Life as a Designer: In-House vs. Agency
- Posted February 1st, 2008
- Filed under: Technology
On my first day with BatchBlue, I wrote on my personal blog about specific qualities I was looking for in a company during the job search. One of the qualities was:
A product company
I’ve done the agency thing. Time to work on something where I don’t have to worry about securing work, filling out timesheets, or coordinating labor plans. I want to bust my ass on a product of our OWN. Something that won’t leave my hands and die.
Now, quite a few folks thought I was crazy for wanting to work for a product company. They wondered how long it would take to get bored with working on the same thing, over and over.
Hasn’t happened.
I started thinking about the differences between working for an agency and a product company with last week’s episode of the Boagworld podcast. Daniel Burka of digg and Leslie Chicoine of Satisfaction. Both went from agency background to working on very successful web apps. Daniel made this observation that really hit home for me:
[A former co-worker] was really jealous that I’m currently re-designing the digg comment system and he thinks it’s really interested that I’ve designed it twice now and I’m coming back again and doing it a third time and that kind of iterative development is something you frequently don’t get to do in the agency environment.
I’m an “attention to detail” guy. While my last company did a lot of interesting projects, more project funds were invested in the “research” part than the “development” part. As a result, I had to become a master of cutting corners, making sure I completed an entire project in the small number of hours allotted.
Being able to actually iterate and pay more attention to the little things suddenly means I’m not “just working on one project” anymore. Everything becomes a little project of its very own. I can investigate better ways to share data across pages. I can add microformats. I can completely re-design a feature that just doesn’t feel right.
It certainly isn’t just BatchBook I’m working on, either. There’s, of course, batchblue.com. There’s this blog. There’s customer service. There’s a lot of writing for an upcoming site update. There’s a presentation for an unconference this month… (oh man, that’s this month?)
Come to think of it, in an agency setting so much focus can be placed on efficiency (since everything is by the hour) that it can be easy to get pigeonholed. At BatchBlue, I’m not “the guy that does Flash stuff really quickly”. I have more hats than Sean has shoes.
Nice writeup, Adam. The important thing, for, is that you really believe in the product you’re designing. I’ve worked on several products that I didn’t believe in, both in the agency and in-house models, and that has had a serious effect on my quality of work. Even a paid-by-the-hour schedule is easily overcome if you love what you’re working on.
Good points, Josh. Another big difference for me has been company size. I went from 110 people to 5 (when I started… Now we’re already at 8). Personally, I love tiny. Perhaps it’s just because I love all the hats.