Re: I QUIT.... Working for nothing.

[Scott Sheriff] "To paraphrase something I said to Andy, I can't believe the lengths that many will go through to help undeserving noobs that are too lazy to RTFM, and for guys like him, the best we can offer is platitudes and condescension. Aren't we supposed to be the professionals?"

Scott, I must respectfully disagree.

Noobs aren't necessarily undeserving. They are new, and sometimes they don't know what they don't know -- like how to learn from a manual, or how complex a seemingly simple task may really be.

Apprenticeships and facilities are pretty much gone. There are no safe places to screw up and learn from the process because someone else with more experience has your back. Forums like CreativeCOW are where the noobs must go to learn from the more experienced. I learned a lot from manuals and from experimentation on my own time, but I also got a lot of help from mentors, mailing lists, and forums like the COW. I can't really pay it back, but I've made the personal decision to try to pay it forward.

Further, it's the noobs who don't ask for help that are going out and doing poor work with nice gear at stupid rates. The noobs who come here, asking questions, willing to learn -- they can hear about the right way to shoot, edit, color, etc., and the right way to calculate what their rate needs to be to stay in business from folks who have done it before.

You say that we are too quick to help noobs when the answer is in the manual, and we are offering Andy only platitudes and condescension. I disagree.

Noobs generally ask easy questions. Like you say, the answers are often right in the manual. There is no manual to answer Andy's question. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was a real book, but it was satire.

I do agree with you that there are no easy answers to the hard questions, and there's no step-by-step formula anyone can follow for instant results. I also agree with you that the economics of the industry are different now than they were 10 or even 5 years ago, and that we all need to pay attention to that.

I disagree that Andy is getting platitudes. He is being advised here that if he wants to continue to succeed in a changing industry, he will need to change his thinking and his approach to his business. That's not some trite moral statement; that's the plain truth. It's not a specific action item, but given the nature of the problem, it's not like he can just trash his preferences and watch his rates bounce back.

Andy has chosen his path: partially ducking out of the industry and perpetuating the conditions that he struggled against. That works! He has essentially followed the advice here -- he's changed his approach to accommodate the changing environment.

The only real disagreement here is whether that is literally the only viable path or not. Andy claims it is. I argue there are other options.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events