becomes a race to the bottom when it comes to low fees and shortened schedules.
Aside from selling better architecture, the most tangible way for an individual to increase one’s risk (and thus reward) is to either start managing other architects, either within a firm or go client side. In both ways, you step away from the technical side of the profession, and take the risk of managing people. You take on a bigger plate of projects, and are now responsible for that much more work.
Your name and reputation are now staked to many more results and the scary thing is you’re not going to be the person doing the work.