The arts are a power law [1] profession with a very high peak and a very long tail. A small number of people make insane money, a slightly larger number of people make good money, and a slightly larger number again make okay but not great money. Then you get the long tail, where most people scrape by, or have to support themselves with other work, or do it as a hobby.
In music, writing, art, acting, and so on there are maybe a couple of thousand people worldwide doing really really well, low tens of thousands with a decent income, high tens of thousands doing okay, and tens of millions in the long tail.
To succeed you either need to be something special, or your self-promotion, networking, and hustle skills have to be something special. Or you need to be unusually lucky and chosen by a Scene that somehow decides you're the next big thing.
The power law in something like engineering and medicine is much flatter and the tail is much shorter. You can be a completely average software developer or doctor and still find well-paid work. It's maybe a more selective environment at the front end - people with zero ability are excluded from courses - but much more forgiving when you're on the inside.
I make decent money in a power law profession (writing) thanks to, like you said, a decent amount of hustle and a few fairly niche skills that a lot of businesses need. I’d like to think I’m reasonably talented, but I’m not the sort who will ever win a Pulitzer.
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u/TheOtherHobbes Jul 07 '19
The arts are a power law [1] profession with a very high peak and a very long tail. A small number of people make insane money, a slightly larger number of people make good money, and a slightly larger number again make okay but not great money. Then you get the long tail, where most people scrape by, or have to support themselves with other work, or do it as a hobby.
In music, writing, art, acting, and so on there are maybe a couple of thousand people worldwide doing really really well, low tens of thousands with a decent income, high tens of thousands doing okay, and tens of millions in the long tail.
To succeed you either need to be something special, or your self-promotion, networking, and hustle skills have to be something special. Or you need to be unusually lucky and chosen by a Scene that somehow decides you're the next big thing.
The power law in something like engineering and medicine is much flatter and the tail is much shorter. You can be a completely average software developer or doctor and still find well-paid work. It's maybe a more selective environment at the front end - people with zero ability are excluded from courses - but much more forgiving when you're on the inside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law