From time to time, designers reach out with questions and seek advice. I’m going to start surfacing them as topics if it’s relevant to a broader group. This is a great time for me to plug that I don’t believe in giving advice. There are too many people out there giving advice based on no merit in order to serve themselves. I’ll frame this as sharing my experience, thoughts, and prompts for consideration. The person that should make the decision on what to do…is you.

The questions this week: "Should I consider working at an agency? Would it hurt my chances of landing an in-house product design role in the future?"

My perspective is heck yes! Before working in-house at tech startups, I worked at agencies full-time, both as a subcontractor and in full-time roles. In addition, I co-founded a product studio with one of my best friends while in New York.

There are a lot of stigmas in the world of professional services at agencies. Some of it is untrue, and others are “not untrue.” There was a Tumblr site many years ago called Clients From Hell where service providers share horror stories of their clients. However, my experience at agencies is looked back on with much joy.

Let’s cover some of the pros and cons of working at an agency. As a child, I would eat all the vegetables I hated first in order to savor the entree in the end, which means that I’ll start with the bad parts and end on a good note.

The not-so-fun challenges at an agency

Despite a positive experience of working at agencies, I’d be lying if I said there aren’t challenges.

The management path is different, or non-existent

Org structures at agencies are drastically different from in-house. They typically flatter, with an art director or creative director overseeing a group of designers. However, it’s not the same type of role as an in-house manager. The value exchange for agencies is typically for time and materials. Larger agencies might have more management structures because their business sustains it. However, smaller agencies typically need to make sure as many designers are billing time to clients in order to generate revenue. It’s common at agencies that managers are player/coaches who still contribute to the work and varies. When asking about management, you’ll often hear, “We’d love to enable this for you, but we really need to bill your time. Can you do a bit of both?”

Workloads vary, especially during feast or famine

You’d be surprised how much of a struggle this can be, even for larger agencies whose work we admire. My co-founder and I ultimately closed shop on our product studio, not because we didn’t love it anymore, but it was a lot of work to ensure there was enough work coming in to keep the lights on, pay everyone, and have an enduring business. At times, you’ll have so much work coming in that you need to grow your team. Other times, you’re opening your digital Rolodex figuring out how you can get enough projects queued up for people to work on. This results in times when you might have to work an absurd amount of hours to get the work done.

The good parts

Now that we got those gross veggies out of the way, let’s focus on the good parts. Despite the challenges of working at an agency, here are a few pros that I believe make it a great experience to have.

1. Your craft will level up a lot

Since in-house companies engage with agencies to provide a capability they typically don’t have, specialization is the differentiation, and the specialization is craft. When you work at an agency, you’ll work with some of the most talented designers. At Black Pixel, I level up my interaction, interface, motion, prototyping, and visual design simply by working with other designers and engineers there. If you want to level up your craft as a designer, working at an agency will give you a lot of chances to practice it in various scenarios. Simply put, you’ll get more iterations than working in-house.

2. You’ll learn how companies work

If you think stakeholder management is hard as an in-house designer, it’s amplified as a designer at an agency. You’ll learn so much about storytelling, articulating design decisions, and convincing people who paid your agency (hopefully) a lot of money. They’ll also be more rigorous about everything since you’re an external team member. You’ll see the rogue’s gallery of clients at agencies. What I appreciated about this is getting an inside look at how startups and Fortune 500 companies operated (Hint: They’re all a shit show).

3. You'll learn a lot

Working at an agency allows you to hopefully explore different portfolio projects. One day you might be working on a consumer app for a client who thinks they’re going to be the next Instagram or help a healthcare company think about their digital transformation. This enables a lot of opportunities to learn about different industries. When you go in-house, you’re honing in on a specific area. At an agency, you get to explore different projects.

4. You’ll make some great friends

Most importantly, you’ll make great friends while working at an agency. I’ve stayed in touch with so many designers I worked with, reminiscing about some of the all-nighters we had to do in order to deliver work to clients or some of the downtime working on pitches for biz dev. Black Pixel was remote throughout the world, allowing me to work with global talent outside of the United States.

Making the transition from agency to in-house product

The second part of the question is about how to make the transition after working at an agency. There is a lot of unfair bias towards people who worked at an agency when going in-house. The primary one is that if you work at an agency you won't be able to be a product thinker like an in-house company. This is common because often agencies are asked to work on 0-to-1 projects with clients or don't get the chance to continue working on it since it then gets handled by the in-house team. I remember always feeling, "I wish I could work on the next iteration of this" but given the nature of agency work, you likely never get to.

Mitigate this by addressing the question when asked, "What would you do to the product if you had more iteration cycles on it?" Go beyond the v1 you worked on in your case study and write about where you would have taken the product if you were the owner.

There will be challenges, but the transition is possible. I’ve hired many people from agencies throughout my career and one of our amazing design managers made the transition from agency to in-house. What’s important is to emphasize the skills you acquired while working at an agency and what makes you differentiating: a great storyteller, eye for craft, articulating design decisions, and so much more.

Working at an agency is also a career path! Some designers I know are lifers in agencies because they enjoy it so much. It gives them a variety to work on incredible projects. For me, I’ll likely not go back, but forever cherish the relationships I made and personal growth while doing it. If that's something that appeals to you, I highly encourage it!

Tweet of the week

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RIP our beautiful friend and colleague Christina Lee

February 14th 2022

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RIP Christina Yuna Lee 

On February 13, Christina Lee was stabbed to death by a man who followed her into her apartment. The more I read the tributes to Christina, it’s clear the world lost an incredible human being.

Christina’s loss is all-too-familiar with the continued violence towards Asians in this country, especially women. I often think of my cousins and their safety in simply living life without being a target of violence.

Her loved ones have set up a fund. Please consider donating if you can. RIP, Christina. 💔

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