You ruined your corporate career, now what?

First post

Over the past few months, I’ve been getting a lot of messages. Some from people I know, some from complete strangers. They all ask the same question, in one way or another: ‘So, what are you doing now?’

What they’re really asking is, ‘Are you still earning, and if so, can you please disclose the precise state of your bank account, so I can gauge whether I too can start saying out loud what I think about my job and not end up homeless?’

I have good news and I have bad news. I’ll tell you the good news first and the bad news will be behind the paywall. Hopefully that will discourage the sort of nosy onlookers who slow down to stare at car crashes. Get into the car with me or fuck off.

The Good News:

Yes, I’m still working. I took a few meetings with agencies that were exactly the same as my last one. ‘We’re doing incredible things for Coca-Cola, their sustainability program is a game-changer, you’ll win so many awards.’ Predictably, those interviews didn’t go well.

So, I started working with clients directly. I’ve pulled together a collective of collaborators – designers, art directors, photographers, stylists, coders. We’re operating like a co-op: everyone gets paid full commercial rates billed directly to clients, no shareholders take a cut, and there’s no overpaid CEO giving pointless Monday morning speeches about attending the office to preserve ‘company culture’ – whatever that means.

Could I start a proper agency? Probably. But I have no interest in doing so. For one, I don’t like the idea of appropriating the surplus value of other people’s labour. For another, building an agency just to sell it to another agency sounds like a spectacular waste of precious life.

So, for now I’m running this little experiment, learning from mistakes as I go.

The Bad News Is This: