I’ve been offered a job at a well respected College in Canada as their Web Strategist. Small team in the marketing dept but the job itself is right up my alley.
I’ve been at my current gig now for 9 years now. Small niche agency in with some good clients. But over the last few years, those bigger clients have been moving their projects in-house and we’ve been forced to focus more on getting smaller gigs to pay the bills and in the meantime, we’ve been developing our own software. One service is a mobile learning platform that allows the user to upload video and then all members can collaborate around it.
2 years in development and we just landed our first, international client. It’s cloud based and practically infinitely scalable with Amazon. So there’s opportunity there, but I’m not a partner (though I was offered partnership 4 years back and I’m sure I could get it back on the table).
I have incredible freedom at my current job. Telecommute 3 days a week, manage a team remotely, 2 days in the office, never work overtime, weekends are my own, excellent compensation and I have the time to do freelance work. On a sunny afternoon, I’m on my deck in the backyard enjoying the weather and working with my company issued Macbook Pro Retina fully loaded.
The job is great. But like everything there’s baggage and I feel like my career is stagnating.
On the other hand, this role of web strategist is significantly less pay, it’s union based, longer hours and my freelance will potentially suffer as a result. I’d be in a corporate environment and the thought of sitting at a desk day in and day out scares the **** out of me just because of my personality and need to move around and change scenery. I’d be managing 125 internal clients and defining and steering the the web presence moving forward. By owning the web properties I’d finally have the chance to conduct usability studies, A/B testing, etc. I don’t currently have that opportunity because, like most niche agencies the clients would rather push the project out the door and not pay for the smart planning and in-depth analysis of the data.
Telecommuting at the College is also not an option, but it’s a 6 minute drive from where I live. Mon to Friday, 8:30 -5 with a 30 min lunch. It would take me many years to get back to my current salary.
But, the job itself seems GREAT. It’s a day-to-day job where “on paper” having a College is good but then, I’ve already taught there and am on the Web Design Advisory Committee so it’s already part of it.
Any thoughts or insight would be highly appreciated.
Nothing major. I’m not a big spender but it is hard for me to say “no” when my family needs cash.