Seven Hells of Digital Agencies

I know a thing or two about software engineering. When applying for a developer job, you have a plethora of companies at your disposal, ranging from dedicated software houses, gaming companies and institutions, to agencies and companies that aren’t necessarily tech, yet maintaining their own IT department.

Digital agencies are the ones I have become most knowledgeable about. Smaller and bigger ones, body-shopping software houses, consulting firms and product-delivery companies. Many articles have been written about upsides and benefits you can come by while working for one and I can totally relate to many of them. Yet, in the light of my own experience, I would like to share my insights from a slightly different point of view.

Firstly, what is a digital agency? This all-encompassing buzzword is often misused and covers all sorts of companies — there is no general characterization. To me, the term digital agency refers to a company that provides services in the field of digital technologies. One of the most definitive aspects is that their core business doesn’t depend on their own products. Simply, the client orders a product and the agency delivers either the product itself or people that will deliver the product.

Let’s talk about 7 challenges you may encounter when choosing to work for a (big) digital agency — seven challenges that may run into seven hells if left unchecked. For every challenge written below, there is a solution laid down that could help you out. Note that not all of them concern only digital agencies and you will unlikely encounter all of them in one place.

Challenge #1: Vision

Success (and failure) belongs to the client, making the agency linger in its shadow. The agency doesn’t own the product and if there are more companies involved, the lead time is dispersed as well, leaving not enough space for strategical maneuvering.

When you work on your own product, it’s like if you were climbing a hill. Working for a big company, on the other hand, feels like flying by airplane, while having very little part in its speed or direction. And finally, working for a digital agency feels like helping assemble an airplane without partaking on its achievements.

Any agency can build a product someone else ordered. The thing is, what makes your agency unique and special? It’s no wonder that the world is filled with agencies of mediocre quality that just “do stuff”, having no vision at all. And if there is no vision, what is left for the engineers?

Solution

If there is no vision, try to make one. Focus on any other aspects you may affect. Introduce new practices, new technologies, bring your own innovations, engage in important decisions. And what is most important, share your find and insights with people from outside the company to get a valuable feedback. Focus on knowledge-sharing and education.

Challenge #2: Mission

If you decide to work for a company that sells their own product, your mission should manifest itself before you even accept the job. For digital agencies, however, things are more complicated. You work on a product, the product gets finished and you either end up devoting the rest of your sojourn to an endless maintenance, or get another product assigned. Your assignment may change any time which brings us to the question: what is your mission, if not the product? What brings you subjective satisfaction?

Solution

On a personal note, I would like to add that my mission has never been to work on a project (except my freelance engagements), but rather service to the community itself — leaving footprints in the hearts of the community was the major thing I have always cared about. For you, it can be basically anything that gives you energy and creativity. If you work on a boring product, find other ways to either make it exciting or start discovering new ways beyond the scope of your work that could help you find your mission statement.

And of course, always choose your projects, since it’s much more pleasant to enjoy a success (and also accept a failure) of a project of your choosing. A project or a task that has been assigned to you by someone else won’t bring much of enthusiasm.

Challenge #3: Performance

Faster, better, cheaper. In the name of immense speed and efficiency, agencies can doom themselves by requiring their engineers to high-perform every day. On the other hand, bigger agencies suffer the opposite problem — indolent people who rarely deliver anything.

The first case can be seen mainly at fixed-price projects — yes, even in 2020, the majority of clients doesn’t want to go agile, because… who wants to pay for a continuous delivery, not knowing the final price? For fixed-price projects, the agency can calculate the margin for the case if everything goes well, provided the project is finished in time. If this is not the case, every additional hour spent on the project lowers the revenue, putting the company in jeopardy of ending in red numbers. Fear from this bad-story-ending forces the management to act up like crazy, create high pressure on the engineers, force them to finish that thing as fast as possible, lowering the quality and eventually — the productivity. Sit, code, deliver. Faster. Faster!

The second case can be found at plain body-shopping. The agency delivers certain amount of people for certain amount of time and if some of them don’t perform good and the client finds out, they will get replaced by someone else. The agency can’t care about the performance as much as in the first case since the client will pay anyway.

Both cases can be described on an example when you try to find the correct tire pressure for your car. If there is too little pressure, the tire will flatten. If there is too much pressure, it will explode.

Either extreme is energy-consuming and is sure to eventually fail.

Solution

Try to adjust your project in such a way that you or your team will have at least some part on setting the goals — it is easier to step out of your comfort zone because of a promise you made, rather than being forced to accomplish something you had no part in determining. There is more — if your team is high-performing and the project you are working on suffers from drastically low processing speed (therefore you get your job done long before the sprint ends), try to dedicate some extra time on other activities - for instance, technical improvements or other things that don’t require input from hundreds of squabbling business experts.

Challenge #4: Environment

When things aren’t going well in your environment, deep down you know it. Sadly, in big digital agencies you are sure to bump into hopeless toxic people that destroy the morale, lazy people that had disengaged from work by doing the bare minimum, and once well-performing teams that are about to burn out since the management doesn’t care about them.

Hopeless people are blessed with rare abilities that help them survive for a long time and it’s very difficult to deal with them. From my own experience, many companies are failing because they allowed a culture of bad leaders and lazy individuals who don’t care about the goal but rather care about how to make themselves look good. When someone is incompetent and the management doesn’t act accordingly, it will demoralize the others.

Solution

Firstly, do your best to recognize the good people (those that aren’t contributing to the dysfunction) and provide them with a consistent support by constantly communicating with them. Your teammates won’t let you know a problem exists before it becomes unmanageable, unless they feel they can trust you. If you don’t openly discuss important topics, those will often turn into back-channel attacks, which is more harmful than any direct conflict. “If we don't speak about problems, the problems will somehow…disappear,” is a common subconscious opinion preached by bad managers.

Secondly, choose your own team, be part of the hiring process, surround yourself with people of similar thinking. Make your environment better by bringing more people whose mission statement will help the team succeed — don’t let the lazy and incompetent ones become a majority.

If you are interviewing someone and start talking about a mission that just came to your mind, does the candidate light up? Does he/she show interest in the role you offered, or is he/she just looking for a job? This is a big difference that distinguishes team members from bare employees.

Challenge #5: Support

Support from the management is imperative. The engineers will be loyal to the company only if the company (and the leadership) is loyal to them.

During my career, I have met so many poisonous, unqualified and also incapable bosses (plus a CEO that was the personification of greed). From toxic leaders that don’t show appreciation nor give their team personal independence, to submissive managers incapable to question authorities, obeying commands from the upstream, passing any bad news in a set of cheesy, zen-like optimistic statements, making the situation even worse.

Growth is only possible if the management provides consistent support. Without commitment, there are only promises. And managers who require excellence from the team, but don’t produce excellent results in their own work (they don't lead by example), will eventually fail.

This reminds me of a project I once worked on — team setup was bad, no probing analysis made, part of the solution depended on an external company,… the failure was inevitable. The management ignored all warning signs, the output of the team began to slide, morale dropped down rapidly, the project was suspended and eventually cancelled, team members had left the studio, nobody was held responsible.

Solution

When dealing with a bad boss, sometimes it’s best to make your own decisions. Long time ago I learnt that no matter how skilled you are, with no alliances having forged beforehand, you will never uphold your point of view. Forge your own alliances, choose your friends carefully, and your enemies even more carefully.

Surrounded by bad bosses, it’s an amazing and invaluable opportunity to develop your soft-skills, as you can demonstrate your ability to perform better than them. Build relationships, though sometimes fragile ones and remain assertive.

If you have a bunch of people who decided to follow you as their informal leader, there is no reason not to go ahead, roll up your sleeves and do the work. It’s important to realize that “Leader” title on your business card doesn’t really make you a leader, unless you start acting like one.

Give people purpose, build networks, pursue your goals as a unit and break the management chain.

Challenge #6: Reward

Social rewards are more important than the materialistic ones and it’s common that many companies that pay best don’t give you much of a social reward or recognition. There is more — those companies are usually filled with people who focus on their paycheck only and those are considered among very bad teammates.

If your salary is low because your company can’t afford to pay you more, it’s completely ok, if there is hope for better tomorrow, shielded by a consistent growth. On the other hand, if you work your ass of every day while earning a lot less than someone from the same team who doesn’t work at all, that’s a real concern to address.

Solution

Always prefer better teacher and better community to better salary. In the long run, it will pay off many times over. Moreover, if the company preaches honesty and transparency, you should feel free to address any irregularities openly.

Challenge #7: Personal space

Larger companies usually put their people into specialized groups focused on one major area, where you will only have access to bare minimum you need to do your job. Anything that makes or breaks any big agency will barely become one individual’s contribution.

People may feel unappreciated, lacking a higher cause and leave, which is a common pattern emerging in AAA game industry or Hollywood movie production. Luckily, many companies are aware of this infliction and provide more or less working solutions, such as founding of subsidiaries or partially independent departments with their own culture and rules.

Solution

Make changes on smaller scales — if your innovative input, no matter how valid, isn't taken into consideration, lower the scale and build your own small world in the middle of the corporate grid.

Final Word

All that having been said, big digital agencies provide a great place to start one’s career as they offer more visibility of your work. It’s also a great opportunity to elevate your soft-skills, because here you will deal with challenges of a nature listed above more often than at startups or product-oriented companies.