Agency vs In-house
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- hitsuji
Worked in an agency as a junior designer and now i'm working in-house. In my opinion, agency all the way, just for variety and creativity.
- kuttyranks0
Is this a question?
- epikore0
In-house, less hours and a better environment. I'm generalizing of course.
- TOMMYxGUNN0
Thanks
- move0
More hours (as an in-house designer), no schedule (ever), less quality work, more money.
- twokids0
in-house if you want a life, and can deal with bureaucracy and stuff like that. agency if you want to build your portfolio and play pool at work. and meet more cute girls.
agency can be ok, but if you put too much of your life into an agency remember that somebody there, the owner, is making the money off your labor.
in-house you are a cog but the company usually will give you a lot more benefits in the long run and you can build up things like 401k, pension, etc. much better than at an agency.
and, this is big - you go home on time and have your weekends
- jlaw850
^ two is dead on. Its so true, I really think its just a matter of what suites your lifestyle best.
- hitsuji0
cute girls. definitely a lack of them here haha. but i think i've tried too quickly to be someone important with lots of responsibility without taking the time to learn and become a better designer etc. I do miss looking at my weekly timetable and seeing what different projects I had to work on. I also miss other fonts, I'm bored of the 2 I use here.
- Koopsy0
The trick to in-house is to be downwardly mobile. You do yourself no favours by actually getting everything done as they simply find more for you to do. In-house is an opportunity to slowly and steadily evolve an outward appearance of being really busy, and in doing so actually reducing the amount of stuff people give you to do.
If you are good at this, you will have plenty of time for freelance projects.
- lvl_130
twokids is spot-on.
design is fun and all, but so are nights and weekends not sitting in front of the soul-sucker.
- twokids0
while what Koopsy above says is true of many people I have known (including myself) about working your way to doing less and less in-house to the point where you can spend a lot of time working on your own stuff....you have be careful. Just because you are in-house does not mean that people are stupid. I have seen a number of designer get cut because it became clear that they did little or not work. To last a while in-house, you need to make sure to put out enough effort to impress; not only with the work but the quickness with which you get it done - then work on your own stuff.
- dskz0
its good to mix it up freely
- Akiraprise0
I went from a small agency to a large in-house team, I miss the variety in my old place + the people, but the work I do here is much more rewarding, money's better, perks are better, hours are better, and time-keepings better. + instead of my work staying local I get my work shown accross the world :D
- hitsuji0
i was the other way around. small role in big agency to big role in small in-house. i did it purely for location though.
- canuck0
In-house can be hard if it is only you, and or a couple other people. It can be hard to grow, and learn from your peers.
- tkmeister0
It really depends. In-house doesn't really guarantee a better working hours. Also, working for an agency doesn't mean you can do variety of work. You can be stuck with the same client, especially at a big agency.
When I am so busy working on 3 different campaigns at once, dealing with a difficult client or on a new business pitch, I feel like being in-house is so much better. But when I am in-house doing a daily grind (usually working for people who has no idea what they are doing and spending more time explaining than producing) I want to be in a agency side.
It's never perfect.
- vaxorcism0
I've done both, I prefer freelancing to either..
It's true, there's lots of coasting going on in the in-house world, so I'm oddly brought in as a freelancer when the full-time in-house staff is "overwhelmed with other projects" because they'd just rather not do whatever it is I'm supposed to do..... and they're sometimes really good at looking busy but doing a few "high-maintenenance" projects.
If you find a way to automate certain things, you could be dead meat, or a hero to somebody... just be careful!
In agencies, you can't get away with as much laziness, but the egos are much bigger....
The first few days at an in-house gig, you have to pay attention and learn the pecking order, there's usually somebody with more authority than knowledge....
Some in-house designers are really good at creating a handful of screenshots every few weeks and going to a few meetings and taking most of the credit for the work the introverted invisible programmers stay up all night coding....
If you're at an agency, make sure you get to meet clients, otherwise 2 things happen:
1. game of telephone - client says "X" account person hears "Y" and tells you "Y+1" in an attempt to add some random feature to impress the client that the client didn't ask for, thus going sideways from the original idea
2. Agency creatives who never meet clients are seen by management as expendable, and sometimes interchangeable
But....it's true, Agencies often do have some good looking women working there, often for their ability to cause high-testerone old men on the client side to ignore their skepticism ans sign on the dotted line....
- hitsuji0
tkmeister has pretty much nailed it there
- hitsuji0
the way forward is winning the Lotto
