Oh boy … strap in for what has to be my most controversial article yet! Although the title might be a touch misleading, this article is more to do with my personal philosophy that deals with deciding whether to take a job or not in general. The ‘working for free’ portion of that philosophy being the most contentious. At the outset I’ll say that not everyone will agree with this, and that’s perfectly fine. Everyone’s career path is different!
Like I mentioned, the basis of this article is dealing with the topic of deciding whether to do a job or not, as not all jobs or tasks are worth doing. For example:
Hey, I have 200 files that need to be renamed, can you do that? I don’t have time. I can’t pay either …
That’s a straightforward one: that’ll most likely be a ‘no.’ However, when the scenarios become a bit more nuanced, and you’re at the beginning stages of your creative career, it’s difficult to know what to say ‘yes’ to and what to say ‘no’ to. I’ve seen some engineers flounder in their career by saying ‘no’ to too many things early on. I know a couple of people who sat at home doing nothing because their prices were a little bit higher than their experience level. I’ve also seen people get jaded quickly and early by saying ‘yes’ to too many things early on and feeling exploited. There’s definitely a balance to be struck; a balance of feeling valued, staying busy, continuing to learn and growing your career. A lack of any of those things can sting and can lead to a tragic career change.
Looking back on my career, I didn’t do it perfectly, but for the most part I do believe I made good decisions. So, for whatever that’s worth to you, and without further ado, let’s detail the philosophy that I’ve followed thus far in my career regarding taking and rejecting short term jobs.
Basically it is this: When I evaluate a job or a task, there are three aspects that I consider.
- Money
- Learning things
- Meeting people
There’ll be an amount of money involved (even if that amount is zero). All jobs have the potential to teach you something, and lastly, all jobs have the potential to meet people and/or get to know people better and form connections with them. This last one has been particularly fruitful for me as the majority of my gigs in the first few years were by referral.
Ideally a job will have all three of these things in a reasonable proportion. If a job offers all three of these things in small proportions, then it might be worth it, this is where your intuition will have to be the judge. If a job has large amounts of two out of three of the above, then it will be beneficial, but if a job has only one out of the three things l, then it better be a large amount of that thing, otherwise it might be a no-go.
If a job has no pay, you don’t meet anyone doing it but there’s the potential to learn A LOT, then it might be worth it.
If a job has mediocre pay, you think you’ll learn only a tiny bit and it’s a remote job where you won’t connect with anyone, that’s probably not a good one to go for. Again, you’ll have to make the final judgement yourself.
In the early years of my career I tried to go for jobs that satisfy two out of the three above (obviously three out of three is the ideal!), even if that means that it’s no pay but highly educational and with the potential to meet people. And this is where the controversy begins, because yes, I’m admitting to doing jobs for no pay early on.
It’s been a very long time since I did work for free, as it is definitely something that you grow out of, but if I think about it for a tiny bit I can imagine some hypothetical dream-like scenario in which I would agree to it today. If you’re troubled by this concept, let me pose two things to you and I’ll ask you to think about how they fit into this framework that I’m describing: 1) a university assignment in an audio engineering degree, and 2) an internship at a post house or similar. Both of these things offer something valuable to your long term career, with money not being one of them.
Like I mentioned before, I’ve watched people’s careers dwindle early on due to a mishandling of the above. I can think of a couple of people who valued themselves too highly early on, and thus never did any work! What’s the point of charging the same as someone with a 10+ year career if it means you’ll just be sitting at home doing nothing? Conversely, I’ve seen people become bitter by doing too much for free and not feeling like they’re getting anything out of it, and of course this is one to avoid.
A principle that I’ve followed is that I never did work for free for a return ‘client.’ If I did a no pay job for someone, they were almost always willing to pay the second time. Another principle is to try not to agree to free work if the clients are friends or family. I feel like this is definitely a trap to fall into and a boundary that should be imposed early on. Thirdly, and this is harder to define, but sometimes you just have that sense that you’re being asked to work for free by someone with bad intentions. Like I said, this one is difficult to define ahead of time, but if you are faced with what you suspect to be this type of scenario, go with your first gut instinct and decline if you feel that might be the case.
At this point I’d like to change topics slightly and just offer some general career advice for those starting out, or indeed for anyone. And that is that even if you don’t have work, make sure you do work every day. Meaning, that if you don’t have any jobs Monday through Friday, make sure you are still working on your craft on those days. Try to develop a routine where you do self guided work or practice at set times. When I was freelancing full time my aim was to always do 10 hours of ‘things’ every day, including travel time and including non-audio casual jobs. If I had a paying gig to do, great, but if not, I would do ‘things.’ Some examples of these ‘things’ included making sample packs, reading, ear-training exercises, plug-in exploration and tutorials. The main goal of these miscellaneous activities I filled my time with was education. I’m pretty nerdy and bookish and I always believed that the more I was able to know the more likely it would be for me to be able to make money.
One thing I would mention about this is that you should try and be honest with yourself about what a valuable ‘thing’ to do is. For example, for me, YouTube is a strict no-go if I’m trying to do the 10-hours-of-things. Yes, YouTube is a valuable resource, but I know personally that browsing YouTube is a time suck and not a good use of my time. Of course you might feel differently about it, you might get something different out of it, but for me, I know that it is not effective use of my time. So my only advice on that front is to be honest with yourself about which things are a good use of time and which aren’t.
To connect it back to my three-point principle, if you’re striving for a full time career in audio, try to spend your days chasing those three things: money, education and meeting people. If you don’t have any work for a whole week, think about how you could grow any of these three aspects and try to spend a quality day doing those things. I know that is sometimes easier said than done as you might have non-audio work commitments to keep the lights on and other responsibilities. That is where my ten-hour-day thing came into play. My non-audio-keep-the-lights-on job was at a fruit shop, and if I had a shift that was less than ten hours, I subtract the shift and the travel time from ten, and that remaining amount of time was what I strived to dedicate to audio. This worked quite well, and it meant that I wasn’t killing myself with fatigue by trying to do too much in one day. I’m not necessarily advocating for having the same plan, but for me it worked very well, and the methodical approach helped to inform what I should be doing and when it was time to relax.
So I hope this article gave you something to think about. Like I said at the start, everyone’s career is different. I’m sure some readers are full time in the audio business, never worked for free, and are shaking their heads at this. I wanted to write this article because I felt it important to be honest about my career path. Working for free is somewhat taboo and I wonder how honest some people are about it. So, here’s me being honest about it: I worked for free at times early on and I have a blessed career now. The key was how I decided what to do and what not to do.
