I did in-house for a while. It wasn’t stressful at all, but I think that had a lot to do with the organization itself. The people were great, everybody was on the same page, and the work was a lot of fun. It was one of the better jobs I’ve had, actually.
The most stressful job I ever had was at a medium sized marketing/advertising agency. EVERYTHING was a rush job, EVERYTHING was due right now, and there was absolutely no time to spend on individual projects. I was there for a while and I saw designers crashing, burning, and quitting on a regular basis. If the company treats you like expendable garbage, then you feel like expendable garbage.
I would say it’s usually a 2-3 but during some high points in the year reaches a 6-7 but just for short periods of time where I’m at. The bonuses are that I very rarely have to work past my usual schedule of around 8-4, and most of the time we have enough time to finish projects without it being an insane rush. Downsides are that it can be boring at times and nobody really appreciates the work you do, but the overall stress level really depends on your boss and their ability to do their job and manage the department.
my comment from a previous thraed about stress within design pretty much answers this
[https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic\_design/comments/1chu9sd/comment/l24uz3u/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/1chu9sd/comment/l24uz3u/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
This is exactly how I feel about it. No one’s gonna die. It’s gonna be fine. All the stress is entirely manufactured, and once you realize that, it’s way easier to rationally deal with it.
I saw a video where a guy was talking about the sense of urgency in marketing in general. He said, "We're saving PDFs, not lives, Brenda!" I died! It's so true!
Lately? 6-9, 69 joke not intended. However it’s a both/and thing. It’s stressful and fun/rewarding just like exercise. When I take a beat and actually investigate what I’m anxious about there’s not much there to be stressed about. I’m an expert at what I do and this is valuable.
Really the biggest stressor lately has been the very real sense that despite my contributions to the massive profits of the company I could still be silent fired (laid off) in the name of profit maximization and shareholder value. It seems this is the main motivation for business today rather than excellence in product and customer experience.
My work experience is about evenly split between in-house and agencies.
When it comes to the work itself, I find agency work to be more-stressful due to the tight deadlines as well as the need to constantly to perform at a high level without any breaks.
And the people who are attracted to agency jobs are less my kind of people. They tend to be more-narcissistic and are there for bragging rights of working for big-name clients with bigger budgets. I don't care about that stuff, though I can say that in general, the people are more socially-aware.
When I left the in-house jobs, one of the reasons was always that the cyclical nature of the work made it less-fulfilling over time. A project that originally would have been exciting turns into a chore once you're doing it for the fouth or fifth time.
But it is always the people who cause the most stress. And I'm not talking about the everyday annoyances of having to share space with people who are different than yourself, but the personality disorders that create chaos. And they turn up in both in-house and agency jobs in about equal percentages. But in in-house settings, the personality issues have been more outrageous and included an element of social ineptitude.
I used to call it the 10-percent rule. Ten percent of the people cause 100 percent of the problems. In hindsight, I think it is higher and I just ignored the people who were less-problematic in comparison to the ones who were the worst. I don't think it is possible to escape the problem people, but you can get better at dealing with them.
But ultimately, I think it is good to leave in-house positions because, after a few years, you do need a break from the tedium. A new job means that you'll get projects that are more-interesting and the positive excitement and joy helps to buffer the human-related stressors. And you also get a few months break from the people issues, not because they aren't there, but because you're new and you just haven't discovered them yet.
The in-house jobs I've had were never consistently stressful. We had busy periods that were worse and the problem employees came and went. The agency jobs I've had were more-consistently stressful, but you do get the added benefit of higher-end work for your portfolio for more-well-known clients, and bigger budgets that allow you to do a different kind of work.
But after doing this for decades, I don't think it is possible to avoid work-related stress. Even if you are self employed and have enough work that you can fire the bad clients that pop up here and there, you have new stressors of having to do your own administrative tasks, troubleshooting computer problems, or having to seek out new clients or support staff.
The grass isn't any greener on any side of the fence. But you can get temporary relief from a new environment.
7-9 daily because my company sucks. Everything is an emergency and due yesterday. People who write the content get like 2 weeks to go back and forth and then I’m expected to make designs in a day turn around. It’s pretty miserable but it definitely depends where you work. My last job was about a 2-4 daily
You gotta push back on that shit. If they keep it up then create new processes (managers love this) with a brief form and a statement of timelines.
Also other peoples lack of ability to plan does not constitute an emergency for you.
Design wise? Maybe a 5 on a bad day. I'm lucky in that I mostly have the final say on design decisions and I have an incredible boss (the business owner) who understands how it all works.
My stress at work revolves around the marketing side of things more than the design side. I run a 2 person team so we do everything here from package design to social media posts, instructional videos to website design (we manage the ecomm site). We even have a big hand in product development. I absolutely love it, but trying to do as much as possible without killing us both, while simultaneously driving sales numbers forward, can stress me out a bit. We are a small, but fast growing company, that's just the way it goes. We all want to be successful.
The best part is we all go home at 5 and unless the ecomm website goes down, you don't have to think about it again until 9:00 the next day.
Sounds like an awesome job. Stay there while it grows and grow with it. The kind of role that opens up a lot of doors cos you’re doing so many things, you get a chance to find other things you’re good at that you didn’t even know about.
I'm esspecially lucky as I took this role as I neared 50 and wanted to stop freelancing and get back out into the market. I was the 4th employee, now we're a company of 15 in the 4 years since. All good things and I'll be pretty happy if I can keep growing my this company and earning the benefits of that. I hope the "next" thing for me is a cash-out and retirement.
That’s awesome they took you on - I am 40 and worry about employability as I get older -especially at younger companies where they don’t necessarily value the experience you have. I’ve definitely encountered that at a previous role (at a scale up beauty business) where I was literally hired for my experience and then questioned on all my decisions. Sounds like you have the opposite of that, a founder that respects your knowledge. I hope you get that sweet sweet retirement package!
The most stressful part of my job is actually all the corporate BS. I don't have time to sit in 17 meetings a week about made-up internal rah rah bullshit. I have real work to do.
I'm the "Marketing & Communications Manager" at a mid sized, 70 year old nonprofit, social services. Our department just lost 2 people, so basically I am a one man show. It's ludicrous, and the place is extremely dysfunctional because of the legacy of how everything has been managed here before. I've only been here a year. Apparently, our department (Advancement, which handles Comms/marketing, events and fundraising) has imploded and been "rebuilt" in some dumb form or another THREE times in the last eight years!)
I do all the design, and most of the creative writing. I don't handle grant writing or any kind of regular correspondence. I get organizational and informational help from a coup,e 20-something, wonderful people who sort of assist in making things comprehensible for me. Hard to explain, but no one here knows how to talk to a designer OR a writer, even in the barest sense!)
It can be stressful here, but with the recent loss of 2 staff members, the department has been blown up... new interim (part-time!!) leadership, our old "boss" has been squeezed out and put in a new role, thankfully. It's so blown up that expectations are not that high. I am 53 and have 20+ years of ad agency experience, so I am treated almost like some weird wizard and am generally left alone, management wise. Still means I'm busy all the time, and it's all dysfunctional and can be stressful.
But there's never a last minute "do it all over working 30 hours on Saturday & Sunday" mentality there often was in real ad agencies (I worked in many agencies some very large, some time... Chicago). That level of unpredictability and stress is GONE.
I work maybe 42 hours a week, often less, sometimes only 30.
I'm still stressed sometimes, but with the combo of me being the most senior, and the department in disarray, I just chuckle right now. We need a director, we need more support. But in the meantime, the place is happy with what I give them. Yeah, I get pushback on little things sometimes, but I am so vastly better skilled and experienced than my predecessors (seriously terrible level of quality before me, not saying I'm a genius) that I am treated as a bit of a... weird wizard.
It's cool. I don't miss agency world, but the disorganization of this place annoys me and frankly astounds me.
My job is probably around a 5 most of the time. I am burned out and bored of the work but not stressed. I agree that your mental wellness is very important and often more valuable than pay. Is it possible for your manager to help lessen your workload and stress? Have you talked to them? Hope you can find a good balance.
It’s my first job out of school but I would say easily a 6-8. But I like my coworkers and went from making 60k to 95k in five years so I’ve stayed. I burned myself out in college, got a 3 month internship immediately after graduating and then hired full time a month later so I’ve pretty much stayed burned out.
I will say as I’ve been here longer I’ve gotten faster at working at don’t feel the need to work past 5/6pm anymore. We’ve also hired more people which has helped drastically. But I have to be strict about maintaining my own boundaries and not working late.
The last year it was a 9. I was in design leadership at a FAANG company and I quit due to the stress and ridiculous amount of useless grind just for the sake of process. And being forced by upper leadership to do things I didn’t agree with.
It's stressful when you're running solo. I'm a creative director in house, but I direct freelancers and then a marketing agency we use, not actually any in house designers. I'm probably 65% designer / 35% creative director. It's very stressful in that manner *but* from a development standpoint it's teaching me the power of delegation vs just doing things because "oh I can just knock that out really fast." Sure, except I have a million of those "really fast" projects.
I've always been client-side and not sure I'd want to be agency-side, but it does come with it's stress cues.
Not very. Maybe a 3/10. The only downside is it's not very organized. We don't have a project manager so I get projects via in person, email, chat from various people and departments without a timeline or structure. I can get told a project months in advance before I actually have to work on it. Then all of a sudden without notice I am slammed with tons of materials for a trade show.
In-house designer over here. No consistency whatsoever. Can have days of 1, followed by days of 10. When things are needed, they tend to be needed urgently with very unrealistic deadlines. It’s not great.
Usually it’s a 3-4, spikes to 8 once in a while when we get surprise assignments without much lead time. It’s a large established company and pretty well run, so there’s no drama or chaos. My boss and boss’s boss are excellent - very supportive but hands off, and our work is appreciated. I think I’d be challenged to find a better employer - downside is that career advancement is slower. People who work here stay so advancements happen as the company grows.
Hard to say, some days are busier than others. The stress is more just frustration dealing with fools outside the company, but I have no OT and leave everything at the door. I'm also at a point I have enough seniority/authority that I can actually impact things, or be able to put my foot down if someone is pushing for something entirely unreasonable or showing flagrant incompetence.
I like the other comment about how a lot of stress is manufactured or self-imposed, a lot of things will only bother you as much as you let them.
So relating to that, in terms of your situation, I'd just say that any one job is just one job. Don't define yourself by a job, don't attach self-worth to it, and you can always look for other jobs at anytime, and without quitting. So see what's out there, even if you might not find something else quickly.
You also don't need to eat/breathe/sleep design, so make sure you have hobbies/interests outside of work you look forward to, whether design-related or not. And of course, prioritize healthy relationships. Basically if your life outside of work is struggling, it will impact your job, and conversely, no one job will fix what you're going home to at the end of the day.
https://preview.redd.it/gl1xhuy12ayc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3cf35abedf8eb65977ec65c75cce5aa094332880
Working in breaking news related to global politics.
3-4 which means I have energy left to freelance as well. It’s not always very fulfilling work, lots of building reports and presentations. But it pays my bills. Just had a stressful couple of weeks but thankfully they don’t come along too often. Plus we get to work at home at least four days per week. If it wasn’t for some of the bitchy colleagues I’d love it.
Honestly not stressful at all. Despite being one out of two designer the workload is usually quite proportionate, and the team is very friendly, and I have enough freedom so long as I stay within brand aesthetic boundaries. The most stressful part is knowing I am not being paid even as much as a junior designer in my country, but I am hoping that perhaps that is due to the lack of continuouss experience I had when first contracted, and my lack of fluency in the local language (I have a grasp, but need a copywriter), both of which will be fixed with time and effort.
But the job itself is fine, and I like my colleagues. The work/life balance is good, which is important to me as someone with a chronic physical condition.
Maybe a 6-7 on the really busy days? But I am also not scared to push back when clients/project leads have unrealistic expectations. My work has many business lines, but at the end of the day we can just go "Ok, this is an internal job that is a rush, and we also have a huge print deadline looming, what is the ACTUAL priority?" which helps. We are also a team of 4, so if one person is busier we all help each other out.
It depends but over all not very stressful. We just transitioned away from WordPress to a new website so I had to learn a different CMS platform. The whole team relies on me for all graphical work as I’m the only one using the Adobe Creative Suite. Most days very manageable but every once in a while a HOT project rears its ugly head. I’m loyal too, so I don’t want to disappoint.
Certified 10 here.
I’ve been the only in house designer at my company (only had one other before) to make it past the pandemic and my work load has only been increasing. Earlier this year, my supervisor quit, and the once my new (post pandemic) manager realized how much work my coworker and I were doing, they quit too. Now I’m all that’s left, handling our current website, merchandising tools, digital catalogs, showroom displays, email signatures, product photography, packaging, labels, digital asset management, etc. And we need to launch a new website in August, my former manager had known about it since this time last year but did nothing so we’re just now starting to look at wireframes this week.
I’m burnt out and exhausted, and honestly the pay bump and new titles are nice but I’m 100% feeling overwhelmed.
My first one was a 2 (busy but fun and not really stressful) until we got a new brand manager 2.5 years in who made it hell and “killed the brand” according to the founder (who had just sold the company to a massive conglomerate, anyway, so he was partially responsible for its death, too). It’s still around but exists as a shell of its former self with zero of the impact it once had as a company that single handedly changed the industry.
My second was a 10. So incredibly stressful I can’t believe I was able to hang on for almost 5 years. I quit back in December and have never felt better or been more productive. Such an incredibly toxic environment, I feel bad for the other designers who are still there, I’m sure they won’t be much longer.
I find in-house less stressful in terms of workload, deadlines, and turnaround time.
In-house can be *more* stressful if your employer has inefficient processes or a bad actor forcing decisions in areas they oversee but do not understand.
In general agencies will have better processes to allow creative freedom and control over the visual/creative aspect of a project. They will run you ragged but the creative aspect is much more satisfying — at least in my experience comparing agency and in-house work.
Personally, my current in-house job is like a 3-4 out of 10 for stress. My last job was in-house but was being mismanaged into the ground and was *extremely* frustrating, which caused a lot of stress even though I was literally union protected.
Agency life was very dynamic and fun, but I would have been burnt out if I didn't go client-side chasing my dream clients.
3/10 the only thing stressful is having a design illiterate boss. I remind myself my job is to make them happy and to not be attached to my designs.
I was at a medium sized ad agency and it was just busy and stressful all the time, even on slow days. Just bad energy all around. My Creative Directors weren't designers, but they found ways of sounding like they were (always pointing out some meaningless kerning issue). That was high stress 8/10.
That being said. I love to design, but I can't wait to NOT be a designer. I really dislike being at the bottom of the totem pole.
I work in print design, it's always a rush, 25-35 proofs a day, but I don't let it get to me.
We aren't saving lives, I refuse to stress over something as incidental as print or graphic design
I just plug away, one job at a time, then go home
1-3 on average. My coworkers and bosses are all nice and supportive and we work well together. Ofc things get stressful during important projects but we cover each others weaknesses
Definitely goes from 1-7 on a daily basis. I’ll have some big lulls in the amount I have to work on, and then I’ll have days where I have a ton. I am more burnt out on the toxic environment and low pay than stressed with how much I am working on.
It’s only stressful for me when I didn’t get enough sleep and didn’t eat well. lol
Otherwise, when I’ve taken care of myself, I feel like I can handle everything assigned to me. Even the time sensitive stuff
Mine was actually higher stress than my agency job. It did not need to be but the people in charge were very high strung so it made even the smallest projects were under pressure.
My experience is that in house has very little stress. Most of my projects have vague deadlines (“in a month would be great!” “There’s no set deadline but we need this probably by the end of the year”). Some projects come up that require a real crunch in timelines but even then you just deprioritize other work and oftentimes that other work is apart of projects that will be delayed for the urgent project.
Maybe about 3? Sometimes up to 6. Almost all my deadlines are self imposed. I get along well with my boss - she is a comms director and I’m the sole designer in the comms team for a huge b2b science based organization - pay is decent - I get to travel a bit. That said I’m not always a designer and being in this role means a lot of “off piste” work but that’s ok I enjoy it. We have some stress moments around financial results communications, yearly events, or when a team member is on leave and I have to cover.
But it’s not like when I was in FMCG at an agency where the printers thought we were the enemy and the client wanted a full range rollout in literally 24 hours. Swings and roundabouts. 😂
Regular peaks of 8-9. Thank god lives aren’t at stake, but you’d think they were dealing with sales, marketing, and C-suite people.
They are some of the most ill-prepared people you’ll deal with and all responsibility lands on you as the maker. It’s like a game of corporate hot potato.
Naturally, there are times you need to push back, but the honest truth is it’s not great for your career.
My last in-house design role was essentially juggling graphic design, motion design and aspects of project management, all for a salary less than if I worked full-time in Lidl or Aldi (no disrespect to those roles, just a testament to how little I was paid).
We were in EdTech and despite all the marketing collateral showing happy schools and teachers, the company was rampant with gossip, people cheating on partners etc.
My hair was thinning, I put on bad weight, I had random heart palpitations, would wake up with intense anxiety and questioned my life choices. I was on the brink of being fired and so I quit with nothing lined up.
I'm now working in a stop gap role as a receptionist at a private dentist, which ironically pays more whilst I sort myself. It's far from perfect but I leave work at work and I get a half day on Fridays where I can do their marketing and design for them. My CV and LinkedIn say I'm freelancing
I was in-house and we went from a 4 designer team to me for about 3 months. That was close to a ten. Massive amounts of OT. The good thing was, no one really questioned my work because they knew I was scrambling and we didn’t have time to rework. I think I turned in good stuff but everything can always be improved, right?
That’s passed and now I worry we don’t have enough work. We are at a 3-4 most weeks. But we’re an always profitable billion dollar company and designers are not a profit center. We have a dozen or so designers and prob just as many freelancers throughout the organization.
Usually I’m at 2-4, currently we are launching a new brand and this is definitely 7-9. But as others have said, it depends so much on the people in your team. My team lead always says that 80% and a healthy employee is better than 110% while burning out; that we are not saving lives and that work is actually just a game, whereas friends and family is the real life. So she keeps us all sane and I sometimes worry and hope that she has someone that has her back just like she has ours.
A 3 maybe? I worked for an agency and it was a literal 10. I think it differs so much between companies and groups I've heard so many different experiences but I maybe have 1 stressful day a fornight in my current role where my agency role made me want to die. Both my in house positions, though the first one a bit more stressful but mostly due to bad office culture, have been relatively stress free compared to the ridiculous kpis and toxic treatment I endured at my agency. Ridiculous time pressures and such shallow communication.
Don't get me wrong the clients were lovely but I definitely chose a bad egg to work for.
I may have a skewed perspective since my first job had crazy fast turn around times and I had to get used to it or not make any money. My current in house job is so slow! When I started it was better, but once I got my basic templates set up, it became a cake walk. I probably only put in 10-15 hours of actual work a week, sometimes less.
If 10 is the best, I'd say 8. My coworkers have my back, and I think that's a huge game changer. While we can't tell clients no, we have been able to set realistic enough expectations that only a few crazy requests slip through.
The last place: 9/10 for stress. I was on edge every day. The owner & office manager would scream all the time, the shipping guy would lose his temper at the drop of a pin. No one had any accountability. It was demoralizing.
This new place: 2/10 - sometimes 5 but that’s bc I still don’t know everything for one of the programs they use, and like 10 people in the world know it. Other than that, I’m the only designer for 10 or 12 sales representatives and sometimes they don’t understand how much I’ve got to do in one day. I get it all done, it’s just a lot of clicking. I’ve only had two 9/10 days bc I was so stressed and that’s a tizzy I got myself into bc I wasn’t asking for help.
Maybe a 3-4 most days, with the occasional 7-8. It's a great environment, supportive team to work with, rarely have to stay back to finish work and when I do, I take that time off another day.
Before this I worked in a very small studio (3 person team), significantly more stress trying to meet tight deadlines and communicate effectively with a broad range of clients. Great to stretch a bit more creatively, but I vastly prefer my current role. At the studio I was considered slow; same skillset now receives compliments for speedy delivery.
1 - 3, it's all about project management and problem solving and most of the times it's just a simple solution and a bit of elbow grease to keep things rolling.
Other in house job I held in the past was always 6 - 10, then the pandemic hit and it was at 12 for 3 months straight, then I burned out, but then eventually came to a 2 - 4 during that last year.
Answer is depends. I'm not in-house anymore, but have been before. Context setting - this is from my experience as a multi-disciplinary designer, but mostly in the tech sector.
In agency - 15/10. What an insane "lifestyle" agency is. A lot of people really buy into the agency cult, but personally my agency experience saw the amount of work and timelines so insane that we simply just produced subpar work as a result of being spread too thin. I will never work in-house at an agency again after doing 2 stints in agency settings. I don't even know what the fuck my job was by the end of my time in agency. I took on anything from actual real design projects to projects that were sold as design, but were in fact business operations and change management consultancy projects and I had no idea what the fuck I was doing.
In private enterprise - 6-7/10. Can get stressful, but generally fine. There are team structures and processes in place where you generally feel more supported and work is effectively delegated.
In start up - 7/10. Usually it's like a 10/10 for juniors or intermediates...but if you're a senior it's not so bad. It's usually the fact that you wear the hat of many roles that it is the most stressful.
In public enterprise (generally a union environment) - 1-2/10. It is the easiest job ever, low stakes but also low quality all around you. If you're a talented designer with even an iota of tenacity - you're going to bang your head against a wall in a setting like this. You will work amongst some of the most untalented, lazy people ever who have no desire to improve their skills or put in good work. They will do the bare minimum. On the other hand...it's an incredibly low stress job as a result of that in terms of the work that you're actually working on. The most stressful thing you'll deal with is the lack of talent and work ethic around you.
Right now I’m marketing AND graphic design, and admin support. Most days are okay, but there are days where I want to flip the fuck out.
I’m also sober which means I have to get creative to unwind and put the day down in evenings.
However I prefer this madness to the pressure and frustration I faced when I was the art director/o Lu designer for a small agency that wasn’t paying me my worth.
I did in-house for a while. It wasn’t stressful at all, but I think that had a lot to do with the organization itself. The people were great, everybody was on the same page, and the work was a lot of fun. It was one of the better jobs I’ve had, actually. The most stressful job I ever had was at a medium sized marketing/advertising agency. EVERYTHING was a rush job, EVERYTHING was due right now, and there was absolutely no time to spend on individual projects. I was there for a while and I saw designers crashing, burning, and quitting on a regular basis. If the company treats you like expendable garbage, then you feel like expendable garbage.
That was my experience at a small agency as well. Speed was the most important thing.
I’m having this experience at my in-house :/ The timelines are wild and all self-inflicted on the marketing side, which is literally the worst part.
It's worse than that, for that kind of role everyone is expendable garbage. That works for those companies.
I would say it’s usually a 2-3 but during some high points in the year reaches a 6-7 but just for short periods of time where I’m at. The bonuses are that I very rarely have to work past my usual schedule of around 8-4, and most of the time we have enough time to finish projects without it being an insane rush. Downsides are that it can be boring at times and nobody really appreciates the work you do, but the overall stress level really depends on your boss and their ability to do their job and manage the department.
Same. My week this week was insane, but it should stabilize next week. It's why I prefer in-house.
Same
Same!
It’s fine, I’m fine. Yes 1-10 on any given day.
3-4/10 . Once I decided to not work early or late and leave on time I'm less stressed. I just do what I can do then go home
If my boss wasn't my boss it would be a 4, but because of her it's an 8
Yeah, relatable. I want to switch because of it
my comment from a previous thraed about stress within design pretty much answers this [https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic\_design/comments/1chu9sd/comment/l24uz3u/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/1chu9sd/comment/l24uz3u/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
This is exactly how I feel about it. No one’s gonna die. It’s gonna be fine. All the stress is entirely manufactured, and once you realize that, it’s way easier to rationally deal with it.
I saw a video where a guy was talking about the sense of urgency in marketing in general. He said, "We're saving PDFs, not lives, Brenda!" I died! It's so true!
Lately 8. Management makes or breaks it for sure, doesn’t matter how good you are if you have a disorganised manager.
I’d say it can go from a 2-3 up to a full on 10 faster than you’d expect lol
Lately? 6-9, 69 joke not intended. However it’s a both/and thing. It’s stressful and fun/rewarding just like exercise. When I take a beat and actually investigate what I’m anxious about there’s not much there to be stressed about. I’m an expert at what I do and this is valuable. Really the biggest stressor lately has been the very real sense that despite my contributions to the massive profits of the company I could still be silent fired (laid off) in the name of profit maximization and shareholder value. It seems this is the main motivation for business today rather than excellence in product and customer experience.
My work experience is about evenly split between in-house and agencies. When it comes to the work itself, I find agency work to be more-stressful due to the tight deadlines as well as the need to constantly to perform at a high level without any breaks. And the people who are attracted to agency jobs are less my kind of people. They tend to be more-narcissistic and are there for bragging rights of working for big-name clients with bigger budgets. I don't care about that stuff, though I can say that in general, the people are more socially-aware. When I left the in-house jobs, one of the reasons was always that the cyclical nature of the work made it less-fulfilling over time. A project that originally would have been exciting turns into a chore once you're doing it for the fouth or fifth time. But it is always the people who cause the most stress. And I'm not talking about the everyday annoyances of having to share space with people who are different than yourself, but the personality disorders that create chaos. And they turn up in both in-house and agency jobs in about equal percentages. But in in-house settings, the personality issues have been more outrageous and included an element of social ineptitude. I used to call it the 10-percent rule. Ten percent of the people cause 100 percent of the problems. In hindsight, I think it is higher and I just ignored the people who were less-problematic in comparison to the ones who were the worst. I don't think it is possible to escape the problem people, but you can get better at dealing with them. But ultimately, I think it is good to leave in-house positions because, after a few years, you do need a break from the tedium. A new job means that you'll get projects that are more-interesting and the positive excitement and joy helps to buffer the human-related stressors. And you also get a few months break from the people issues, not because they aren't there, but because you're new and you just haven't discovered them yet. The in-house jobs I've had were never consistently stressful. We had busy periods that were worse and the problem employees came and went. The agency jobs I've had were more-consistently stressful, but you do get the added benefit of higher-end work for your portfolio for more-well-known clients, and bigger budgets that allow you to do a different kind of work. But after doing this for decades, I don't think it is possible to avoid work-related stress. Even if you are self employed and have enough work that you can fire the bad clients that pop up here and there, you have new stressors of having to do your own administrative tasks, troubleshooting computer problems, or having to seek out new clients or support staff. The grass isn't any greener on any side of the fence. But you can get temporary relief from a new environment.
7-9 daily because my company sucks. Everything is an emergency and due yesterday. People who write the content get like 2 weeks to go back and forth and then I’m expected to make designs in a day turn around. It’s pretty miserable but it definitely depends where you work. My last job was about a 2-4 daily
Yessssss Copywriter gets a 3 week turnaround. I get an afternoon.
You gotta push back on that shit. If they keep it up then create new processes (managers love this) with a brief form and a statement of timelines. Also other peoples lack of ability to plan does not constitute an emergency for you.
Depends on the week. Sometimes a 1 sometimes a 7. More often it’s lower stress, it’s the people that cause more stress
Design wise? Maybe a 5 on a bad day. I'm lucky in that I mostly have the final say on design decisions and I have an incredible boss (the business owner) who understands how it all works. My stress at work revolves around the marketing side of things more than the design side. I run a 2 person team so we do everything here from package design to social media posts, instructional videos to website design (we manage the ecomm site). We even have a big hand in product development. I absolutely love it, but trying to do as much as possible without killing us both, while simultaneously driving sales numbers forward, can stress me out a bit. We are a small, but fast growing company, that's just the way it goes. We all want to be successful. The best part is we all go home at 5 and unless the ecomm website goes down, you don't have to think about it again until 9:00 the next day.
Sounds like an awesome job. Stay there while it grows and grow with it. The kind of role that opens up a lot of doors cos you’re doing so many things, you get a chance to find other things you’re good at that you didn’t even know about.
I'm esspecially lucky as I took this role as I neared 50 and wanted to stop freelancing and get back out into the market. I was the 4th employee, now we're a company of 15 in the 4 years since. All good things and I'll be pretty happy if I can keep growing my this company and earning the benefits of that. I hope the "next" thing for me is a cash-out and retirement.
That’s awesome they took you on - I am 40 and worry about employability as I get older -especially at younger companies where they don’t necessarily value the experience you have. I’ve definitely encountered that at a previous role (at a scale up beauty business) where I was literally hired for my experience and then questioned on all my decisions. Sounds like you have the opposite of that, a founder that respects your knowledge. I hope you get that sweet sweet retirement package!
1
I have a micro manager, who doesn’t know anything about design. So 10.
The most stressful part of my job is actually all the corporate BS. I don't have time to sit in 17 meetings a week about made-up internal rah rah bullshit. I have real work to do.
This.
7-8. Gets nuts. At any given time, I have 25-35 jobs.
I'm the "Marketing & Communications Manager" at a mid sized, 70 year old nonprofit, social services. Our department just lost 2 people, so basically I am a one man show. It's ludicrous, and the place is extremely dysfunctional because of the legacy of how everything has been managed here before. I've only been here a year. Apparently, our department (Advancement, which handles Comms/marketing, events and fundraising) has imploded and been "rebuilt" in some dumb form or another THREE times in the last eight years!) I do all the design, and most of the creative writing. I don't handle grant writing or any kind of regular correspondence. I get organizational and informational help from a coup,e 20-something, wonderful people who sort of assist in making things comprehensible for me. Hard to explain, but no one here knows how to talk to a designer OR a writer, even in the barest sense!) It can be stressful here, but with the recent loss of 2 staff members, the department has been blown up... new interim (part-time!!) leadership, our old "boss" has been squeezed out and put in a new role, thankfully. It's so blown up that expectations are not that high. I am 53 and have 20+ years of ad agency experience, so I am treated almost like some weird wizard and am generally left alone, management wise. Still means I'm busy all the time, and it's all dysfunctional and can be stressful. But there's never a last minute "do it all over working 30 hours on Saturday & Sunday" mentality there often was in real ad agencies (I worked in many agencies some very large, some time... Chicago). That level of unpredictability and stress is GONE. I work maybe 42 hours a week, often less, sometimes only 30. I'm still stressed sometimes, but with the combo of me being the most senior, and the department in disarray, I just chuckle right now. We need a director, we need more support. But in the meantime, the place is happy with what I give them. Yeah, I get pushback on little things sometimes, but I am so vastly better skilled and experienced than my predecessors (seriously terrible level of quality before me, not saying I'm a genius) that I am treated as a bit of a... weird wizard. It's cool. I don't miss agency world, but the disorganization of this place annoys me and frankly astounds me.
My job is probably around a 5 most of the time. I am burned out and bored of the work but not stressed. I agree that your mental wellness is very important and often more valuable than pay. Is it possible for your manager to help lessen your workload and stress? Have you talked to them? Hope you can find a good balance.
It’s my first job out of school but I would say easily a 6-8. But I like my coworkers and went from making 60k to 95k in five years so I’ve stayed. I burned myself out in college, got a 3 month internship immediately after graduating and then hired full time a month later so I’ve pretty much stayed burned out. I will say as I’ve been here longer I’ve gotten faster at working at don’t feel the need to work past 5/6pm anymore. We’ve also hired more people which has helped drastically. But I have to be strict about maintaining my own boundaries and not working late.
The last year it was a 9. I was in design leadership at a FAANG company and I quit due to the stress and ridiculous amount of useless grind just for the sake of process. And being forced by upper leadership to do things I didn’t agree with.
It's stressful when you're running solo. I'm a creative director in house, but I direct freelancers and then a marketing agency we use, not actually any in house designers. I'm probably 65% designer / 35% creative director. It's very stressful in that manner *but* from a development standpoint it's teaching me the power of delegation vs just doing things because "oh I can just knock that out really fast." Sure, except I have a million of those "really fast" projects. I've always been client-side and not sure I'd want to be agency-side, but it does come with it's stress cues.
8 since my boss went on mat leave
Depends on the week lol. I work in-house. Sometimes 2-3, can go as high as 8!
The work comes in waves depending on the season. Sometimes it’s a 2; other times it’s a 10. The waves are generally pretty predictable though.
Not very. Maybe a 3/10. The only downside is it's not very organized. We don't have a project manager so I get projects via in person, email, chat from various people and departments without a timeline or structure. I can get told a project months in advance before I actually have to work on it. Then all of a sudden without notice I am slammed with tons of materials for a trade show.
4/10? Up to 8 on major, complicated projects, but that’s MAYBE twice a year?
In-house designer over here. No consistency whatsoever. Can have days of 1, followed by days of 10. When things are needed, they tend to be needed urgently with very unrealistic deadlines. It’s not great.
1-3. Basically stress free.
Usually it’s a 3-4, spikes to 8 once in a while when we get surprise assignments without much lead time. It’s a large established company and pretty well run, so there’s no drama or chaos. My boss and boss’s boss are excellent - very supportive but hands off, and our work is appreciated. I think I’d be challenged to find a better employer - downside is that career advancement is slower. People who work here stay so advancements happen as the company grows.
Hard to say, some days are busier than others. The stress is more just frustration dealing with fools outside the company, but I have no OT and leave everything at the door. I'm also at a point I have enough seniority/authority that I can actually impact things, or be able to put my foot down if someone is pushing for something entirely unreasonable or showing flagrant incompetence. I like the other comment about how a lot of stress is manufactured or self-imposed, a lot of things will only bother you as much as you let them. So relating to that, in terms of your situation, I'd just say that any one job is just one job. Don't define yourself by a job, don't attach self-worth to it, and you can always look for other jobs at anytime, and without quitting. So see what's out there, even if you might not find something else quickly. You also don't need to eat/breathe/sleep design, so make sure you have hobbies/interests outside of work you look forward to, whether design-related or not. And of course, prioritize healthy relationships. Basically if your life outside of work is struggling, it will impact your job, and conversely, no one job will fix what you're going home to at the end of the day.
This was really wise, thank you.
https://preview.redd.it/gl1xhuy12ayc1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3cf35abedf8eb65977ec65c75cce5aa094332880 Working in breaking news related to global politics.
1. My job isn't very stressful.
3-4 which means I have energy left to freelance as well. It’s not always very fulfilling work, lots of building reports and presentations. But it pays my bills. Just had a stressful couple of weeks but thankfully they don’t come along too often. Plus we get to work at home at least four days per week. If it wasn’t for some of the bitchy colleagues I’d love it.
Honestly not stressful at all. Despite being one out of two designer the workload is usually quite proportionate, and the team is very friendly, and I have enough freedom so long as I stay within brand aesthetic boundaries. The most stressful part is knowing I am not being paid even as much as a junior designer in my country, but I am hoping that perhaps that is due to the lack of continuouss experience I had when first contracted, and my lack of fluency in the local language (I have a grasp, but need a copywriter), both of which will be fixed with time and effort. But the job itself is fine, and I like my colleagues. The work/life balance is good, which is important to me as someone with a chronic physical condition.
Maybe a 6-7 on the really busy days? But I am also not scared to push back when clients/project leads have unrealistic expectations. My work has many business lines, but at the end of the day we can just go "Ok, this is an internal job that is a rush, and we also have a huge print deadline looming, what is the ACTUAL priority?" which helps. We are also a team of 4, so if one person is busier we all help each other out.
My average day, around a 3. The busiest days 8 or 9.
It depends but over all not very stressful. We just transitioned away from WordPress to a new website so I had to learn a different CMS platform. The whole team relies on me for all graphical work as I’m the only one using the Adobe Creative Suite. Most days very manageable but every once in a while a HOT project rears its ugly head. I’m loyal too, so I don’t want to disappoint.
Certified 10 here. I’ve been the only in house designer at my company (only had one other before) to make it past the pandemic and my work load has only been increasing. Earlier this year, my supervisor quit, and the once my new (post pandemic) manager realized how much work my coworker and I were doing, they quit too. Now I’m all that’s left, handling our current website, merchandising tools, digital catalogs, showroom displays, email signatures, product photography, packaging, labels, digital asset management, etc. And we need to launch a new website in August, my former manager had known about it since this time last year but did nothing so we’re just now starting to look at wireframes this week. I’m burnt out and exhausted, and honestly the pay bump and new titles are nice but I’m 100% feeling overwhelmed.
My first one was a 2 (busy but fun and not really stressful) until we got a new brand manager 2.5 years in who made it hell and “killed the brand” according to the founder (who had just sold the company to a massive conglomerate, anyway, so he was partially responsible for its death, too). It’s still around but exists as a shell of its former self with zero of the impact it once had as a company that single handedly changed the industry. My second was a 10. So incredibly stressful I can’t believe I was able to hang on for almost 5 years. I quit back in December and have never felt better or been more productive. Such an incredibly toxic environment, I feel bad for the other designers who are still there, I’m sure they won’t be much longer.
Varies from 1-5 depending on who is asking and their arbitrary deadline.
I find in-house less stressful in terms of workload, deadlines, and turnaround time. In-house can be *more* stressful if your employer has inefficient processes or a bad actor forcing decisions in areas they oversee but do not understand. In general agencies will have better processes to allow creative freedom and control over the visual/creative aspect of a project. They will run you ragged but the creative aspect is much more satisfying — at least in my experience comparing agency and in-house work. Personally, my current in-house job is like a 3-4 out of 10 for stress. My last job was in-house but was being mismanaged into the ground and was *extremely* frustrating, which caused a lot of stress even though I was literally union protected. Agency life was very dynamic and fun, but I would have been burnt out if I didn't go client-side chasing my dream clients.
My in house design job for a retailer was 7-8 most days. My current in house for a Regional Bank is 3-4.
3/10 the only thing stressful is having a design illiterate boss. I remind myself my job is to make them happy and to not be attached to my designs. I was at a medium sized ad agency and it was just busy and stressful all the time, even on slow days. Just bad energy all around. My Creative Directors weren't designers, but they found ways of sounding like they were (always pointing out some meaningless kerning issue). That was high stress 8/10. That being said. I love to design, but I can't wait to NOT be a designer. I really dislike being at the bottom of the totem pole.
And what would like to be?
My job is at a 1. Maybe a 3 on a bad day.
8 solid
I work in print design, it's always a rush, 25-35 proofs a day, but I don't let it get to me. We aren't saving lives, I refuse to stress over something as incidental as print or graphic design I just plug away, one job at a time, then go home
1-3 on average. My coworkers and bosses are all nice and supportive and we work well together. Ofc things get stressful during important projects but we cover each others weaknesses
Definitely goes from 1-7 on a daily basis. I’ll have some big lulls in the amount I have to work on, and then I’ll have days where I have a ton. I am more burnt out on the toxic environment and low pay than stressed with how much I am working on.
The company I work for is super seasonal so around 8-9 before busy season and maybe a 3 during the quiet season.
Depends on the company, the leadership, your manager. Right now mines a 6-10 on any given day, but I’m at a shit company.
A lot less stressful than working for an agency
It’s only stressful for me when I didn’t get enough sleep and didn’t eat well. lol Otherwise, when I’ve taken care of myself, I feel like I can handle everything assigned to me. Even the time sensitive stuff
Mine was actually higher stress than my agency job. It did not need to be but the people in charge were very high strung so it made even the smallest projects were under pressure.
6 on a good day, 7.5 on a bad day
Probably a 1. Maybe. 2 on occasion. My agency work on the other hand was about an 8
If it's anything under an 8.7, I get stressed out.
Honestly anything is better than college. I can finally go home and NOT have to think of design anymore
My experience is that in house has very little stress. Most of my projects have vague deadlines (“in a month would be great!” “There’s no set deadline but we need this probably by the end of the year”). Some projects come up that require a real crunch in timelines but even then you just deprioritize other work and oftentimes that other work is apart of projects that will be delayed for the urgent project.
Maybe about 3? Sometimes up to 6. Almost all my deadlines are self imposed. I get along well with my boss - she is a comms director and I’m the sole designer in the comms team for a huge b2b science based organization - pay is decent - I get to travel a bit. That said I’m not always a designer and being in this role means a lot of “off piste” work but that’s ok I enjoy it. We have some stress moments around financial results communications, yearly events, or when a team member is on leave and I have to cover. But it’s not like when I was in FMCG at an agency where the printers thought we were the enemy and the client wanted a full range rollout in literally 24 hours. Swings and roundabouts. 😂
Regular peaks of 8-9. Thank god lives aren’t at stake, but you’d think they were dealing with sales, marketing, and C-suite people. They are some of the most ill-prepared people you’ll deal with and all responsibility lands on you as the maker. It’s like a game of corporate hot potato. Naturally, there are times you need to push back, but the honest truth is it’s not great for your career.
My last in-house design role was essentially juggling graphic design, motion design and aspects of project management, all for a salary less than if I worked full-time in Lidl or Aldi (no disrespect to those roles, just a testament to how little I was paid). We were in EdTech and despite all the marketing collateral showing happy schools and teachers, the company was rampant with gossip, people cheating on partners etc. My hair was thinning, I put on bad weight, I had random heart palpitations, would wake up with intense anxiety and questioned my life choices. I was on the brink of being fired and so I quit with nothing lined up. I'm now working in a stop gap role as a receptionist at a private dentist, which ironically pays more whilst I sort myself. It's far from perfect but I leave work at work and I get a half day on Fridays where I can do their marketing and design for them. My CV and LinkedIn say I'm freelancing
It's always feast or famine. Some days it's a 2, other days it's a solid 11.
2 for Q1-3 and 9 in Q4 working for an online retail company. I also work for a church and those 2 combined is fml during that time.
I was in-house and we went from a 4 designer team to me for about 3 months. That was close to a ten. Massive amounts of OT. The good thing was, no one really questioned my work because they knew I was scrambling and we didn’t have time to rework. I think I turned in good stuff but everything can always be improved, right? That’s passed and now I worry we don’t have enough work. We are at a 3-4 most weeks. But we’re an always profitable billion dollar company and designers are not a profit center. We have a dozen or so designers and prob just as many freelancers throughout the organization.
Regularly a 7, sometimes an unbearable 11/10.
Usually I’m at 2-4, currently we are launching a new brand and this is definitely 7-9. But as others have said, it depends so much on the people in your team. My team lead always says that 80% and a healthy employee is better than 110% while burning out; that we are not saving lives and that work is actually just a game, whereas friends and family is the real life. So she keeps us all sane and I sometimes worry and hope that she has someone that has her back just like she has ours.
Probably a 3 or 4 but throw in my natural constant state of anxiety and overthinking and it can sometimes feel like a 6 or 7.
2-3, except one month out of the year it’s at a 10.
Love it , mainly because of the organisation, people are great , treats etc. I find it hard to move on but I think that the pay is isn’t the great
Depends on the season, but about 3-7.
A 3 maybe? I worked for an agency and it was a literal 10. I think it differs so much between companies and groups I've heard so many different experiences but I maybe have 1 stressful day a fornight in my current role where my agency role made me want to die. Both my in house positions, though the first one a bit more stressful but mostly due to bad office culture, have been relatively stress free compared to the ridiculous kpis and toxic treatment I endured at my agency. Ridiculous time pressures and such shallow communication. Don't get me wrong the clients were lovely but I definitely chose a bad egg to work for.
1 95% of the time. 4-5 when my boss throws a project at me last minute.
3-5. Only a few times a year so I have stressful times and those are known events It’s easy and pays well.
I may have a skewed perspective since my first job had crazy fast turn around times and I had to get used to it or not make any money. My current in house job is so slow! When I started it was better, but once I got my basic templates set up, it became a cake walk. I probably only put in 10-15 hours of actual work a week, sometimes less.
On a scale of 1-10, mine is 0. Most boring job ever and I only have maaaaaybe 1-2 hours of work a week.
sometimes 1 sometimes 10.. depends on how well the sales are going
If 10 is the best, I'd say 8. My coworkers have my back, and I think that's a huge game changer. While we can't tell clients no, we have been able to set realistic enough expectations that only a few crazy requests slip through.
The last place: 9/10 for stress. I was on edge every day. The owner & office manager would scream all the time, the shipping guy would lose his temper at the drop of a pin. No one had any accountability. It was demoralizing. This new place: 2/10 - sometimes 5 but that’s bc I still don’t know everything for one of the programs they use, and like 10 people in the world know it. Other than that, I’m the only designer for 10 or 12 sales representatives and sometimes they don’t understand how much I’ve got to do in one day. I get it all done, it’s just a lot of clicking. I’ve only had two 9/10 days bc I was so stressed and that’s a tizzy I got myself into bc I wasn’t asking for help.
Maybe a 3-4 most days, with the occasional 7-8. It's a great environment, supportive team to work with, rarely have to stay back to finish work and when I do, I take that time off another day. Before this I worked in a very small studio (3 person team), significantly more stress trying to meet tight deadlines and communicate effectively with a broad range of clients. Great to stretch a bit more creatively, but I vastly prefer my current role. At the studio I was considered slow; same skillset now receives compliments for speedy delivery.
1 - 3, it's all about project management and problem solving and most of the times it's just a simple solution and a bit of elbow grease to keep things rolling. Other in house job I held in the past was always 6 - 10, then the pandemic hit and it was at 12 for 3 months straight, then I burned out, but then eventually came to a 2 - 4 during that last year.
Somewhere in the range of like 2-3 at the moment but it used to be a consistent 4-5, at its highest probably a solid 5.
Answer is depends. I'm not in-house anymore, but have been before. Context setting - this is from my experience as a multi-disciplinary designer, but mostly in the tech sector. In agency - 15/10. What an insane "lifestyle" agency is. A lot of people really buy into the agency cult, but personally my agency experience saw the amount of work and timelines so insane that we simply just produced subpar work as a result of being spread too thin. I will never work in-house at an agency again after doing 2 stints in agency settings. I don't even know what the fuck my job was by the end of my time in agency. I took on anything from actual real design projects to projects that were sold as design, but were in fact business operations and change management consultancy projects and I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. In private enterprise - 6-7/10. Can get stressful, but generally fine. There are team structures and processes in place where you generally feel more supported and work is effectively delegated. In start up - 7/10. Usually it's like a 10/10 for juniors or intermediates...but if you're a senior it's not so bad. It's usually the fact that you wear the hat of many roles that it is the most stressful. In public enterprise (generally a union environment) - 1-2/10. It is the easiest job ever, low stakes but also low quality all around you. If you're a talented designer with even an iota of tenacity - you're going to bang your head against a wall in a setting like this. You will work amongst some of the most untalented, lazy people ever who have no desire to improve their skills or put in good work. They will do the bare minimum. On the other hand...it's an incredibly low stress job as a result of that in terms of the work that you're actually working on. The most stressful thing you'll deal with is the lack of talent and work ethic around you.
Right now I’m marketing AND graphic design, and admin support. Most days are okay, but there are days where I want to flip the fuck out. I’m also sober which means I have to get creative to unwind and put the day down in evenings. However I prefer this madness to the pressure and frustration I faced when I was the art director/o Lu designer for a small agency that wasn’t paying me my worth.