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Comment by labster | Hacker News Reader

> I think it's because they're hiring writers who are too young with too little life experience.

That’s what you get when you hire writers willing to work in mini-rooms (and not go to production): inexperienced folks still sponging off their parents.

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This is an unfair comment. First, people do have to get started somewhere and early career is rarely as glamorous as late career. It’s highly possible that the only jobs in that industry for new entrants are in mini-rooms. So the choice becomes not working in one’s chosen industry at all or starting out in mini rooms — I say starting out because you’re talking about inexperienced folks. So that part of the comment isn’t really fair.

The other part of the comment that isn’t fair is the “sponging” part. Generally this implies loafing or laziness, someone taking their parents resources and being lazy with them. But we’re talking about working people who are new to their career and putting in the sweat and willing to work in mini-rooms. I don’t think using parental resources is sponging when someone is early career and trying to work hard to get ahead.

They don't pay enough so people who's moral code whould have them support themselves can't participate and instead you get people who are OK with mommy and daddy paying for everything, often well into their 30's, and it shows.

If this is someone’s “moral code” then it goes against basically all of human history’s actions with the elders helping out the children until they get on their feet, and then the children supporting their parents when the parents age. Not everyone has the privilege to align with this system, but certainly aligning instead with a contrived moral code comes across more as sour grapes than any principled stand against receiving some help from one’s elders.

Elders never provided for people in their late 20's and up, it was the other way around.

Majority of human history have kids being expected to contribute meaningfully much much sooner then we do know. And them being seriously mistreated if they don't. And them being expected to actively help elders by the time they are 30.

I read labster's comment as a criticism of the industry, rather than the writers.

If the pay is so bad that the job's only available to kids with rich parents, whence comes the breadth of experience needed to portray the world as it really is?

And by offering such bad pay, hasn't the industry brought this on themselves?

Those things are exactly the problem. You don’t actually gain experience without going to production, and you don’t have steady enough income to support yourself. They can work hard but never actually get ahead.

Imagine a world where all junior developers are contractors hired for a month or two. They work with more experienced senior devs to write a program together. But junior devs contracts end before the code is ever compiled or run, so they never learn anything about bugfixing or adjusting to client changes or performance with real world data. This is what working hard to get ahead looks like in Hollywood today.

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