Like the previous comment, I don’t think it’s as simple a distinction as some seem to. I get frustrated with “selling” UCD and IA, that’s true. On the other hand, I get to drive a project through to the end. I get the satisfaction of generating long-term strategic changes in how my company think, and I get to pick and choose when I want to do the “fun stuff” or leave it to a contractor.

Sometimes I pine for the freedom of the “outie” world, and it’s definitely something i’m considering at the moment, but equally, I worry i’ll miss the long-term results of my brief work if i’m on the outside, and often only briefly there at all…

That all said, I have to attend maybe 1-2 meetings every 14 days. I’m currently working across applications, web gui’s, CLIs & physical interfaces. I’m the only UI designer in a company of 6000 people and I dont have to travel.

Point being, its isnt black & white and I think if you get far enough up the food chain in either field, people knock on your door and you can chose to ignore the BS be that politics or constant selling.

I’ve been both innie and outie, and last time I was being an outie thought it was for good. Then I was quite surprised to finde a (reasonably small) place where I can make a difference and get to be part of a family (sounds sappy, but there are times when being an outie can be damn lonely).

While I can never see myself going back to being a very small cog in a vast machine, I think there is something to be said for the third way- as Gino says, perhaps sometimes you can have the best of both worlds?

My impression is the opposite. It’s the outties that need to constantly sell their value to prospective employers, and deal with the overhead of managing a business. Not that there’s no process overhead for innies, but it seems to me that there’s a lot of things we don’t need to do that outties need to do.

Now, as for politics are concerned… ouch, that makes me want to be an outtie!

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and it seems many of the innies are spending most of their time dealing with process instead of doing work.

Namely the processes of 1. Contracting outies and 2. Pushing work through the massive corporate funnel, dealing with large company overhead, having meetings about meetings and, generally being consumed by corporate inefficiencies… all while the outies are doing the cool work!