Over the past year or so, I’ve managed to work with a fairly diverse lot – each providing me with very interesting and varied experiences. Part one of this post will endeavor to shed some light on my experiences with employers (large & small), and part two will touch on my dealings with various clients (again, large & small).
Rather than spell out what I thought to be the pros and cons of each arrangement, I’d rather just give you an overview of each of my experiences and let you judge the pros and cons for yourself. So, without further ado…
SMALL
For those that know, and for those that don’t, I’ve spend the better part of the last year or so in the full-time freelance realm, so when I refer to ’small’ employers, I mean as small as you can get.
Being your own boss has tremendous advantages, and I was able to enjoy many of them, but far and away the best perk from my perspective was flexibility. I might even go as far as to say the foundation of my freelance career was built on flexibility. That’s not to say that I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to – quite the contrary – being the go-getter I am, I was constantly working towards deadlines and tweaking designs ‘just one more time.’ What I mean by flexibility is that how the deadlines, tweaks and for that matter the projects themselves played out was my prerogative. If any number of “things” came up, I was usually able to roll with it. Hair’s getting a little shaggy - no problem. Need to pick mom up from the airport - no worries. Out late the night before and needed an extra hour in the sack - zzzzzzzz.
That said, I tried very much not to let “fun time” creep into my workday - I felt that was a very slippery slope. Though my XBOX would taunt me from time to time, and my bike would beg me to take it out when the sun was shining, that was one avenue I didn’t venture down.
The one thing that I found hard was the need to be three people at the same time, and I’m sure any entrepreneur-type can attest to this. Somehow I needed to find a balance between:
- the “administration guy” who took care of communication, invoicing, red staplers and such,
- the “design guy” who took care of design, programming, self-loathing and such, and
- the “sales guy” who took care of meetings, drumming up new work and generally making me look like an all-star.
Since I’m a fairly organized fellow, I didn’t find it too troublesome to balance all of these, but because there were all of these facets to worry about, I found I wasn’t able to focus on any one as much as I would have liked.
MEDIUM
Though, technically my ‘medium’ employer may be considered to be small by some (the size of my ‘medium’ employer floated between 3 and 12 employees during my tenure), it’s still bigger than just me so we’ll stick with the heading we have.
For me, I think the pivotal thing about working at a company is that I like people… And I think people like me. I like to joke, tell stories, and create convoluted inside jokes that no one else understands. I like to spitball ideas, brainstorm concepts, push co-workers and have them push me to produce better products. You can do all of this when you’re on your own, but it’s not the same. There’s just something about being in the same place as a bunch of like-minded people that creates a little bit of magic.
Bearing that in mind, small firms are all about chemistry – if you bring in one person that doesn’t match up, the magic is gone (well, ok, maybe not gone, but not nearly as bright and sparkly), so you have to be careful.
The other nice thing about a smaller company is the sense of ownership… Obviously when you’re on your own, you are the proverbial “man” (second only to the client), but you shape the direction of each and every project. It’s much the same with a smaller team, but since you are no longer the “man”, you have to be o.k. working things out in a team dynamic.
LARGE
Working for a large firm (as I am now) is an entirely different beast. Not worse… Just different. I think one of the reasons it’s not worse is because I work for a “good” large firm… They aren’t good because of the work they create (though that’s really good too), they’re good because they understand the strengths and the appeal of the freelance and boutique shops. As such they’re willing to bend a little bit to attract and keep the best talent… Offering a bit more flexibility that other large organizations, and pushing employees to take ownership of projects. In addition to this, they also take advantage of the inherent benefits of being big… Benefits many smaller firms can’t match.
Of course many large firms have fancy offices, offer the odd catered lunch, and grant you free reign of the office foosball table, but those aren’t ‘real’ benefits to me (though air conditioning is nice 
). The benefits I’m talking about are things like having a ton of really talented people (leaders in their respective fields) all around you to draw on, or having clients that understand what the web can do and offer you the freedom to explore it. Granted it’s not all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, since there are a number of slightly tedious things that come with dealing with large clients, but by in large I’ve been lucky that the good has outweighed the bad.
THE VERDICT
The verdict is that there is no verdict, at least not for me, not yet. There are very wonderful things about each scenario, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with some really excellent people in each instance. I’m not sure what the future holds, but I’m glad I at least got to experience (to some extent) each scale of the business.
