[spamizbad]

Boy do I disagree with these.

You're probably going to see more senior Agency people grumbling about startups for two reasons:

1) Agencies are getting priced-out of the market for talented designers. Go on glassdoor and compare how much mid-level designers at agencies make compared to tech companies. It's close to double. As an aside, #7 is really rich. There are tons of design firms out there who utilize of 1099 designers (some with masters degrees!) who gross less than 38K a year for full-time work. Mike's Mule isn't one of those companies, but the design industry isn't without it's own 1099 abuses.

2) The startup world requires "product designers" who have a specific set of design skills that agencies aren't well equipped to provide. Namely- ongoing data-driven product development (as opposed to "Just enough research"), systemized/componentized view of design (as opposed to "The customer is always right/Take what I have created for you or I'll walk like Saul Bass"), and a more collaborative "agile" workflow (As opposed to waterfall). Based on my experience as an engineer working with agencies, they are reluctant to allow their designers to directly interact with engineering teams -- we always had a PM or an senior designer (who wasn't on our project) act as this mediator, putting us in a time-boxed meeting when in reality we just needed to sit down with 1 designer and just work through a few issues over <1 hour.

Because of this, agencies aren't just losing talent: They're also losing potential clients. Startups tend to prefer tight-knit product teams, where the designer is (or at the very least SHOULD BE!) a major component.