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Topic: magazine staffing
| Author | Message |
| WinonaWriter | Posted – 7/11/2007 1:38:12 PM | show profile A follow-up question ConfidentDesigner, your old job sounds like hell! Glad you've moved on. I'll have to tell my AD about your old job...should make her feel better! To answer your question, when the graphic designers aren't helping her on this mag, they're working on all the other mags we publish (for her and for the other AD, who doesn't do anything with THIS particular mag). Sounds like this is a pretty common theme among custom/trade mags. Still would like to hear from anyone who works for one of the big newsstand pubs. In the meantime, my follow-up question: For those of you who have moved on to other things, thereby improving your health and work-life balance -- what are you doing now? Freelance? Working for a more sane employer? Something entirely different? |
| ConfidentDesigner | Posted – 7/11/2007 4:16:20 PM | show profile I'm actually working for another non profit that it even more dysfunctional! So...I'm looking for yet another job. It started out okay but it's gotten really bad in the past year (I've been here 2 now). No respect for our dept. which consists of an editor, designer, web developer and a PR person. We do everything for the entire org. when it comes to print, web, editing reports, etc., etc., etc. but we're treated very poorly. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 7/11/2007 5:09:03 PM | show profile | email poster I freelance, and have yet to make as much as I did at my old job. But on a per-hour basis, I'm way in the black. I wouldn't mind being in the workplace -- I like the energy, and being responsible for a single publication instead of writing for many. But I am not going to kill myself for someone who, in the end, really doesn't appreciate it other than wishing the next workhorse was as "good" (read self-sacrificing) as me. In his job, my son has a great deal of responsibility and is ever given more because he's so darn good at managing it all. But I see shades of myself in days gone by in his inability to use the weeks of comp time he's built up. (At the publications I worked at, comp time was supposed to occur but it put the pub in a huge bind if you used it, so of course it wasn't really possible.) I tell him, "You do no one any favors if you let them kill their work horse." And believe me, even though the publisher is delighted to have a work horse, the work horse gets credit only while they're being worked to death. |
| Chamsah | Posted – 7/12/2007 9:42:11 AM | show profile Credit? Hmm. Not sure I've seen many workhorses get credit.... I am curious who has ever gotten accolades for all of their hard work? Praise in front of the staff? More money? Bonuses? Extra time off? Promotions? The only thing you get for being a workhorse is more and more responsibility. How dangerous to see that as positive reinforcement (ie: I work SO hard, my boss trusts me to handle XXZ, tripled. Plus HIS job too!) It's a vicious cycle. They know you work like a dog so they keep piling it on. They don't go to the slackers in time of need. That's not credit, that's abuse. |
| CBL | Posted – 7/12/2007 10:53:26 AM | show profile Confident Designer, I'm beginning to think that's how non-profits are these days. That kind of treatment seems to be everywhere. |
| beachbum | Posted – 7/12/2007 3:00:58 PM | show profile WinonaWriter I've been a graphic designer for 15+ years, worked in advertising agencies, newspapers, mags, non-profit, corporations. The one thing they had in common is the designers were always stuck with most of the workload in the final stages of production. While the ad execs, managers and sales directors were off enjoying fancy lunches, there we were, the designers, burning the midnight oil and getting a pat on the back. Guess who got the hefty bonuses in the end? Not the folks in the art dept. But hey, we love our jobs and are dreamy types anyway, so we don't need money to buy a Porsche, right? Not. In my experience as an art director, many people with this title don't really do much art directing. It's just a nice title for what's basically a production job. As much as I love graphic design and am quite good at it, recently I decided I needed a break from pushing pixels and am now working in marketing. It's not as "pretty" or "glamorous" as being in the art dept. and there's still some stress but all in all, it's less draining and a nice change for me. I don't know if I'll stay in marketing forever but at least now I'm learning the money/business side of things and I get paid more, plus a nice yearly bonus, something that was unheard of in my past jobs. |
