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As an IT Security DevOps consultant for almost 20 years. I had a small chat with a stranger at a Starbucks and led to a longer conservation about future jobs.
I started the conversation by telling the stranger his son is just like mine. He said he's worried that he can't take care of himself in school..
Eventually I said I worry about their future, as it looks very bleak from my perspective. The stranger said "How so?"
I said, the last few years I've worked at some big companies that does heavy automation in the cloud and all they do is onboard other companies and they shed their old contracts with traditional service providers and they get to take over their clients entire ecosystem and business.
The stranger said "that sounds fascinating.. something I could write a script out of."
He claims he works for many film companies as a script writer and he doesn't see technology replacing his work ever. His work has gotten even more the last few years and he only takes a few proposals a year and he's done. He doesn't have to work a 9-5 job and vacation whenever he finds the time in between.
He said, get your kids into theater and script writing. Computers can't write stories.
Theater? Professional schools at the university level are graduating them by the 100s only to fight for the few living wage gigs available. Scriptwriting, maybe.
His work has gotten even more the last few years and he only takes a few proposals a year and he's done. He doesn't have to work a 9-5 job and vacation whenever he finds the time in between.
He said, get your kids into theater and script writing. Computers can't write stories.
Then the barista handed the guy a script he's been trying to market for years.
It's cool that you happened to come across someone who's been so successful at it. As a writer myself I agree that it's a VERY valuable skill that is needed in all fields, but it's not valued in all fields and it's traditionally not well paid.
I would never encourage my kids to set their entire future on "theater and script writing." If they want to "get into it" on the side, great.
So, to get a handle on the real size of the competition, let’s divide all scripts into the following five categories:
1. Really good to great
2. Good
3. Decent
4. Bad
5. Truly terrible
What percentage of scripts submitted to the industry fall into each of these categories? This is a question I’m fairly confident I know the answer to, since I’ve asked dozens of agents, managers and producers, and always get the same responses.
One percent (or less than one percent) of all scripts fall into the really good-to-great category.
About four percent fall into the good category.
And 95 percent or so are in the decent-to-truly terrible categories.
Given these estimates, there are approximately 2,000 writers (one percent of 200,000) able to write really good-to-great scripts, and another 8,000 writers (four percent of 200,000) who put out good scripts.
And since agents and managers will tell you that, in order to have any real shot at a career, you need to be writing scripts that are at least in the good category, we can safely ignore the 190,000 writers cranking out decent-to-truly terrible scripts.
Therefore, the real competition is the approximately 10,000 writers who are able to consistently write good-to-great scripts. How many of these writers are working?
The WGA reported that 4,760 of their members earned money last year writing for TV or feature films. This number obviously doesn’t include anyone paid under the table for non-union gigs, but let’s ignore them and stick to the WGA numbers.
As a writer myself I agree that it's a VERY valuable skill that is needed in all fields, but it's not valued in all fields and it's traditionally not well paid.
As a writer, myself, I can certainly second that.
Even in fields where they say that skill is valued, they still don't necessarily want to pay you well for it.
Sort of like job ads (in whatever field) that say they want a certain level of experience -- more than the job might actually need -- but they still want to pay an entry level wage.
As an IT Security DevOps consultant for almost 20 years. I had a small chat with a stranger at a Starbucks and led to a longer conservation about future jobs.
I started the conversation by telling the stranger his son is just like mine. He said he's worried that he can't take care of himself in school..
Eventually I said I worry about their future, as it looks very bleak from my perspective. The stranger said "How so?"
I said, the last few years I've worked at some big companies that does heavy automation in the cloud and all they do is onboard other companies and they shed their old contracts with traditional service providers and they get to take over their clients entire ecosystem and business.
The stranger said "that sounds fascinating.. something I could write a script out of."
He claims he works for many film companies as a script writer and he doesn't see technology replacing his work ever. His work has gotten even more the last few years and he only takes a few proposals a year and he's done. He doesn't have to work a 9-5 job and vacation whenever he finds the time in between.
He said, get your kids into theater and script writing. Computers can't write stories.
Jobs weren't eliminated, jobs were shifted from your traditional service provider to cloud. There are engineers building cloud platform, help desk for cloud and management for cloud. IaaS has been on the radar for a long time, I would think that anyone in traditional infrastructure who is worth their salt started transitioning to cloud a long time ago. I know someone who's studying to leave the network admin role because he's been seeing the trend that you are talking about.
Entertainment quality has decreased and become more about quantity than quality.
I wish they valued screenwriters more but have you seen the latest shows? Only 1 out of 20 is even worth going beyond episode 1.
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