2006 / June 26th/ The joys of working at an agency
Much ado is made of going freelance, but very little of working full-time at an agency. Many people view working at an agency as simply throwing their life away for slave wages. To be perfectly honest, some days waking up and working in my boxers does sound like a damn good idea. But, I’m here to tell you the other side of the story — the one rarely told. The one where working at an agency is one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had.
Separation of Church and State
One of the greatest downfalls to entrepreneurship is the fact that your home life becomes your work life; you can never go home again. I love the fact that when I get off work and go home, it’s just that. I can sit at home, futz around on my MBP or play some Burnout Revenge on my XBOX360. There’s no work looming over my head, no client phone calls, no emergency emails. I just go home.
Working on the coolest projects
Sure, going freelance you might think you get to work on cool projects, but let me tell you — you’re wrong. All of the coolest stuff on the web gets thrown to the big agencies. We’re talking about everything from on-site video shoots to changing the face of the websites that span dozens of languages and serve hundreds of millions of visitors a month. You get to work with some of the most influential brands in the world and help them shape their image. Do you think that Yahoo looks for some freelancer when they want to redesign their home page? Hardly.
No clients
So long as you’re not in a client-facing role, you don’t have to deal with clients on a day-to-day basis. Oh man, I love it. No more clients going wacko, no more dealing with the constant phone calls — you just get to work. You get to let someone else deal with all that, and just focus on what you do best.
You just get paid
Along the same lines, there’s no heckling for invoices, no waiting for your NET 30 to come through, you just get paid. Every two weeks, on the money. You work, you get paid. There’s something poetic about a regular pay schedule after doing the whole freelance thing for a while.
Great people
Working from home can get mighty lonely after a while. Sure, video chats, phone calls and IMs are great — but does it replace going out to lunch with your co-workers? Almost everyone that ends up working at an agency has a great personality for one reason or another. It’s great to walk into work and be able to talk about your weekend for a half hour while you catch up on emails.
Fun Prizes
When you go freelance, you also accept responsibility for your finances. Pretty soon it gets hard to justify that new toy when all your money is just lumped into one big pile. You know, you really should start paying off your house faster.
But see, when you’re in an agency environment, you don’t have to deal with all that crap. As a result, we get all kinds of goodies thrown our way. Every month we get a set book budget and get to get whatever new books we wants. We also get to have awesome parties several times a year (on the company, of course) where they give out all kinds of prizes. Just recently, everyone on my team got a brand new XBOX360. How badass is that?
Doughnuts every friday
Oh yeah. There’s free doughnuts every Friday.
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All my little projects that I leave scattered around the web. Some for profit, all for fun.
June 26th | #
Sounds like a great agency, anyway.
June 26th | #
Can you tell us which agency is this?
It would nice to see your opinions about the downfalls of working at an agency :)
June 26th | #
I don’t completely agree with you on all what you’ve said, each side, working for an agency or doing solo business has its advantages and disadvantages.
Working from home is a blessing, most of what you said can be maintained when working from home when we have enough will to do it, and why not to start our own agency by starting as freelancers? doesn’t that seems cool? and isn’t that what most of the agencies owners did in the first place?
I agree with you on the income stability that all of us love to have, but for every big dream there should be some risk as well.. Personally I still want to do freelance, and then start my own small business, and keep on climbing the tough mountain…. Well unless I got this fancy job offer that may take me to a higher mountain than the one I’m already climbing :) .
June 26th | #
You’re absolutely right, Kyle. The last place I worked at was absolutely fabulous. It was a lot of fun and got to work with some truly high profile clients. I would and have recommended people to work there and I would go back if I ever decided to give up freelance.
June 26th | #
Thank you for the good information! I think the same. […] A very accosting layout and a interesting discussion topic, do you provide any Web-based services to universities or students. […]
Greetings Milos
June 26th | #
OK Kyle, you’ve won me over. Where do I apply? :)
June 27th | #
Great article, and I know just what you mean, I spend half my time remoting from home and the other working at the office, so I am doing it both ways.
Going freelance is very very difficult, tried it, didn’t enjoy it, you spend more time trying to get new clients, than actually getting paid for doing any work.
Comment for Rida… I understand your point of view, however, I think if you want to start your own agency one day (which most of us think about), the best way to do it, is to actually work at an agency, not go freelance. There is alot that goes into operating an agency smoothly, alot of politics. Clients can be ruthless at times, and extremely demanding. I am actually learning alot from my boss, in terms of what it takes, you can’t be a designer anymore, you have to become a sales person, and that is the trade off at the very end.
June 27th | #
Can’t agree with you enough regarding work and home - mind you that’s only because of personal experience with my father.
What you need is alot of self discipline. You also need to maintain a separation - both physical and mental - between ‘work’ areas and ‘home’ areas otherwise you’ll have spill over between them - and that’s the slippery slope that one can quite easily go down.
June 29th | #
Kyle,
You the man! All good points, I think. I’m not really a web designer, although I always have some design project underway. I have been, however, doing some freelance writing, and I appreciate your perspective completely. It gives me something to think about. Keep up the good work and I like your style on this site — and the poetry site.
Best,
R. Kennedy
July 2nd | #
Haha, that’s all well and fun - but i’ve worked for the design department of my college before, and I did not like a second of it. I’m doing freelance right now on several projects, and prefer that over what i did before (I’m also making more money this way anyway, so it all works out!)
PS - Your Hemingway theme is amazing.
July 3rd | #
Very much agreed! I have worked in-house, freelance, and agency with the latter being the best by a long shot! I work at a small company, and it’s wonderful to get a lot of say in the direction of each project, without having to deal with the client directly. And it doesn’t get boring like in-house did for me. Good post!
July 5th | #
Yeah! I agree. U get to work for the best of the brands in market. Besides, ;)its the school to learn the business while u get paid. No risk involved. wat say u?
July 5th | #
To all those who are asking where he works i belive he works for web associates in San Luis Obispo. It is a very large firm that has offices here. Some of there clites are HP, Visa, and Yahoo.
July 14th | #
I strongly agree with what you are saying. I love having a place to go to do my work and then leave at the end of the day. It’s nice to go to work and interact with others. It’s enjoyable to have a home and personal life completely separated from work. Yes, freelancing can be fun and more flexible at times, but I much rather choose the environment you describe.
March 28th | #
Hi Kyle,
thank your for the good informations. It´s an interesting article, really!
Greetings from Germany
Sven Fischer
September 19th | #
when they say it’s ove. Martino Heino.