On ad agencies and a work-life balance

Ad agencies are notorious for exploiting, and then burning out, their employees. Employees are expected to work long hours, work weekends, and exhibit a willingness to drop anything in order to serve a client.

For me, that’s the money quote from Peter Merholz‘ post The Pernicious Effects of Advertising and Marketing Agencies Trying To Deliver User Experience Design. Actually, the entire post aligns quite well with my experience at two advertising (one traditional, one interactive-only) agencies, but this one point has been my biggest frustration with agency work.

Working employees that hard leads to employee turnover, burnout, dissatisfaction, crap creative, and buggy applications. I’ve seen it. I’ve shipped bad code because of it. I haven’t worked in enough agencies to know that this is par for the course, but since the industry has a reputation for devouring its workers, I feel comfortable saying that it needs to change.

Also see: Peter’s follow-up post.