Freelance vs Digital Agency
There are several ways to put your foot into web design and development world. The most obvious ways in via freelancing or entering a design/digital agency. Off course there are pros and cons for both, and everyone has different preferences.
I’ve done both so I’m going to share my experience on both.
Freelance
I freelanced for a few months after I graduated from university. It was not my first choice but it’s a bit of income while looking for a job. I freelanced for about 3 months before finding my first full time developer job at an agency. Freelance was okay but it’s not suitable for me.
Freelance has some great advantages as such working from the comfort of your own home. It was really good to be able to sit around in my dressing gown and have access to my own kitchen at any time. I didn’t have to worry about traveling to work or getting up early in the mornings.
However finding the motivation was really hard. You need to be self motivated and it’s particularly hard with home entertainment all around you and the freedom to do what you want when you want. There’s a famous saying “with great freedom comes great responsibility”.
You need many different skills to be a successful full time freelance developer. You need to be able to manage the project and communicate with revilement individuals as well as developing the website. It’s a pretty difficult job once you put all that into perspective. There’s also no one to help you when you’re stuck as you’re working alone.
Income wasn’t stable and varied from week to week making it pretty difficult to manage my spendings.
Digital agency
I definitely refer working at a digital agency. A digital agency will generally consist mainly of project managers, sales, client services, designers and developers. The roles are very defined and it allows each person to concentrate on what they’re good at.
Off course i need to be on time, work 9am – 5pm, take lunch at certain times and report my daily progress. It sounds horrible and constrained doesn’t it? Well actually it’s not, I quite like the regularity of it.
I work in a small team with three other developers, four designers and some project managers. 90% of my time is spent developing, the other 10% goes to meetings, and general admin work. I absolutely love it! I don’t have to deal with clients or manage the project or even have to deal with the subjectiveness of design.
Deadlines have to be met but it isn’t that difficult. You’re at the office for 8hrs a day and motivation comes by easily when you’re in the work environment. Enough time will be allocated for development and any unexpected technical issues. Time will also be allocated according to the knowledge of on the developer working on it.
One major advantage is stable and regular income. Money management is much easier with a regular income that’s the same every month.
Which path should you take?
I believe the agency path is a better route for all inexperience developers. Freelance sounds easier but it isn’t. You actually need more experience and skills to be a successful freelance. Generally developers will go down the freelance route after several years of agency experience.
Some worry that they’re not skilled enough to start a career in the digital world, but that’s just a silly thought. Everyone is inexperienced sometime in their career life. There are roles for the experienced and the inexperienced, you just need to make sure you apply for the right ones (e.g. Junior developer/graduate developer etc).
The agency will know your skill level upon hiring you. Don’t think that they’ll expect you to be amazing. If they want an experienced developer they will advertise it in their job specification. Companies will always want junior developers because they always need someone to do simple and sometimes tedious task. It’s not very cost effective to get the experience developers to amend typos and update images on a website.
The agency experience is very valuable to a young developer. You will learn and improve more than freelancing. Not only will you improve your technical skills but you will also pick up other useful skills from the other team members.
Good luck in your journey into this world. Leave any comments or questions and I’ll be happy to answer them.
Love this post. Informative and accurate! I guess I sort of did it backwards, doing freelancing first. I had to learn a lot of things the hard way, whereas having an entire team training you and having experience under your built will make you a much more successful freelancer. On the positive sign, my freelancing is what got me the job in the first place! It’s definitely interesting to see the vs. side of both.
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I done freelancing for a while too but it didn’t go very well. I found it really hard because I was totally inexperienced. I just finished university at the time and only done some websites for myself. It was a big step to take and I didn’t earn very much. I was glad to drop that after a while as it was starting to stress me out a bit. Working in an agency with a team of other developers is definitely much better.
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I think I’d rather work at the agency then. There’s no way I’m allowed to laze off and I would get a regular income. Freelancing requires a lot of responsibility that I don’t think I have yet. Well with my career freelance isn’t much of a choice anyway. Not that I know what my career is.
Thanks for writing this it’s very inspiration to read someone who knows what she’s doing. =) I wish I could have a job that can have some freelancing at least on the side. It sounds more like an adventure for someone like me who can’t sit still.
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Responsibility is a big thing especially for a young person, best to lower it as much as possible at the beginning. There’s room for freelance for many jobs. Computer is used in everything now a days and email communication is used more often than face to face. Don’t always need to be there in person to get the job done. I know many women work from home when they have children, that’s similar to freelancing.
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This reminds me of similar advice that is given to engineers. Generally, we are told to start out by working for a large company, where we will have both less responsibility and less room to shine. Then, once our skills are honed, we can start working at a startup where we will have more to do. After a while at a startup, then we can do whatever we like.
Personally, I’d enjoy the social interaction that comes with being around people at a design agency rather than alone. I learn so much more that way.
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Less responsibility is always good especially for a first job. It’s pretty hard stepping into the working life as it is so the less worry there is the easier it is to adapt to the lifestyle. There’s always room to shine after gaining some experience and knowledge.
The social interaction in a big plus, it’s boring working alone at home all day. Takes the life out of you after a while.
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Great post! I also think that working at an agency would be the best. I am so afraid of loosing my inspiration (that happens sometimes!) and that’s not so good if you are a freelancer. I’m studying web development on distance (from home, or whatever you call it), and after two years I think I need to see some people so I don’t turn in to a total loner! I have no one I can talk to, in person, about web design or development either, and I think it would be a huge benefit to be able do that.
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