| I would say that running a small consultancy with 1-4 employees can give you more than enough of juggling between managing and producing (designing, programming, etc.) I am personally in the situation that you want to be in, and to be honest it's the hardest thing I've had to do in my life (this is obviously personal). Having meetings with customers after X hours of design work in front of a screen is hard. Sitting down to design for X hours after dealing with an endless stream of information you need to process and be aware of, before lunch is hard. Worrying about payroll is hard. Delivering good design/code is hard. What I'm trying to say is these things are hard enough on their own, and I find myself overwhelmed often. And I'm not trying to dissuade you from giving it a go, I'm just trying to paint a clear picture for you, so you know how it is. If you think you'll be able to divide your managing hours vs. your production hours — you're deluding yourself. It's a mess and as the saying goes: when it rains, it pours. The main difficulty with balancing these two roles is time management, and stress caused by having to manage when you'd rather be producing and vice versa. So, it's interesting, it keeps you on your toes, it beats working in a coal mine, but it's still hard work. It has personally made me discover that I much prefer working with people that I do sitting in front of a computer all day, so I'm working on transitioning myself from a designer role, to a manager role. |