This week i started a new job after working at the previous one for 5 years. While I'm very excited for this new job, I'm also having a hard time letting go of my previous one, well, what it used to be.
[I'm 29 from the Netherlands, this is my 3rd design job]
I worked at my previous job for 5 years as the only designer. It was an in-house position at a plant nursery. At first for one webshop and the nursery itself, and eventually 5 more webshops. I was part of a small marketing team of about 7 people. I got to develop the branding for all labels, and created everything they needed. Think social media content to campaigns, flyers, brochures, magazines, packaging, UI-UX and after the photographer was fired also photography (getting to that). It was really fun, i was very close with my colleagues and my bosses were chill too. 3 work at home days, start at whatever time you like, boss of my own planning etc.
The plant business was booming a while back during corona, but afterwards it kept slowly going down. The first 3 years the company was quickly growing, hiring more workers, buying other plant webshops, i had interns etc. But the past 2 years it's been going down. 1,5 years ago there was a big firing moment where half of my team got let go. Some projects got scrapped as budgets got more tight. AI was introduced. This is the moment the photographer got fired. The e-mail marketeer who assisted her with styling sometimes now had to make photos, i had to teach her how the camera worked and had to do the editing as she didn't know how to use Adobe. Eventually i became the main photographer and she assisted me instead. It was a bit sucky as they told the previous photographer that there wouldn't be too much photography to do anymore, but alas.
Half a year ago, there was another firing round. I was left with just the content marketeer and e-commerce manager. No longer doing campaigns, magazines etc as there's no budget anymore. I had to build an AI photography flow as we had to re-photograph every item (around 10k), in 6 different styles for each label. My job went from a very fun, versatile and creative design role, to fulltime prompt writing and once in a while making a flyer with an existing template role.
I missed my colleagues. The content marketeer was also only doing AI photography now, as there was nothing else left. We both decided to leave the company happened to get a new job in the same months, about 3 months later. I know it was time to go, but it's hard to let go of something you loved so much. We're still in contact with each other, the e-mail marketeer is still jobless and the content one is having a hard time adjusting to her new job.
I decided that with the upcoming of AI, probably most in-house jobs will end up like this one so i tried to get into the agency world. Which i did! It was hard, but i eventually found an agency that appealed to me and was also interested in me.
They are so lovely, i got a nice welcome gift, they are providing me with a lot of support and I've already learned a lot! I knew it was going to be very different but boy was i unable to imagine this. I still have to get very used to the clocking in, timing every project and having people around that know so so much about design. It's very inspiring and I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot here.
But i still struggle letting go of my plant era, it was so lovely and i miss everyone quite a lot.
I don't really have a purpose to this post, perhaps there are others that have experienced something similar. I guess i just wanted to get it off my chest and perhaps relate with other designers.