@jacob.small you mean that, looks like a chrismas movie 
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That’s the one. Not really Xmas themed, but quite funny and relevant.
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I echo that to make any kind of change or impact it takes time and vision.
Often its your own of both to start with. 
Developing skills/tools ‘on-the-fly’ within the projects you are working on can often provide the best value initially, as its for yourself, and this important as you must think of yourself first. It’s your time that you are using, its finite. How you are using/spending your time is very important to consider. If you are learning while using your time, then you are investing in yourself. You are reducing your own workload, reducing your stress levels, improving your own portfolio of skills, and hopefully getting some satisfaction from this.
When other people realise you have these kinds of skills, they start to want you to make their lives easier as well. The more buy-in you can achieve by demonstrating added value through digital development to those setting the current direction at your firm, the better. Communication is key here as if you broadcast what you are archiving on projects, making the benefits clear to your specific audience, and doing this regularly, then you may see changes start to happen.
My own digital development journey started this way, making stuff for me to make my life easier. Even so, it’s taken over 10 years of personal and professional growth for automation and digital solution development to become one of the things listed on my job description. 
I am extremely fortunate to be part of a company that has a vision for embracing digital innovation. Part of this mindset existing is, funnily enough, location. An engrained mindset of innovating to achieve success is part of the collective psyche here in NZ, number 8 wire and all.
My advice to anyone is stick with improving things for yourself, learn new skills, be open to new opportunities and try to make informed decisions that take you where you want to go and to what you want to spend your time doing.
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Culture and cement the business case first, build all the cool stuff second. It sucks and yes it’s the horribly boring approach, but do first sell second never works in my experience. Pitch this transformation as a condition of your employment and be ready to pitch its value alongside it, in the JD ideally.
I found it helped to clarify that:
- I am not an architect, hence don’t pay me as one
- Closest thing I am to is an IT manager, they always get paid well because they are critical company performance infrastructure. BIM hits the fan just like IT does - and specialists are the only people who can help there.
- You will need to invest high trust in my experience, and in return I communicate clearly to those who want/need to understand the steps we will take as we take them
- Most BIM specialists do not know how to code or use it, so if you have that you are a developer also. This comes with a unique role and salary demands related to
- I am moreorless a unique, difficult to replace employee. Pay me well to keep me here. A good business is great, but recognizing we have lots of options in/out of AEC is a condition of hanging around
- I appreciate the firm does not make money directly from BIM, so part of my goal/role is to connect the benefits of BIM to the way the company delivers and profits
Honestly most firms out there do just suck at this sort of thing from what I hear (and have seen at times). Most are actually knuckling down to status quo and backsliding if anything - the best BIM job I ever worked on was my first one, and it’s all sort of slid downhill from there I feel. It will always take a tough uphill battle to get to the point you want to be, but aim high and accept no less than what you want. Most wont last unless they are niche boutique or corporate behemoths in the future I think.
That and generally, a lot of luck - hate to say it, but I’d be disingeous if I didn’t say it.
If you build the same thing over and over again, build it outside work and git’ it or sell it - own your ideas beyond the domain of a company, that way it lasts beyond that point. You can also then offer it as an employment value add. I did this with my current role and it definitely helped (we have the guy on YT who can do XYZ etc., opened doors). Some will see it as frayed loyalty to company vision, otherswill appreciate you want to build a name (which in turn brings traffic back to the place you choose to work at). The biggest money maker in AEC is connections and trust (I know a guy… etc. - it’s the secret sauce). Don’t be arrogant, but be proud of your abilities.
Last tip is don’t be a perfectionist. Learn where things can be a bit crappy and don’t try to fix everything. Not everything has to be 100% finished, spread your focus to add a general value to the firm versus very specific parts of it in order. It will help get more general buyin and a feeling that the users are broadly appreciated and prioritized together (e.g. don’t just focus on residential sector, such a trap in most firms).
Understand and strategically confront the challenge that most architects simply do not care about BIM and often do not really need it - it’s something they’re forced to do. Took me ages to figure this out, but helped give me more empathy to the plight of AEC users. Clients need it, teams benefit from it, but we could in reality deliver jobs without it if we had to (yes it would not be good). AEC firms churn fee out of time on seats that they can charge. If you want to reduce time people are on seats, make sure your value add/uplift is known as well (e.g. you save X hours, now you can do Y as well, so we can now charge client for Y and X). Most clients do not understand hours to complete tasks (and firms should break away from charging this way), so find ways to empower and bolster the firm’s offerings without detracting from the core service on paper overall.
Oh and do look outside your industry from time to time. On the one hand it might open new doors, on the other it is refreshing to see how backwards some are compared to ours.
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I completely agree with all the ideas and observations here, and I think there are some very valid observations. Perhaps I should say experiences.
First of all, if you are not working in a big company or if you have a manager who does not follow technology and innovation, life can be very difficult for you. Most companies in the industry, unfortunately, don’t just make money from BIM, and you have to have jobs that you can do when BIM isn’t there, automation - coding -, plug-in, acceleration and development jobs… all these things give us the flexibility and ease to work there in the role that you want. By the way, I don’t think it’s a good idea to change everything at once. It’s more effective to do things bit by bit, step by step and in front of their eyes. Because they don’t understand why you’re doing it or why you’re changing it, and they don’t want to understand anyway.
Remember, at the end of the day, all they care about is the result!
If this is the case, we can neither talk about being valued, nor about getting the salary we deserve (and demanding it), nor about motivation. What I mean is that the employees of companies in this situation start to see their companies only as “financial resources”. The only thing that motivates us is the good feedback from the industry. At least that is what fuels my fire. It is necessary to take the risk of working non-stop and unpaid.
Durmus
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Thanks to all for taking the time for your replies. I really appreciate all the advice and support. I´m in the 4th round of negotiations tomorrow, I now have accepted that this company will not be my future. It´s a really strange situation because my team and the employee representatives are now planning to try to talk to the managers because they are as frustrated as me about the situation.
Coworkers told me that this all happend before and an employee had to change to another office of the same company but in another country (Switzerland). Now they have a BIM department there and are much more productive than any other office, surprise! So the company clearly doesn´t learn from mistakes and doesn´t want to change anything.
I have now been looking for jobs and found a company with the following text on their “career” page:
Do you want to break out of the daily routine as an architect, planner, or engineer in the construction industry and would like to ‘switch sides’? Are you passionate about the digitalization of construction and believe in the importance and success of Building Information Modeling (BIM)? Are you proficient in CAD and BIM software like Autodesk Revit and/or AutoCAD? Then we are the ideal employer for you!
With around 70 employees at 9 locations, we are one of the largest Autodesk partners in the German-speaking area. At our company experienced architects and engineers work for architects and engineers, planners, and construction companies. 35 years of experience form the foundation for our deep understanding of our clients’ needs. We support them with individual BIM consulting, software solutions, comprehensive training, and technical support in successfully managing digital transformation. And in the planning and implementation of the most demanding construction projects.
This sounds very interesting. I didn´t want to go the “just coding” way, but the last years showed me that the design engineer+coder thing doesn´t work out. So why not trying this as a next step.
To answer a few questions and give some background info:
Europe, Austria, Vienna, born and raised.
I´m currently a design engineer for hydro power, creating formwork plans for hydro power plants in pretty much the whole world. Company has 18.000 employees.
The years before I created formwork plans for larger office buildings and working together in an office with ~100 architects and MEP engineers. The years before I created steel plans for transmission towers and worked for a civil engineer with all kinds of projects.
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haha I got a good one too!
IT department created a word/excel button that gives the ability to save a file with pre defined file names 
The CEO himself sent a mail to all employees how amazing this is and what unbelievable effort is done by the IT department. I will not tell you how many years the development took, the number has 2 digits
Same company sayd they will “throw my handouts in the trash” after I gave a 60 min presentation of about 20 dynamo scripts. Maybe I should not have started by pointing out about 20 mistakes and errors in our revit “plugins”^^
Yeah, it is really confusing when you see what some people are getting applause for, or what for they are applauding.
Oh and I´m now employed at a job placement agency and I have been assigned to the current company for 1 year now. It´s now about the contract for the transition to the company. So it´s pretty much the best situation I can have because they know my work now for 1 year. If they still can´t see my worth I can´t help anymore
make the best out of it…!
Revit did not change at all in the last 20 years, because of that i became a beast: I program plugins, I started with WPF. I use GIT. It is ridicules. I look more and more to blender. I discover that there is so much more…
I think in general there is a disrubtive process… Major companies “innovation” get eaten by shareholder-value… If money loses value, what matters…
KR
Andreas
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All you can do is you - and at this point if they can’t see it they never will. That’s not on you, it’s on them. Their loss. Keep your head up @gerhard.p you will find something and somewhere that values you 
In the meantime, there is tonnes of great advice in this thread from so many folks No matter what, evolving yourself and pushing yourself forward is always a win in life. That constant growth builds a form of positive pressure that will pop at some point. There is a saying in BIM Circles in London, at least, that someone from the AEC industry who knows both the domain and how to code is a Unicorn; hard to find, very important to keep. So it’s out there, and not limited to London either.
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Unfortunately most managers don’t believe in fairy tales 
Leaving the company is seen as just a business loss.
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But the ones that do recognize and support the treasure they have. But I hear you, it’s not easy per se.
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Don’t be bothered, some people do need you, you just haven’t found them.
I’m with you.
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I recon everyone at the bottom that does the grunt work will see and appreciate the work that is done with any form of scripting. It saves them time and effort. They will always appreciate that. Senior level don’t do any of the grunt work, and just manage others doing it. Cracking the whip and not caring how it’s done, just as long as the work is done. I don’t see them getting out of that mentality for a while. I’ve seen lots of management like that with Revit (some still are). Dynamo is the new kid on the block so they’ll be just as bad with appreciating that.
I’ve always seen it as inevitable until the juniors climb the ranks and get into senior positions. They will grasp the benefit and take that appreciation with them as they climb the ladder and they will support fair pay on these things. Unfortunately I can see that been up to a decade with most places. As there’s still lots of dinosaurs in positions of power.
Best advice is don’t tell anyone how you work just do the work and use Dynamo as you like
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yes @ruben.romero and if the manager give your hour to a task as to no users…you can probably just work a couple of hour daily
Yeah I can agree, if i wasnt allowed to spend company time on Dynamo, or get compensated for what I bring to the table (efficiency wise) my scripts wouldn’t see the light of day and would only be used to cut my working hours without anyone knowing.
I’m fortunate enough that it’s not the case for me, but i fully understand the frustration and agree with everything thats been said in this post already. Not much more for me to add besides reiterating how much of an improvement you’ve made on your own skillset/CV. Keep track of it and keep at it, it will pay off.
Also, this is the funniest line i’ve ever read on here:
Do watch that movie, it’s great and shows the office life really well.
Can’t you just zonk me out so there’s no way that I know I’m at work? Can’t I just come home and think I’ve been fishing all day?
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Totally disagree with that idea. If you want to just do your thing and not be understood beyond the output you produce I guess, but I’ve had some success by actually doing the opposite - documenting my process’, training colleagues and making it all as accessible as possible.
Yes not everyone will appreciate it, but if noone did I doubt there’d be any motivation from my side in the long run.
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