To be clear, I agree with your assessment and I would not recommend an agency unless you are a huge company as well. It's a mis-match of interests and goals.

The work I did as a web programmer for an agency (freelance) was similarly imbalanced with many "leaders" telling me what to do, (ie, project lead heavy, 1 designer, 1 programmer) and it was a mess and I won't bother with it again.