I love my Day Job but it seems to me that I don’t have as much control as I do in my Freelance ventures. Sure I have pretty good control over the design of my day time projects but there is a lot of interference.
In my day job we have very specialized roles. You have User Experience, Content Writers, Client Service, Designers, Front End Coders, Flash Developers, Back End Programmers, IT and of course all the managers of each of those functions.
Where as in my freelance work I’m personally doing UE, Content Organization (not writing), Client Service and Design. I get others to do the development and such, because that is definitely not one of my strengths, but I don’t mind doing it for myself.
I could never handle all that stuff on my own during my day time job, the projects are far too large and much more complicated than my freelance jobs. But, by the time my projects launch I don’t feel as satisfied. It’s usually been months since I’ve last seen the project or been involved in it. There are always a lot of things I would like tweaked. Move this a pixel here, tweak this a bit there maybe completely rework something because it’s not really working. Maybe, it’s our process and I should be more involved as things get developed.
Mean while in my freelance jobs I can have something moved a pixel, completely rework something that may not be working as well as initially intended. I can be more involved in the development of the site. Because the developers look to me for approval on everything and I can pay attention more to the little details and have the changes made.
When there are more cooks in the kitchen there just seems to be a lot more noise, be it for the better or not. I guess that’s one of the great parts of doing freelance, you have more control. Then again the projects we do at work are great I’m always dissatisfied with little pieces here and there. But maybe my freelance projects aren’t the best solution either because I’m wearing too many hats and not getting enough of others feedback.
I guess at the end of the day things can always be improved, so does it really matter?
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One Comment
I think that is a by-product of the agency environment. I know I would see the same thing happen at my old job, whereas when we were at Alienware that wasn’t the case since projects didn’t last for months and months, but were compressed into a week or two.
But of course because there was a small team, everyone wore a lot of hats and things could change a lot easier.
So to me it’s not so much freelance vs day-job but big-shop vs small-shop so to speak.