#88 Choosing to work full time over freelancing
32:26 Share

With big companies and in steady roles, I felt like I could follow up through my vision. I felt that I could control the way things get implemented, control the way we measure outcomes, the improvements that we can do after that, right? So I could have a say in maybe I make a bad design decision. I want to be there to be able to adjust it, right? If I understand that it's not working well. I felt that with freelancing, it's going to be a very superficial kind of exchangey thing where I give you my best take on something.

And then I don't know what goes on after that. I love the responsibility of being in control as much as possible end to end.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the next episode of Honest UX Talks. My name is Anfisa, and I'm joined by my lovely co-host, Ioana. And today, the topic of the episode is why are we choosing to work full-time in a product company and not to freelance? So an interesting topic. I feel like this could unpack and help people to decide which direction they want to go, especially right now in this very weird, turbulent market when a lot of companies choose, I would say, unwisely to lay off their designers. A lot of designers actually start freelancing. So

There is an interesting discussion we can have there. But before doing that, let's also catch up. How are you doing, Ioana? Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I'm doing okay. I think I had a week with a lot of ups and downs and I've been pretty moody. But I'm very excited that I've been working intensively with my researcher at Miro to uncover insights on some new AI stuff we're doing, some very cool features and initiatives. And so I've been in like

10 research sessions. It's pretty intense intellectually, cognitively, but I'm very grateful that I get to inform my design decisions so deeply. And so I'm very excited to be exhausted by this. It's a good reason to feel exhausted. Yeah, that's pretty much what I've been up to and very interesting. On Monday, I realized that UX Goodies is a design page and I'm talking exclusively about AI because I'm very passionate about this now and I'm very immersed in the space. But so I'm

I still want to be relevant for the people who are following UX Goodies for Design questions. And so I realized that I need a different place where I can put all the AI stuff, which is pure AI, not AI and design, but just things about AI in general, like what GPT can do. And so I launched a new Instagram project or page to be more specific. It's called AI Goodies. It has a small point, AI point dot goodies.

And I want to invite everyone to follow AI Goodies. I'm going to share mostly things about AI, obviously, sometimes less designy. Yeah, this is what I've been up to. How about you? How was your week? I'm really hoping that you'll still share some AI design goodies on your original page. Looking forward to that, at least. I saw this new project. That looks fun. I was like, oh, nice. Something new is brewing. On my turn, I think everything is good. I also started the new courses.

I did mention last time that I am starting or planning to roll the new program, basically all about building the strategy around your job hunting process and how to prepare yourself, how to practice all those whiteboarding challenges and app critiques and interviews and stuff like that, and also how to build a portfolio. So I'm finally starting the program. This is very exciting because on Monday we started having this ice-breaking games. We get to know each other. We had a lot of fun because it was all about games and just having fun around what to expect from

from this program. And then on Wednesday, we actually did the strategy workshop. Based on the video lessons that I've recorded previously, it was like partly self-reflection and also partly ideating on what is the perfect target company they want to shoot for. So it was eventually this kind of strategy workshop where everybody started understanding how their skill set and their unique talents could match the target companies they're looking for. That's

That's the first thing. And obviously there are so many more events are coming. I have built a new community. There is like literally 18 events coming up. So I'm very excited for that. And also the course is up. And so pretty much all I'm doing right now is trying to engage the community and answering the questions and help everyone and just working on the events. So very, very exciting time since for me. Also have some mentoring calls. So I think at the moment I'm almost enjoying everything that's happening besides the fact that I just did again another anti-COVID boost event.

So yeah, that's pretty much it on my side. Let's probably just get started with the episodes because we talked a lot in our previous episodes about how we are doing. I think people are missing the content now. Let's get started. And to remind everyone, we are talking today about why we are choosing to work full time in a product company versus freelancing.

And to kick it off, Ioana, I have one question for you. So what motivated you to start working full-time in the first place? And I know your story a little bit, but once you have decided to transition to UX design, what made you want to stay in full-time environment versus quitting your job and actually start freelancing to maybe get some experience and potentially even get in the portfolio faster? Tell us about your story.

Yeah, well, I'm going to try to summarize 10 years of decision making professionally into a couple of key ideas. So what got me into pursuing a full time role for, let's say, half of my career in general was this anxiety that I won't be able to go back in the job market if I do something that's not a classic job.

And it was just a voice of my parents' generation telling me perpetually, nagging me that I have to have a job. I have to go in the office and have a job and have a steady salary and not do weird experiments with things that are not a job. So I felt in a way guilty to even consider freelancing or going on my own for a long time. And then after I managed to solve this through therapy, which I recommend, I

I was able to finally start experimenting with stuff on the side and realize that it's a huge opportunity as well. You can have a steady income. You can organize yourself financially in a way that's sustainable and you will not run out of money, out of projects if you put the right system in place.

I didn't stay in a product role because I was scared to go on my own. I actually did a lot of things on my own on the side, which very beautifully informed my product roles. My, let's say, steady company roles were informed and energized. And I brought a lot of enthusiasm from my, let's say, gigs on the side into my full-time roles.

So to sum it up, I started a steady professional classic path very safe because of anxiety. I'm excited to expand on what made me stay after so many years. But what about you? What made you start with a full time job and choose a full time job in the first place? This is first time ever happened, but we have a very different story. It's really the opposite story. So this is interesting because we never discussed this.

I had a completely different journey in this kind of free spirit that originally was like, I'm never going to work for big companies. I'm never going to work in the corporate. Nobody's going to tell me to work nine to five. I was kind of that person who immediately said, I would rather get very low paid than work full time. I think it's also part of my personality. I

I'm a very strong non-conformist. I hate what everybody's doing. So from the beginning, I said, not going to do what everybody else is doing. Basically, my journey was like, okay, I started going to the hackathons. There I found the first clients to my freelancing. And actually, because I was living in Estonia, there was a lot of IT businesses there. A lot of people started coming my way and saying, hey, we're looking for a freelancer working for the startup. Are you in? And I was always in, even sometimes basically working for food.

I actually freelanced for a very long time. I think I was doing it for like around six years with On and Off because I was also training and traveling around. But I literally started freelancing thinking that's the only way for me to go. Right now, looking back, I think that part of me was just afraid, to be honest, to be embedded in the company and be compared to others. I definitely was a little bit self-cautious and...

afraid? What if I'm not good enough? Definitely imposter was a huge part of my journey in general. So I feel like one of the reasons was that I was a conformist. And then the second reason is that maybe I was afraid to be compared to others. What if I'm not good enough? What if I don't know anything? What if I'm not even a designer if I never worked in a company? So those fears definitely crossed my mind. And

And then essentially after a while, like I said, I was doing this for almost six years, I realized I'm very tired just from freelancing. So to answer the original question, why I chose to work full time as I'm doing right now for around four years, originally was floating around. And then there are two things that happened. First, I was super tired from freelancing. I was super tired from working for startups. They are very unstable, constantly switching brains, constantly being unstable in terms of the income.

I mean, it's fun. It's always exciting because I got to travel everywhere. I had clients all over the world. It was interesting to explore different cultures and business etiquettes. A lot of things were super fun and it definitely gave me a huge experience that I would not be able to get in the corporate environment, I think. However, at the same time, it just made me super tired. And I also didn't feel myself like I belong somewhere. I'm like this person who just jumps around here and there, but I

I'm not a part of something big. I'm part of a mission. So I've been never looked at as a partner. Like I was trying to become a partner in any company I worked at or any startup I worked at, but I was never feeling myself that way. And that contributed to me feeling like I'm just getting tired of that.

Plus, I wanted to find my team. I was tired of the lifestyle a little bit. Probably I was getting about 30 years old, so I needed to start looking for more stable work and roles. And another thing, which I think it was 2018, and back then everybody was talking that, oh,

oh, you know, everybody wants to work in the product companies. Product companies are stable. Product companies pay well. Tech companies now really value the product designers. So it's kind of then when the market started shifting from UX to product design and everybody wants to work in product companies. And this is the tech

bubble where you're getting paid not just some graphic design salary, but some IT salary. So, you know, a lot of people are trying to say, I've heard this idea very, very often, actually, that it's a good direction. You should probably consider it. And slowly, slowly, slowly, I was sleeping on this idea until I was very accidentally invited to the interview to one of the product companies. And I didn't plan to. It was never my intention. I just started feeling fatigue from the

freelancer lifestyle. But then one day I wake up to the LinkedIn message from one HR company who's looking for product designers and they didn't even see my portfolio. I have no idea how they found me, probably from some social media posting. But they say, hey, here is a salary, here's a product, here's a company, really recommend it. Would you like to apply? And I'm seeing the salary range and it's like three times more than I was making as a freelancer. And I'm like, damn.

It's probably a very good thing to do. Knowing how tired I am from freelancing lifestyle, knowing that I will finally belong somewhere and the stable income, it was definitely not in my plans. I was planning to finally launch the online course. Everything was already overwhelming. But then this opportunity came in. I just couldn't say no to it. I'm in general very bad at saying no. But this was the one opportunity that literally drift me away from freelancing. And from that moment on, I'm actually very happy. I still feel that I'm on the right path.

I don't know how about future. Maybe in the future, I will again decide that I want more freedom, more freelancing, more startups. But as of right now, I feel like, okay, this is my third official full-time company and I'm feeling like I'm in the right direction because I'm learning a lot from others. I'm definitely much more selfless. I've learned to let go of my ego, be not so vulnerable and not be afraid of the feedback. And I just wanted to learn from others, which obviously is not so easy, but it definitely taught me so much. And I'm super happy that I was on this journey.

All right, that's been a huge story, but I actually want to move on to our next follow-up question and something that Ioana wanted to start uncovering. So let's do that. So Ioana, what motivated you to stay in the place?

Yeah, so it turns out that I'm pretty stable and loyal. I, with my first employer, so I got hired at 20 just because of the anxiety I was mentioning and to prove my parents that I can have a job and I can support myself. Of course, I couldn't because I got a very entry-level salary, but I knew that this is the path I wanted to go in, something very stable and safe.

And then I stayed with ING Bank for 10 years and I was a designer for the past three, four years before switching roles. So I was very, let's say, stable and dedicated to that particular problem space, which at that moment was banking. This is very quickly just setting the context to answer your question. Then I moved to UiPath, which was this very juicy opportunity in the market. Everybody wanted to get in UiPath.

It was this, let's say, unicorn, the best startup story we listed. We IPO'd on the New York Stock Exchange. So it's the biggest success in Romanian history ever. This company just changed Eastern Europe. So I wanted to be part of that journey. Everybody, they were recruiting the top talent. I knew I'm going to work with very interesting people. So it really took something.

to drag me out of that stability and just inertia. I really had a strong motivation to change my jobs. And then now five years after, I moved to Miro because it's Miro and it's the AI team. And so again, very strong motivator. So I tend to sustain these stable jobs and in full-time roles in general because of a couple of reasons.

The first one is I like to do deep work. So that's why I don't switch companies often, because I feel that it takes me a long time to really build the domain knowledge that I need to make the best design decisions possible. So I feel that the problem with freelancing for me was that I had to switch quickly between industries, understand a problem space. I always had the feeling that I understand it superficially, that I'm just scratching the surface.

I felt like an imposter. I felt like many times I'm guessing in making design decisions. And I don't mean usability decisions like, is this button clickable and does it have enough contrast? But like, is this the right problem to solve? And to answer these abstract, bigger questions, you really need to understand that problem space. You really need to understand the industry. You really need to understand things deeply. And I didn't get that opportunity when freelancing. But when I'm in a full-time role, the more time I spend,

Of course, at the same time, you could counter argue that you're building biases, you're becoming less creative, you lose your fresh perspective if you're so. That's also true. But most of the times I felt like I really get to the bottom of things after a couple of months, years, I really understand what's going on.

I built an ecosystem, uncovered most of the unknowns, the blind spots in my landscape. I kind of ran into all these things that I didn't know and now I know them. And so I can be a better designer for this product and industry. So that's what got me to stay in full-time roles for a long time. Plus, I really like complex ecosystems and this feeling that you're making an impact

you can make an impact as a freelancer as well, right? So you can convince the team that you're freelancing for of your vision, of the direction. But many times you lack that control. You're an outsider, right? So they will do whatever they want after you're gone. With big companies and in steady roles, I felt like I could follow up through my vision. I felt that I could

control the way things get implemented, control what comes after that, control the way we measure outcomes, the improvements that we can do after that, right? So I could have a say in maybe I make a bad design decision. I want to be there to be able to adjust it, right? If I understand that it's not working well. I felt that with freelancing, it's going to be a very superficial kind of exchangey thing where I give you my best take on something

And then I don't know what goes on after that. And I love that agency. I love the responsibility of being in control as much as possible end to end. And I also like big corporate challenges of building, let's say, a design culture, evangelizing design, proving the value of design, convincing people to invest more in design. I like these battles. I think they're valuable. I think that one battle at a time, I'm changing the world.

I have this feeling that I'm fighting for the greater good of design. And I also like big organizations in general because I like complex systems in general. So this is another opportunity for me to interact with complex systems of relationships, roles, teams, tensions, conflicts, conflicting goals, conflicting interests, common goals, shared interests, shared vision. And so it's really interesting to navigate these complex. Sometimes it's training. Sometimes it's just

politics. But when you make it about solving the problem, those, let's say, genius moments, like sparkly moments, when you all know that you're fighting to solve the same problem, you're on the same team, moving in the same direction of making the user's life better. That's very inspirational for me. And so, yeah, these are some of the things and I'm excited to hear yours. Honestly, you picked up all the juicy answers. I almost felt literally the same about every single point. So it's hard to add something here.

Coming back to sort of prolonging the story I started, I would just say that originally it was definitely all about people and feeling of belonging. Like I said already, when you're jumping from project to project, it's fun and it's exciting. You learn a lot, but at the same time, it doesn't fulfill me because I was looking for my little product family, so to say. I actually had my startup where I was trying to build it from scratch, which was eventually more of the tech

family rather than the product design family because I was the only designer and I didn't surround myself in that little startup with designers because the design was never a huge priority. And like always, you know, as a designer founder, you're probably more of a marketer. You're pitching the idea, you're promoting it, you're doing the research and you're doing the design and just so many things already. So

Essentially, as a founder designer, it was a different story. But then I definitely felt like I want to be a part of the design team. I want to learn from other designers. I want to look how other people learn things and do things. And that was almost the first strong wave of new hype design collaboration. A lot of people started talking about

it, but that was not a big thing back then yet in 2018. Even if you think about the tools we are using today, right? Collaboration is the must have. But in 2018, most of us used Sketch and there was no collaboration because they just introduced the cloud back then. And so collaboration was a very new thing, but I really wanted to do something with designers. And me as a freelancer, I just got used to be so comfortable on my own. My files were never organized. I've never been able to collaborate with other designers on the same file and basically ask

them questions and see how they are doing things, right? Yeah, we were all in our little bubbles. And even like the file structure was never a big thing back then. And so this was a new thing, very interesting for me. So I definitely was looking for design people first.

And then after that, as I started working for the first product company, I realized that, ooh, this is interesting because now you are the only voice of the design in the huge system, in a huge company where there are hundreds of developers sometimes. Not a good sign, by the way, but generally, if you are one designer in relation to 100 developers, it's a sign of maybe not so UX mature company, but that's something that still happens. And I was part of that.

To be honest, we had like three designers, so I was three designers against 100 developers. But it was a very interesting journey for me to also learn to advocate for design because suddenly I'm in this very heavily dominated tech bubble where everybody understands constraints, technical things, and I'm only getting started with that, right? I know a lot of things from my startup, but not necessarily in the huge environment like that, in the corporate environment.

Then I've learned to advocate for the design. And that was another very interesting challenge for me. I've learned to start speaking other languages, not just design bubble language, not just my design double diamond language, you know. That also helped me to sort of build the empathy, let's say so, for the team, not just for the user, but also for the team. And like you, Anna, mentioned,

expertise is something that came later, but I also felt, oh, this is very interesting. I really liked learning in depth one new field because with the freelancing, it was always kind of scratching the surface a lot of the times working with assumptions and hypotheses. Whereas in a product company, you really have a chance to build this expertise and depth.

of knowledge because you have a lot of data, you hear a lot of opinions, you have a lot of experts, you're constantly in this kind of bubble and information. Information is just running around you all the time. So you have no other choice but to learn about this field very much in depth. And I'm very happy that I happened to start from the hospitality bubble because I'm in love with it. I want to continue working with it. So it was a very successful or lucky accident. But that's something that I've learned later that I'm very interested in as well.

And then as longer I stayed in the company, because after one corporate, I moved to another corporate. And right now I'm in a scale up. So after switching context like that, I've also learned that I'm very interested in the career growth trajectory. So as you know, right now, I'm kind of building the course. I'm learning a lot about how to grow as a designer, about the ladder of the designer, how different design skills manifest in different contexts, how design processes impact us as professionals.

how our work impacts the business. So all those things become very important, interesting thing for me because before in a freelancing context, I wasn't able to manifest those skills. I've never been able to see those skills through. And even politics right now, I kind of hate it in a moment, but looking from the bird's eye perspective, I kind of find it interesting to even see, you know, how people talk to each other, how they make decisions, how do you stay in a room where decisions are made and stuff like that. So it's very interesting to even be a part of that, something I've never been a part of in the

past. I think like it also gives me a lot of negotiating skills that I never had before. I think we have talked a lot about the good things, the gains of working full time. But I also want to unpack another interesting juicy topic, which is what are the sacrifices you're given or having when you're working full time versus the gains you might have in the freelancing context? Do you have a take on this?

I also have Andy Budd's perspective. It's a designer, a very senior designer, one of the, let's say, fathers of design who I had the chance to have a conversation with. And in that conversation, he told me that if he would recommend a designer one experience, it would be the design agency experience.

because you learn to work at a very fast pace with rapidly changing themes, problems, challenges, and so on. And so you are exposed to a variety of problems and challenges and interesting learning opportunities at a very fast pace. So sometimes I feel like this is what I'm missing out on, right? I understand RPA industry very well. I understand banking very well, but how many other industries or spaces could I've had

understood, maybe not so good, but maybe decent enough and be exposed to different kinds of problems. Again, I did freelance on the side all these years and I worked in the health industry. I worked in the legal tech industry. I've been in many other projects in different spaces and I've had that learning. But again, I think if I wouldn't have, this is one of the things I would have mostly regretted, not exposing myself to different kind of challenges and problems fast enough.

And then there's also the problem that some things are very hard to solve in big companies. Like some things are not in your responsibility. You don't have a lot of power over them. And so you tend to end up in the same frustrations for a very long time. And with freelancing,

If there is a frustration, it's a, let's say, very businessy, structured, kind of clear relationship, right? This is what I do. This is how I do it. Accept it or no. In a company, you tend to compromise many times. You tend to stay in things that kind of are unsolvable or you don't know how to solve them and you're frustrated by the same thing again and again. And that's something that

I feel that freelancing will take you out of, right? So you have more control over the problems you have to work with and the frustrations you have to deal with, right? So every relationship, every project comes with a set of challenges and frustrations. So with freelancing, you have more freedom to choose what you want to stress over.

Apart from that, I don't see a lot of downsides. Maybe, yeah, maybe just that you get too stuck in a particular problem space. You tend to become less creative over time. And sometimes people that spend 15 years in the same company on the same role are less equipped with the ability to unpack design problems effectively.

effectively than people who have worked for three years with a couple of employers and a couple of projects. So I feel that that's the deal. More projects, more industry spaces expose you to different challenges and force you to grow and be a better designer ultimately. So yeah, what about you? What do you feel are the downsides?

I feel like I'm on the same wave with you when it comes to gains. Maybe we're biased because we are in this context right now, but I definitely feel like full-time product role gives you more gains than sacrifices. But at least that's my subjective perspective. When I'm thinking about the sacrifices I have to make is kind of

the thing that I already started mentioning, which is basically corporate politics. I'm not a big fan of it. Like I said, in a moment, I hate it. I hate when people are not mature enough, when they are not able to control their emotions, when they're not able to form their thoughts rationally, when they're not able to have proper adult conversations. And I think that unfortunately, and I hate to say this, I feel like I'm being naggy, but a lot of people in IT and the industry are not

very self-aware and it's something we have to deal with. So I personally was working a lot with those people in the past. That's right now because in my company, I feel like many people are very smart and we really prioritize smart people who actually are aware and I'm enjoying working with the people right now. However, I did work with people who were not very well controlled in emotions wise and that's something I hated.

The other thing is the politics. So not just people who are not mature enough, but also the politics in terms of the leadership. So when the politic impacts your work so strongly that it becomes your bottleneck in the growth. So for example, you love the company, you love the mission, you'll enjoy working with your tribe, with your people, but...

But there is some leadership thing that might not be a part of your vision or how you like to do things or how you believe the product should be evolving and how you see insights drive the direction. And then some people who are not necessarily in the trenches with you believe something different or see the vision differently. And you end up being in the conflict with the leadership. And obviously, this is the losing game for you from the beginning.

So I hate when, you know, leadership becomes your bottleneck in a great company. But it's probably specific, right? That's just my personal pain that I happen to experience. And then another thing which I hate, and it's very tactical and don't know why I'm mentioning this, but I honestly hate FEMA comments. This is absolutely a nightmare for me because of the

Figma comments, I can quit jobs, I feel like, some days. Because Figma comments are just, I don't know, it's so not productive to me. It's like, you enter the file, there is like some sort of milestones you are going through with your team, and then suddenly somebody opened your file somewhere in this random Slack channel, started commenting and everything without context, without being a part of the team, without

being informed of the decisions and being aligned with the decisions and suddenly, I mean, sometimes you can see some interesting and very useful comments, obviously, not to say that it's always bad, but there are moments when it's very unproductive and inefficient in terms of moving forward. So some comments distract you and you have to expect

play in the context again, I get another buy-in from somebody who was not invited in the first place to the project milestone. So I personally hate it, working in bigger companies in a full-time environment. Whereas as a freelancer, you're just there collaborating with a couple of designers, or sometimes you're the only one designer. And it's much more easier to get a buy-in and to have the alignment within your team. So you are not even going through the Figma comments rounds, right? Yeah. So that's my little sacrifice, I would say, even though it's so random.

I just wanted to make a point to what you were saying earlier. I feel that the immaturity problem is not necessarily solved through freelancing. I think many people that are doing only freelancing have to deal with immature clients, clients that don't have a culture for working with designers in a freelancing setup, problems with paying the invoices, problems with reliability, pulling them in, weird feedback, stuff like that. So I feel that dealing with people will be a problem

whatever you choose to do. But for me, it's very fun. And I think that's how you should frame it, right? It's an interesting learning opportunity. All of these, I think, meeting other people in different ways, teach you something about yourself. So that's how I think about it. Every time I see a conflict emerging or I see an interesting thing, which I wouldn't have expected from a person or stuff like that.

But yeah, freelancing is also extremely useful for growth. And I think that in the end, and it's, let's say, our mantra for this podcast, it all comes down to self-awareness and self-reflection and figuring out what works best for you. So there is no recipe for anything and there's no recipe for me. For example, I need both. If I'm not freelancing and don't have a full-time role, I feel like I'm missing out. I'm very, let's say, driven by this FOMO. I'm always stressed out.

So I need multiple projects to juggle with and inform each other and give me the energy and enthusiasm. And that's how I work. The point is, figure out, maybe experiment if you're in the early days of your career. Try finding a full-time role.

journal, self-reflect constantly. Do you like it? Why do you not like it? Is it because of the company specificities or is it because you don't like full-time roles? And then try freelancing and figure out why you don't like it or like it. Is it because of the clients or is it because you just don't like the unpredictability of freelancing? And so that's my final note.

I was going to just finish this conversation about awareness. I would say the reason why I mentioned this in this context was because I feel like when you're working full time with people you're not happy about or not feeling great working with, you're stuck. And unfortunately, that sometimes impacts your productivity.

So that's not the reason. In the freelance, you can quickly switch teams after a couple of months. But when you're supposed to work with somebody for five years, then it's a different story. Anyways, I think that brings us to the final takeaways. And it feels like you already started doing the takeaway. So I'll just extend on what you were just saying, because I have a very similar takeaway, to be honest, from our conversation. And I like that you've also brought up here the design agency, because I feel like it's very similar. There's a

a huge parallel between design agencies and freelancing. The only difference is that as a freelancer, you also do your own, let's say, HR, you look for people, you do finances, you do selling, marketing and stuff like that. So you're being the jack of all trades in a way, whereas in agency, you are constantly switching a lot of projects, but the projects are being sort of offered to you. So you're not necessarily doing the sales in the first place. You do them later.

during the process, but not necessarily to get the project in. I definitely think that's a great thing to start from, even though maybe freelancing is definitely better for the later stages of your career. Design agency is a good way for you to explore different directions and explore different industries and figure out where do you see yourself working in the next, let's say, five, 10 years.

So design agency might be a good context to start from simply because you switch a lot of context. You are surrounded by designers. You always possibly can get the mentorship or advice or support. And you're not supposed to do the sales job, right? You are not supposed to find the clients and constantly be scared that you will not find another client tomorrow. So maybe that's a better way to start, right? Rather than freelancing. But

then my perspective is that it just makes sense that if you started from agencies, which by the way is also easier to start from because agencies more often need for junior designers. So once you figured out the industry you're most interested in and most excited about, then you can start building the expertise, probably putting the projects that you had been working on in the agency, hopefully it was not NDA, into your portfolio. So those projects can lead you towards the

in specific industries. So for me, it's hospitality. For you, Anna, right now, it's AI. In the past, it was banking. For you, it might be something else, health tech, fintech, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's my conclusion. Starting from agencies, then possibly moving to product design companies if you're more interested in building the expertise. And then maybe

Maybe, who knows, maybe in the future, once you are a very strong designer, you don't necessarily need a constant support, constant learning from others, you can consider even freelancing. But my advice, because I started from freelancing, don't start from freelancing. It's very messy. You don't grow so much as a designer, but you grow a lot as a person. And if you want to have a faster career trajectory, faster growth in the design craft, then probably you need to start not as a freelancer, but more as a design agency designer, or if you're a super lucky product designer.

in the company. With that being said, let's wrap this episode up. Thank you so much, everybody who was listening to us. We're again, super excited to be back and share with you our insights. If you have ideas on the next episodes, if you want us to expand on any other topics, or if you want us to talk about your situation, you will find an anonymous submission link under this episode.

You can also let us know where you listen to this episode from because we have learned recently that people listening to this podcast from absolutely new and crazy and interesting environments. Somebody was just submitting today that they're listening to this episode from Shower. So where do you listen to this episode from? Let us know. And we're looking forward to the next episodes. Have a great day, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye, everyone. Thanks for tuning in.