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I don't think OP was in the entertainment industry. He has worked with several large companies at a very senior level and has never experienced anything like what is alleged to occur in the entertainment industry.

Yes, thanks for clarifying - I should have highlighted that I worked in tech. This is why I was wondering how life is different between companies (and even organizations within a company).

I worked in tech companies, this is why I was mentioning how this is different between companies and organizations.

Oh sorry I thought you were talking about roles on the entertainment industry. I also work in tech and worked in tech most of my life and even talking about this stuff in certain circles can get you fired. Not so much about the drugs thing, but for for reason the tech industry is very conservative regarding sex.

I am French so the sex part is, well, French :)

> but for for reason the tech industry is very conservative regarding sex.

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.

The discomfort is considered to be part of the broad topic of ‘consent’. In a similar manner to people consenting to actual sexual actions, you should get consent about talking about sex, because people’s boundaries are all over the place, and you’re almost certainly not going to get informed, free consent in a workplace with power dynamics.

Right, in a way that's what I'm talking about. I still wanted to come up with a separate term for the "feelings", vs. the concept of consent which is designed to prevent people inflicting these feelings on parties against their will. I still don't like my own choice of wording... feels kinda weak, or an understatement

I believe the reason you don't see this kind of parties in tech is because the industry is filled with people who are introverts, not specially groomed/attractive and/or not very good reading social cues.

These parties are absolutely in tech...

Go on... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

https://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-uncovered-brotopia-l...

If we already had a GPT-deepfake interface I would now ask it to generate a costumed Elon Musk confusedly 'John Travolta'ing (the Pulp Fiction meme) in the middle of a SciFi sex party.

In a year or two, perhaps.

No, I don't think so. That's a 1980s era explanation. There are people who aren't especially attractive in all industries. Even in Hollywood, look at what Weinstein got up to, and he isn't exactly Adonis reborn.

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!"

I'm not sure where to start with this, so I'll start with the broad strokes: You've underestimated the difficulty of creative work (or what is traditionally seen as creative) and overestimated the difficulty of "tech" (which I would argue is also a creative field). If anything, tech is ridiculously easy to get into even if you are patently and demonstrably unskilled. The same is simply not true for other creative work (at least not if it has to pay the bills).

Also, young naive tech people are consistently and often financially exploited by startups in the valley all of the time. It’s just a different kind of exploitation.

I would say the grandparent even has the correlation backwards.

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.

tech is ridiculously easy to get into even if you are patently and demonstrably unskilled

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.

> after starting from scratch

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.

> 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.

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)

Uh huh, really.

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.

Music, acting, and dancing are much, much more difficult than you portray them to be. It's just that the people who are good at it make it look easy. The competition is also extremely fierce and ruthless. There is little demand for most artists.

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 worked in film visual effects for nearly a decade, and my wife was a AAA producer (since left the industry.) Perhaps because we were a couple, I never encountered any sex orgies, but the drugs, oh yeah, the drugs were very prevalent.

The appeal of drugs and orgies is perfectly understandable. What I don't get is the appeal of mixing those with work and hierarchical relationships.

Well it will make it easier to get promoted if you are good looking and/or mentally and physically fit enough to do a shit ton of drugs every day so you are "friends" with everyone. So yeah a lot of people don't want it to go away.

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.

Yikes, my answer is yes to all of these, and, indeed, I witnessed and partook in several of said orgies. They certainly do happen, for sure.