Work Advice: Should I stay or should I go?

Not knowing where you are, what other opportunities are around you, it is difficult to say. There have been a lot of studios closing and other reducing staff with the economic downturn – really only you can assess your situation and prospects.

Is there a way you can trim down your work for them to a smaller consulting gig? Then you can continue to run your business your way without being a slave to the hours. It also opens up the contract/conditions for negotiation. I think it’s worth at least exploring.

Are you working for them because they provide you health care benefits? You could, as @cyndyh said, start a consulting business and work for yourself. Could you live on your night job while you get a freelance business started? Are there opportunities to pick up freelance work as a graphic designer in your area? If you quit, could you be easily replaced, or would they have to hire you as a freelancer?

The owners don’t seem to feel that the work you do adds directly to the bottom line of their business. Do you have any way to demonstrate that it does, like increased traffic due to ads, Web sales, etc. Are you able to factually (real numbers) gauge your impact on their business?

For me… it comes down to this:

Are you happy?

If yes, stay… if no, leave. Much of life ends up being as simple as that, I find…

@PandoraBoxx: My wife also has a full set of benefits. We can easily get them through her job.

If I quit, they couldn’t easily replace me (I run the website, write the radio ads, design all print collateral, coordinate all events, handle vendors and I shoot all the photographs).

I also contribute heavily to the bottom line and run reports quarterly to prove it (unique web traffic, print coupon tracking, customer surveys, online reviews, customer count tied to event promotion, etc.)

While the other owners see this data, they are extremely old fashioned (none, save my boss own a computer) and, for example, will expect an eight page wholesale flyer (with photographs) to be completed in a day. They don’t understand why it might take a week or don’t understand why we need a website (they’re 85, 64 and 60 respectively. My boss is about 44 and more savy to the modern world).

@PB: Also, the night job (teaching at a college) pays extremely well, but the hours are scarce and the place is very unstable.

@thrice2k3: It may just come down to that.

But as @DarkScribe mentions, I’m not certain the economy in my area (Boston) can support me going freelance or doing consulting.

Do you love it? I have to say, from the pictures of yours I’ve seen it really seems like you do. If you love it, and they pay you enough to live reasonably well, I’d stay. You have a very unique position in a beautiful environment. I imagine things would be much more stressful in a design shop that you don’t control.

Of course, I could be totally off-base. If it’s making you miserable, then by all means look elsewhere.

@augustlan: No, you’re right. I do love the actual design and photography work.

I’m tiring of the long hours and their need to justify my presence (go stack some tomatoes so we can feel better about under paying you).

@cprevite, one of my favorite sayings is, “No one can make you feel bad without your permission.” Likewise, no one can take advantage of you without your permission. Some things that you do starting out in a career often require you to take advantage of opportunities and do things in order to get a chance, and that sounds like what’s happened here. You have been willing to work for less for the chance to hone your skills. You are essentially a full service agency for them. If you are teaching at a college as well, then you shouldn’t have much difficulty in creating a freelance business.

You might want to create schedules for the work, and work on controlling the work according to the schedule. If it takes you a week to put the flyer together, create a schedule, and give them the due dates. Organize your work by jobs, track your time against the job, and create a bill for it based upon competitive freelance rates for your area. Track the sales metrics against the projects, and submit it on a regular basis.
Update your resume, and with the sales metrics, you should have no problem finding someone who wants creative with proven sales results.

Have you been there long enough to build a portfolio? If you do top notch work, maybe you could use that as a springboard to get a similar job that pays normative rates without the extra produce-related duties.

@pdworkin: Yes, I’ve been there over two years and have dozens of pieces of portfolio-level work. Plus, I’ve been a designer for over fifteen years (web design and photography only in the past five years; print and illustration the rest).

@PD: I think that’s a good idea – to use that documentation to buoy my experience in measurable terms.

See the “produce-related duties” were added on after my boss discovered his partners (family) were less than thrilled with this newly created position (prior to me it was college kids making photocopies).

If you’re reasonably happy at the the job but unhappy with the time and the lack of appreciation but don’t think there are other opportunities right now, I believe I would stay for now. You can always re-evaluate when the economy turns around (it will! it will!). It’s also possible that the older partners will get out and the work environment will improve in a year or two. But I can certainly understand your frustrations!

In this economy, I would not recommend that anyone quit without knowing what they were going to. You are currently seeing all the downsides of your job. I have worked for a company where no one else was in my field. It was very frustrating not to have a common base of understanding to work from.

What about exploring new opportunities first before quitting? Think through what you would be going to. What does your new job look like? Are you a staff graphic design person in a corporation? Are you consulting? Have you moved to full-time teaching?

Make a grid of what features you want, what salary you want, etc. Then start looking to see what is in the market right now.

One outcome could be you find something, and then quit. Another outcome might be that your current job begins to look better to you.

I say put out into the universe what you want, and you may attract it to you. What I notice about your Q as posed, though, is that it is about what you don’t want and not what you want.

Good luck, cprevite!

@cprevite: I would recommend against going freelance, unless you’ve already got a network of contacts in place and you’re already getting pinged regularly to see about doing work. When I tried to go freelance, I ran hard into the fact that I am simply not a salesman. Also, even if you’re only getting paid 50% of what you could get at a salaried job somewhere else, going freelance has a salary of 0, so that’s a step down unless you’ve already got leads and prospects.

It sounds like you’re more annoyed that the other three partners don’t appreciate you. Could you negotiate a reduced work week and no “produce duties”? Does the partner who does appreciate you realize that he’s at risk of losing you? (The other three partners don’t need to relent in their disdain, they just need to shut up about it, while you bear in mind that progress is made one funeral at a time.)

@cwilbur: “while you bear in mind that progress is made one funeral at a time.”

LOLFR! (I just scared the lady and her dog next to me when I laughed.) That is a very good point.

And yes, my boss and I have discussed this. He says to hang in there (perhaps he shares your perspective). :^)

How long have you been there? Just curious…it maybe a seniority issue more than anything.

You could ask to go hourly, so you are paid for your overtime.
You could ask to work from home some of the time, so you are less available for produce duty?

My sister once had a job where she was grossly underpaid and overworked. She asked for more money and didn’t get it so she quit. When she did, the company had to hire three people to replace her, and when her ex-boss saw her out in public he refused to speak to her because she quit. People are really odd sometimes.

Just from what you’ve said I would say you should first look around and see if you can even get a hold of another job opportunity ( w/o that there is no point in leaving). Assuming you do get a job offer and the situation/money/area to live is what your looking for then I would go for it (I doubt they would fire someone they just hired).
Honestly it seems like where you work atm is so small that you’ll never get payed more and your time is being diverted from what your good at. You need a job where your only task is to do what you do and where your talents will not be overlooked. A bigger company or bigger city would give you a better chance to grow imo.

If anything you could always think about going back to school (not sure how much schooling you’ve had already) and maybe get an mba and work for a big firm while slowly thinking about setting up your own small setup with maybe one other designer if you believe the market can handle it a few years from now.

@everyone: Thanks for the great advice and ideas. Very, very helpful.

It us much appreciated.