Chris Mele, Director and founder of Siberia, an independent design studio / agency based in Brooklyn, manages a five -time full -time former basis that manages the design, product management, engineering and talent management – while being responsible for strategy, as well as sales and marketing.

Mele compares the configuration to the classic rock “band” Steely Dan, who in reality was mainly composed of two founding members, Donald Fagan and Walter Becker – who hired a certain number of professional session musicians to record their albums in the 1970s. Known to be production perfectionists, they sometimes crossed different players before finding their sound. The shop is then based on a list of 30 to 40 people independent of different skills to expand what is necessary for each customer.

“When we started this iteration of the company, our intention was, let’s do this and find how to flex and flexion,” said Mele. “We have some customers who have longer -term contracts where it is logical to convert a few very selected people who are also very old … Most of the people who are in our list are somehow committed to entrepreneurs.”

The pandemic certainly helped “shake the box” of agency work, added Mele. “For any reason, in our corner of the world, it was not as widespread,” he noted. “I think people have exhausted a little a little [at the time]. Whatever the percentage before, there is now a much larger percentage of people who really have no interest in being part of a full -time team and being involved in corporate culture. »»

Adam Kleinberg, founder of traction, an agency he now describes as a marketing accelerator company, believes in what he calls a “liquid workforce”. Kleinberg has in fact set up the current means of traction to work before the pandemic – it is currently at around 20 full -time staff, but around 100 freelancers, or “perma -lanchers” as he calls them.

The perma-lance list of the traction continues to develop because, as Kleinberg explained, they tend to turn each other thanks to the recommendation. In fact, a few moments after hanging up with Digiday for this interview, he received a message in his LinkedIn from one of his perma-lanciers suggesting another potential person to add to his team. “It is not too difficult to keep a bench when you get intros like that all the time,” he said.

There are some drawbacks, explained Mele, including the perception of instability, the prospect of not having the right people available at the right time. He said that Siberia had lost a potential customer because they did not think that Siberia could evolve enough on a project without more labor. And Mele and Kleinberg have talked about the important effort that it takes to integrate independent or perma-lance talent, which can turn against him if this person turns out to be a failure (this even happens after a considerable verification).

But no founder would come back to a complete staff operation. “When we define who we are, we proudly states this model of liquid labor,” said Kleinberg. “And customers say, oh, it’s intelligent.”

A bit like Steve Gadd’s famous drum solo at the end of Steely Dan’s legendary song, Aja.