> Hollywood's really different than Silicon Valley. And neither understands the other at all. People up here think being creative is some guys in their late 20s and early 30s sitting around old couches drinking beer thinking up jokes. It couldn't be further from the truth. The creative process is just as disciplined as the technical process; it requires just as much talent. And yet people in Hollywood think technology is only as deep as something you buy. There's no technical culture in Hollywood, they couldn't attract and retain good engineers to save their life, because they're second class citizens down there. Just like creative people are second class citizens in Silicon Valley.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,32207-6...
My experience as a geek, on shores very far from Silicon Valley, is that engineers are second-class citizens almost everywhere, but particularly where "creatives" are on top.
Look at any high paying industry/job, apart from FAANG tech or doctors - it's either marketing or sales at the end of the day. I'll go so far as to say that even most doctors in the US are in the sales business.
There are places where engineers' and creatives' opinions are valued and taken into account when making decisions, for instance certain quant funds or Hollywood studios. If you want to not be considered a second-class citizen, so to speak, work in a place where ideally your job isn't just coding or building content, but also convincing others of your own ideas (sales) and building consensus within the organization to back them (marketing).
I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses, and we get a fair number of calls from smart people who started with the best of intentions and then after a number of hours of struggle decided to seek aid.
I had two roommates try to make a structurally stable stool / box out of lumber. 3 hours later I returned to find both of them pissed off & a "box" without a square corner in sight.
Days later, I offered in a conversation with them how odd it is that dimensional lumber doesn't measure the named dimensions.
They looked at me in shock and said "Maybe that's why nothing was lining up."
That's "X does Y, because how hard can it be?" in a nutshell. But the broader takeaway is to test & validate your own assumptions -- they had a measuring tape the entire time.
My foreign friends all pointed at the screen and shouted! Anyone know what that means? Searching for yes no doesn't turn up appropriate results.
We have a running comparison of "LA people coming to the Bay Area to do tech because 'How hard can it be?'" and the reverse being true as well, "Bay Area people going to LA to produce television/movies because 'How hard can it be?'"
Reality is complicated, and smart people so often seem to miss that.