Plenty of travel, plenty of team building, plenty of dinners and hotels.
My wife asked me a few times about the orgies the movies show, and damn it, I must have always been at the wrong parties.
It is interesting how this varies by companies and organizations.
I also frequented movie festivals.
Don't take this personally but I think you were at the wrong parties. Good signs to tell if you are "in" or not: do you know how to get illegal drugs on set? have you ever been to a private event in a hotel room or AirBNB before or after a ceremony? have you ever been in the same room with an A list celebrity or actor when they are using an illegal substance?
If the answer to all those is no then yeah it's probably that you are in the wrong parties.
If you've been there and like never witnessed a movie level epic orgy then that's great for you. I know they are not usual on some circles, I've heard Disney and Netflix try to keep their staff on a tight leash. Honestly I wished my experience was more like yours because I liked the industry and it was a little bit of a dream of mine to be more involved with the movie creative process, and one of the reasons I didn't get more into it was that I was not comfortable mixing illegal drugs and orgies with work in the way it was usual.
IDK about that it's the same or slightly better than the rest of corporate America IME. Maybe a bit more lenient, if anything.
Industry is "very conservative" because talking about sex can almost instantaneously turn into sexual harassment. So you have to be careful talking about it. Drugs don't have the same liability concerns, if people aren't obviously loaded on the job.
I'm talking about frivolous lawsuits as well as legitimate grievances. People have a right not to deal with sexual discomfort (I don't have a better name for this concept - the uncomfortable feelings people have when talking about sex). Some people are very very uncomfortable talking about sex for various reasons. You can't even mention it without toing this line, or potentially crossing it.
I have no idea what you're talking about regarding the tech industry being conservative on sex. I've met so many very openly LGBTQ in software. It definitely feels more common than elsewhere, especially with these corporate jobs.
In a year or two, perhaps.
I think the explanation is simpler: music and acting jobs are easy. Lots of people can sing, dance, semi-convincingly repeat lines written for them by other people, or even write scripts. It's just not a very skilled set of jobs. It doesn't take 5 years of study to become a great actor, people just luck into it all the time. Anywhere you get the intersection of a lot of money and easy jobs, you get jobs being parcelled out according to criteria like looks, knowing the right people, having the right parents, having the right party attitudes, or how easily they get into bed. After all, what other criteria are they going to use to differentiate between the masses of hopefuls applying for their chance at fame and fortune.
In contrast, tech is hard. It takes years of study to even get in on the bottom rung. Then it takes many more years of obsessive-level study and work to climb to the top. The difference in skill between a newbie and a master is enormous. If you're interviewing for a master software developer, and say "hey, you party much?" and they reply with something lame and boring like "no, I prefer to spend time with my wife and kids" then in a well functioning organisation they will still get the job. In quite a few other industries, if the interviewer is young that reply could easily cause you to be ranked lower than some other candidate who said "I'm always up for a good time!"
Tech isn’t necessarily harder or easier, there is just so much demand for tech that employees can afford to walk away from egregious behavior. Most creative industries do not suffer from extremely high demand.
In fact this isn’t even true for all tech. Academia sounds like a big hazing ritual. Games has had high profile abuse cases. And startups can be plenty exploitative.
For what definition of "get into tech" is this? Be somewhere in the proximity of a company that calls itself a tech company? Maybe? Be hired as an actual software developer after starting from scratch - this is by no means "ridiculously easy". I've helped people try to break in and they found it extremely hard.
I am as always assuming schooling. If you've done no relevant schooling it may be difficult at first, but relatively I'd say it still isn't very difficult when compared to other industries.
Oh please. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. I can't speak to acting, but it takes far more than 5 years of study to become a professional dancer or musician
(oh and FWIW I've been a professional software dev for 25 years, having lucked into it just by being a nerdy guy in the right place at the right time)
John Lennon formed the Beatles when he was 20, after flunking out of music school, failing his O-Levels and being written off by his teachers. He wrote his first top 10 hit when he was 15, just a year or so after getting his first guitar. The Beatles was formed mostly of his mates, no extensive 5+ year study of music went into any of this.
Naturally talented group, yes, but that is nowhere near the same as requiring years of study to be able to get work in the field at all.
The history of most bands and professional musicians is the same. They're all self taught and it doesn't take years before they can get work. The slogan "learn to code" was deemed a quasi-offensive thing to say to out of work Appalachian coal miners because it implied that anyone can learn to code pretty easily, and that's widely recognised across society as not being true. How many of those coal miners could already sing songs or play musical instruments? Probably quite a few.
In tech, there is high demand for even moderately proficient individuals. There are tons of free tools and helpful resources to help you study and improve. If you have access to a computer and the internet you are already in a great position to practice. Being a master is obviously tremendously hard, but it is far from necessary for a good life.
If I had to choose, I would pick tech since there is a greater probability of having a very decent standard of living, and tech workers are generally left alone when it comes to the rest of their lifestyle. They do not need to keep up a personal style and social life that directly feeds into their job prospects. That's why the last point you mentioned is actually in favor of tech being easier.
I don't like mixing it with professional life because it pushes people that can't take it away from a job were partying and getting intoxicated is "required". Even if they are good at that job.
So he swings by to pick me up and I didn’t ask where we were headed, figured just some cocktail bar or something normal. Nope, we roll up to a strip club out near North Beach. It actually was my first time in one, I was young and it never was my thing. The guy had a bottle of vodka on a shelf behind the bar that he used for clients (but honestly for whoever), and the strippers all knew him. I start talking to one of the performers about regular things - the school she was studying at, her family, etc. Then somehow we start talking about how they had a private room that was mainly for Zynga employees, with video game setups, bottle service and private dances. She made it clear that lots of tech companies came in to entertain clients, investors, and whoever else they wanted to.
Last time I let a sales guy bring me somewhere without telling me what the plan was first.
Wow, that sales guy must be thinking: last time I’m bringing the prude guy.
Okay, here's what happened. I'll never forget it because it was so weird. There was a younger guy and a much older guy. They introduce themselves, the younger one hands us business cards and pamphlets, and then the oldest one... starts telling us names of all the people he sold products to.
It was so weird because neither of them knew much about the product they were selling. Just their customers. And they tried hard to figure out if we knew any of their customers. Given our company's culture, we were all fairly new and thrown off guard by that lol. I think only one of us knew any of the people he was talking about.
We ended up not buying any of their products, because among other things, it was the worst sales pitch I've ever heard of. Like they relied on connections lol.
I am French and worked for French, German and US companies (tech) and I never witnessed what was discussed above.
Flights in corporate jets were convenient and everyone was either chatting, or reading, or working. Multiple week travels in great hotels were pleases where people got to know, had dinner and then everyone went to their room.
Parties were parties (including after-parties), some drinking, lots of laughing and that's all.
All this from "general population" parties/travels, to top level ones.
Like I said: I must have been to the wrong parties :)
They'll seldom if ever make the mistake of inviting a clean cut / square type of person.
I was signing contracts or giving GO/NOGO for others (as customers of vendors, very large contracts) and I was getting invitations to dinners, sport events or "company walk-though" in interesting places (that I never took because this the way I work). These were "normal" sales invitations, no hidden agenda.