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This is why I entered tech first. I love acting and want to go drama school but after graduating a top uni with a Compsci degree it made far more sense to spend

by ck425 7y ago

This is why I entered tech first. I love acting and want to go drama school but after graduating a top uni with a Compsci degree it made far more sense to spend ~10 years working as an engineer first. I can save a ton, get into a good financial position with investments and learn the skills to get well paid flexible work (tech & agile/operations consulting). After that I go to drama school in my mid/late 30s, when it's easier to get in and to get gigs, due to less competition my age (most folk have either given up or gone onto bigger roles by that age). It'll still be tough but if you don't need to worry so much about money and you have other skills to base self esteem on it'll be so much easier.

pm90 7y ago
Your acting skills might make you stand out as a very effective communicator in the world of Tech. It sounds like a good strategy, although I have to ask if being unemployed, struggling with what comes of that and having to interact with a whole bunch of people (while employed in part time gigs like restaurant etc.) is part of what makes actors great. They hone their skills through exposure to the wide swathes of humanity that you may not see while being gainfully employed in a nice software engineering job.
- icxa 7y ago
  anecdotal evidence here, but our "comms specialist" (the person we bring in to help struggling tech teams communicate better) was a former improv actor and comedian, and she's great. She brings color to everything, makes the mundane feel less so and generally brings truth to laughter is the best therapy.
  - ck425 7y ago
    There's definitely a value to having those skills within tech. The flip side is that while I spend many hours pursuing acting outside of work, many of my peers instead work long hours or do loads of side projects. Early career theirs is a far more effective strategy for (tech) career growth. Longer term it might work out better me.
- ck425 7y ago
  They do actually. It's part of why I also specialize in agile/operations stuff. You have a point. Tbh I might consider doing some of that work just for the experience, but I've also done a few odd jobs in the past that involve that sort of thing. Also doing amateur theatre exposes you to a ton of random folk outside of the tech bubble.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
lilsoso 7y ago
Sam Altman advises against this. He said something along the lines of, the people who hedge their careers end up with nothing. For example, if someone wants to start a rocketship company and they tell themselves they'll spend 15 years in investment banking to accumulate some capital first -- they end up doing neither very well. Maybe they work as an investment banker, but their heart and focus isn't in it, so the perform poorly. They don't end up starting a rocketship company. The people who do that do it from the beginning: they find a way. Sorry I forget the source and this is written from memory. I remember him saying this in an interview I watched on Youtube.
- ck425 7y ago
  I think that's good advice if you're driven and want to get to the very top. I'm personally quite happy to have a moderately successful tech career then a moderately successful acting career, while having a moderately enjoyable and somewhat chilled life. Sam Altman is a super driven guy, I'm not so much.
mattzito 7y ago
Obviously your mileage may vary, but I think you’ve got the curve backwards here. There are far far fewer late-30s roles for men, as on screen most look too old to be “young” and not old enough to read as “dad” or “distinguished”. If you look very very young or older you may be able to jump the gap some - I like to use nick offerman as a random cherrypicked example, he was 38 when he starred in Parks and Rec, but reads as mid-40s or older on screen. Then on top of that, many of the people who have stopped acting by their mid-30s are either the people who were not very good or couldn’t handle the ambiguity/uncertainty. The population of actors who remain and are still working in their mid-30s, by and large, are very good and very committed. Not only are they very good, they know many/most of the other good actors who go up for the same roles as them. They have an established network, they have a reputation, they have an inside track on a lot of opportunities. Random anecdote 1: a mid-30s friend of mine could guess what 5 or 10 people would be auditioning with him for basically any commercial in NYC after reading the script. He just knew who the casting directors would be calling alongside him, and the other actors knew too. It’s a small world once you make it to a certain level. I think an imperfect analogy would be that it’s like graduating from a software boot camp and trying to go right for engineering leadership jobs at Facebook or Google, or maybe a better example is graduating law school and immediately trying to oversee an major tech acquisition. For sure, there are some that probably could, but even if they have the technical skills, there’s the network, the relationships, the hands on experience that makes it very unlikely. Fun anecdote 2: acquaintance of mine, successful character actor (like “hey I recognize that guy from something” successful not “John c Reilly” successful), worked steadily from his mid-20s through his mid-30s and then his acting income dropped by 90%-ish over the next 8-10 years. He got a little older, greyer, more distinguished, stayed in great shape, and when he hit 45-ish the work started flowing again. He’s not making the same money as he did, but it’s back to a regular stream of income. I think if your goal is to go to acting school and semi retire, working in tech part-time to make money, and try moonlighting casually in community theater and the like - that’s totally doable. I think if you’re going to try to join the varsity teams, it’s going to be really tough.
- ck425 7y ago
  Hmm interesting. I've ran my plan past many acting friends and they thought it was solid. That said I'm perfectly happy to semi-retire and do lots of semi-professional threatre. I'm very much driven by having fun rather than being super successful.

by ck425 7y ago

pm90 7y ago

Your acting skills might make you stand out as a very effective communicator in the world of Tech. It sounds like a good strategy, although I have to ask if being unemployed, struggling with what comes of that and having to interact with a whole bunch of people (while employed in part time gigs like restaurant etc.) is part of what makes actors great. They hone their skills through exposure to the wide swathes of humanity that you may not see while being gainfully employed in a nice software engineering job.

icxa 7y ago
anecdotal evidence here, but our "comms specialist" (the person we bring in to help struggling tech teams communicate better) was a former improv actor and comedian, and she's great. She brings color to everything, makes the mundane feel less so and generally brings truth to laughter is the best therapy.
- ck425 7y ago
  There's definitely a value to having those skills within tech. The flip side is that while I spend many hours pursuing acting outside of work, many of my peers instead work long hours or do loads of side projects. Early career theirs is a far more effective strategy for (tech) career growth. Longer term it might work out better me.
ck425 7y ago
They do actually. It's part of why I also specialize in agile/operations stuff. You have a point. Tbh I might consider doing some of that work just for the experience, but I've also done a few odd jobs in the past that involve that sort of thing. Also doing amateur theatre exposes you to a ton of random folk outside of the tech bubble.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

lilsoso 7y ago

Sam Altman advises against this. He said something along the lines of, the people who hedge their careers end up with nothing. For example, if someone wants to start a rocketship company and they tell themselves they'll spend 15 years in investment banking to accumulate some capital first -- they end up doing neither very well. Maybe they work as an investment banker, but their heart and focus isn't in it, so the perform poorly. They don't end up starting a rocketship company. The people who do that do it from the beginning: they find a way. Sorry I forget the source and this is written from memory. I remember him saying this in an interview I watched on Youtube.

ck425 7y ago
I think that's good advice if you're driven and want to get to the very top. I'm personally quite happy to have a moderately successful tech career then a moderately successful acting career, while having a moderately enjoyable and somewhat chilled life. Sam Altman is a super driven guy, I'm not so much.

mattzito 7y ago

Obviously your mileage may vary, but I think you’ve got the curve backwards here. There are far far fewer late-30s roles for men, as on screen most look too old to be “young” and not old enough to read as “dad” or “distinguished”. If you look very very young or older you may be able to jump the gap some - I like to use nick offerman as a random cherrypicked example, he was 38 when he starred in Parks and Rec, but reads as mid-40s or older on screen. Then on top of that, many of the people who have stopped acting by their mid-30s are either the people who were not very good or couldn’t handle the ambiguity/uncertainty. The population of actors who remain and are still working in their mid-30s, by and large, are very good and very committed. Not only are they very good, they know many/most of the other good actors who go up for the same roles as them. They have an established network, they have a reputation, they have an inside track on a lot of opportunities. Random anecdote 1: a mid-30s friend of mine could guess what 5 or 10 people would be auditioning with him for basically any commercial in NYC after reading the script. He just knew who the casting directors would be calling alongside him, and the other actors knew too. It’s a small world once you make it to a certain level. I think an imperfect analogy would be that it’s like graduating from a software boot camp and trying to go right for engineering leadership jobs at Facebook or Google, or maybe a better example is graduating law school and immediately trying to oversee an major tech acquisition. For sure, there are some that probably could, but even if they have the technical skills, there’s the network, the relationships, the hands on experience that makes it very unlikely. Fun anecdote 2: acquaintance of mine, successful character actor (like “hey I recognize that guy from something” successful not “John c Reilly” successful), worked steadily from his mid-20s through his mid-30s and then his acting income dropped by 90%-ish over the next 8-10 years. He got a little older, greyer, more distinguished, stayed in great shape, and when he hit 45-ish the work started flowing again. He’s not making the same money as he did, but it’s back to a regular stream of income. I think if your goal is to go to acting school and semi retire, working in tech part-time to make money, and try moonlighting casually in community theater and the like - that’s totally doable. I think if you’re going to try to join the varsity teams, it’s going to be really tough.

ck425 7y ago
Hmm interesting. I've ran my plan past many acting friends and they thought it was solid. That said I'm perfectly happy to semi-retire and do lots of semi-professional threatre. I'm very much driven by having fun rather than being super successful.