![]() Here’s Andrew Johnson, who at 23 became the youngest master builder ever hired by LEGO. From there, a promising apprentice builder is promoted to a senior builder, where the pay may bump from $10 to $12 an hour, and additional duties are assumed: constructing models, overseeing daily procedures, and shadowing the master builders.īecoming a LEGO master builder has more prestige than money: The salary is $37,500 a year.Īccording to Crockett’s piece, LEGO looks for candidates with a bachelor’s degree in architecture or design, or an engineering degree - mechanical, aeronautical, or structural. They spend long hours adhering thousands of individual pieces together and work on maintaining the parks’ various sculptures and exhibits. Typically, a new hire starts as an apprentice builder - essentially a “glue minion,” according to a young “peon” who works at LEGOLAND Florida. But in most cases, they have to start from the bottom and work their way up: only the most skilled Lego artisans achieve the honor of master builder. These builders are hand-picked by Lego, and are employed at the company’s Discovery centers, and its seven LEGOLAND theme park locations (Billund, Denmark Windsor, England Günzburg, Germany Nusajaya, Malaysia Florida, California). To give you an idea of how selective this group is, there are only 40 Lego master builders in the world, 7 of whom are Americans. ![]() The road to becoming a master model builder for Lego is excruciating and arduous - and the monetary payoff is less than exciting. “Getting to say that is pretty cool.At Priceonomics, Zachary Crockett looks at “Life as a LEGO Professional” and it is fascinating. “I get to play with Legos as my job,” Thaddeus says. He also plans to use Lego bricks to recreate Johannes Vermeer’s famous painting, “Girl With A Pearl Earring,” and Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” Thaddeus also has some big projects in the works, including a mosaic Mona Lisa that looks like the original painting from one side and features her as a Lego woman from another side. Some of his more recent builds include a tiger for the Chinese New Year and a mosaic of Martin Luther King Jr. “I can just see a piece and I can think of all the different possibilities and connections and what it can be used for,” Thaddeus says. This helps him pitch ideas as he can get a rough estimate of how many bricks he’ll need, how long it will take and what the overall cost will be. Thaddeus starts projects by building them out digitally using Lego software. Thaddeus’ responsibilities include building new Lego models and maintaining current ones, including a small-scale Lego version of the DFW Metroplex that features AT&T Stadium, the Stockyards and Globe Life Field. After nine months, Thaddeus reentered the competition and won in the fall of 2019, officially becoming one of only 25 master model builders for all of Legoland and the Legoland Discovery Centers. After that, Lego offered him an entry-level office job, where he took the opportunity to learn more about the company. In his first competition, Thaddeus finished in third place out of over 100 participants. “Each round has a certain theme, and the contestants only have a certain amount of Lego bricks to build with.” “It’s three rounds of Lego building, timed with single elimination,” Thaddeus says. Working at the Legoland Discovery Center in Grapevine, Thaddeus is a master model builder, a job one gets only after winning the Lego building competition, Brick Factor. But I was always kind of preparing myself for this job, even though I never dreamed in a million years that this could be something obtainable.” “I had my own little Lego page… and would upload pictures to a nonexistent audience. “I’ve collected ever since I was a little kid,” Thaddeus says. ![]() It all started in 1999 when he bought his first Lego “Star Wars” set, which he still has to this day. Thaddeus Bennett has built his career one Lego brick at a time.
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