I’ve been with an agency for about 1.5 years now.
Around my 6 month mark, the senior WP dev just up and left. No contact. Nothing.
So for the last year, I’ve been solo’ing 50+ clients of maintenance on top of working on new client websites that come in. It’s getting to the point where there is so much maintenance work to do, because clients are constantly asking for small updates or image swaps, etc – that I can’t even get around to the new websites coming in. Which really sucks, because our account managers sell the website builds to clients with the idea that they will have something launched within 2 months, which has not been the case since I’ve came on board.
What makes it even harder is I’ve gone from being just the website guy to basically being the all around IT guy. Client has an issue with their email provider? I have to help them with it. Client has a question that nobody in the entire agency knows how to answer despite the information being easy to Google and find an answer to? I get pinged to respond to the client’s email. I often question if it’s even worth it to have an account manager between me and the client because of how many times I get pinged.
I’ve been begging for a second developer for a while now, but because we don’t charge enough for websites, we can’t afford a second dev. And despite how many times I’ve told them we need to raise our prices, my agency goes with the idea of “Keeping website build costs low so we can get them in the door for other services like PPC” which makes no sense to me, but I don’t make those calls.
We just recently brought onboard an unpaid intern to help knock out some work, but unfortunately I have to spend time explaining a task to the intern, when I could’ve done it myself faster – but it’s all in hopes the intern will become a full-time employee who will be on par with me. Agency doesn’t want to hire someone with experience because they would cost more.
All the venting aside, I wanted to get some answers from fellow WP devs.
For starters: How many websites would you say you are “in charge of”? Does your agency try to go with a certain number of websites per dev? Would you say that a single dev being the sole person responsible for any website-related tasks concerning 50+ clients is too much on one person’s shoulders?
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This sounds very much like my current situation. The senior dev buggered off with zero handover, all of the knowledge and I was only 6 months in the role at the time. Taken on as a front end but essentially being used and expected to know full stack. They were aware of my lack of e-commerce experience but still threw heavily integrated ecom builds onto me and expecting speed, plus perfect results. Had a site that was easily a 2 month build but ended up taking just over 3 weeks because out of personal pride I ended up working all hours to get it over the line. As well as that, there are about 20+ maintenance clients to take care of. Designers completely ignoring budgets and creating sites that are way too complex for the quoted price and time, no goals or appraisals being set, promise of a pay rise that never appeared…
I just handed in my notice today as that really has been my last experience with an agency (all my work experience has been with agencies). They always promise the earth, promise they will invest in you, promise that you’ll have great career opportunities and training.
None of it ever happens. You end up working on project after project with no time for personal development or improving development processes.
All I’ll say is the grass definitely isn’t greener, but having other devs to bounce ideas off and share the workload is vital.
I’ve run the gamut of all that you’re tasked with.
My advice, set some boundaries. When a client comes to you with a 3rd party issue, the extent of your assistance could be, “I see you’re having a problem with MS 365 mail. We don’t have the means to fully support you on this so let me get you the contact info for them.”
No one person can be expected to be successful with the load you’ve been tasked with. That’s literally too much. And, it looks terrible for your agency. Like, They don’t care enough about quality of work and services they provide to hire another dev? I’d leave that agency and take my business elsewhere.
I work for one of the largest agencies in the US right now. We have some maintenance tasks but mainly focus on builds and have content people to handle update requests with dev support.
Maybe see about getting an intern or if they will hire a content manager.
50 at once is too much. Try searching for a better job.
It may be useful to get an idea of averages but obviously the required efforts on both the website build and support can vary massively.
I’m a sole trader for example and I manage 100+ hosted WordPress websites for my clients and I then maybe build 1-3 new client websites every month.
I’m fairly flat out but still able to prioritise being accessible, supportive and reliable for my clients. This has been my biggest challenge the last year or two. I get a lot of new work from clients who don’t get the support (or even a reply) so they’re looking elsewhere.
I’m my own boss so things may be more streamlined than working with others such as yourself. IT support can be one of the biggest resource drains of your valuable time.
Our company employs around 80 individuals in marketing and associated roles, along with 8 developers. Typically, one website costs approximately 30k euros and it generally takes 1-2 months for a single developer to complete. I’m located in the EU. We have one team member who primarily handles tickets, but of course, when we’re between projects, we all step in to assist. My job is rather relaxed and I earn about 40 euros per hour, while our clients are charged 109 euros per hour. I also have about 1.5 years of freelance experience and no formal education in this field.
I would set up my own side gig developing websites and building a client base then simply moving on when your side gig income exceeded your existing income. I can assure you that if you were to complete the work you are currently doing under your own brand / banner / company you would be making a hell of a lot more money and a lot happier doing the work.
The more work you put in at an agency, the more work they will expect. Competency is a rarity and oven exploited within agencies.