Come on and admit it – we’ve either done it or we’re thinking about doing it. It’s the siren’s call of moonlighting, beckoning you to the edge with the promise of being addressed as an architect and getting something built that is uniquely your own. Moonlighting has dark undertones as it’s very name might suggest. There are advantages and disadvantages to taking on work outside of normal business hours and I think it’s worthwhile to review what they might be. I read an article on moonlighting in Residential Architect some years ago and there was a quote in there I will never forget (well, I did actually forget it so I am paraphrasing here):
“…moonlighting presents a dangerous risk, if a person wants to do their own work, let them start a firm and struggle and starve..”
Yikes! That person sounds nasty, either that or they have been burned by the liability issues that moonlighting creates for architectural firms. The other remarkable thing about this phrase was that at the time, it came from the chair of the A.I.A. Practice Management Advisory group. For me, the part about “struggle and starve” suggests that the person taking on the moonlighting work is ill-prepared and unlicensed, which suggest youth and inexperience. So for my purposes here, I am going to focus on that demographic: the youthful, inexperienced and unlicensed.
