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Comment by yomly | Hacker News Reader

Can confirm this having accidentally ended up working in the Media industry (in a non-passion capacity).

More pertinently, I know someone trying to get an entry level role in a similar passion field and is struggling.

Adding to the problem is:

- Passion fields are quite insular and like to only hire from within the industry

- Nepotism is everywhere. In something like art, hiring so and so's son/daughter may cost you $30k but could close you a $10M deal which is good business

- Pulling up the ladder culture: "well I had to go through XYZ to get where I am so I don't see why this new person shouldn't also have to do it and maybe a bit more"

I think the real problem is we've somehow managed to glamorize work as an end rather than a means. Is spending the first 5-10 years of your working career doing grunt work which could be making coffee and doing photocopying really "living the dream"?

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> Nepotism is everywhere. In something like art, hiring so and so's son/daughter may cost you $30k but could close you a $10M deal which is good business

This is so true, and why you always see royals/semi-royals/royal-hangers-on work in a gallery/auction/museum capacity.

I worked for a large cable company and nepotism was rampant there as well. It seems that if money is involved then nepotism follows.

Yes, nepotism is everywhere, but I would argue that for some of these very insular sectors like art, many jobs exist solely so they can be filled with the relatives of rich potential clients. That's slightly different than some management job being filled by someone who may be less qualified but is still expected to do the work.

That's the main appeal of being a dev by far - they can't just hire an incompetent family member, no matter how much they want to.

They do put them through the best schools and coding classes to hire them, but they still need.someone.competent.

Not really. They just need to hire someone competent to take work alongside the family member and take up the slack. Happens in all industries with a measurable work product.

At one point my dad was doing finance for a 20ish person company, where five of the employees were family members. He said that they basically did nothing all day, but all collected paychecks. As the finance guy, he could see how their results were compared to everyone else.

Seconded. Seen more than one software company with departments named something like "R&D" that were used as a playground for executives' children where they could screw around all day and collect a wage, while once in a blue moon releasing some sort of press release composed of a meaningless soup of last year's buzzwords.

Nepotism is so pervasive and so horrible that I believe it should be outlawed.

My SO is trying to get into the Media industry and I am myself incredibly frustrated for her sake by the amount of nepotism she experiences, when you've got assistants who are rude to everyone and lazy outright at a company but can't be fired because one of the producers knows their mother it's pretty freaking annoying.

How do you outlaw it?

Do you propose shutting down every small family-run business in the country?

In some cases, nepotism isn't even harmful. Plenty of cases where hiring a family member doesn't mean that family member is necessarily unsuited for the job.

There can also just be a lot of randomness involved. How many actors hit at least B-list status because of some TV show that ends up a big hit and then they never really get a significant role again? [ADDED: Or, for that matter, the many other actors of similar talent who didn't click with the casting director for that role for whatever reason and never got that break at all.]

I think the randomness comes from the mismatched supply / demand. After the people with a leg up (very talented and pliable, or with good personal connections) get selected, you're left with a reserve army of labour, so random allocation is a sensible strategy.

I know many actors of this class (irregular appearances on TV shows), and the casting directors simply don't care; they and the crew just try to remember a few names on the spot that fit the needed profile, make a few calls, maybe do a couple of auditions (often not even that), and they're chosen.

I'm thinking randomness more in the sense of getting a big break which may be pretty much the result of a dice roll rather than getting on the list for bit parts.

Of course, luck plays a role pretty much everywhere and those who really strike it big in tech and other professionals should chalk that up to luck to at least some degree. But, for the most part, if someone with a modicum of talent and educational background doesn't get a job at $TECH_COMPANY_A because the interviewer was having a bad day, they didn't have the right keyword for HR, or they choked on an interview question, they probably haven't blown their one and only chance to get a decent professional job.

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