Santiago Jiménez Marroquín

I get why people are frustrated. It’s brutal out there, especially for juniors. But I don’t think the industry is “in shambles.” I think it’s contracting, consolidating, and correcting after years of over-expansion. That’s not new. This industry has always moved in cycles. Sixteen years ago (when I started) people were also trying to break in during a rough market, post-recession, with fewer seats and a lot of uncertainty. Today has its own version: layoffs, studio closures, streaming contraction, tech correction, and companies moving back toward leaner models. But saying it’s all luck removes too much agency from the people who have survived and kept building careers through every cycle. Luck matters. Timing matters. Connections matter. But so do craft, consistency, humility, feedback, communication, ego management, and learning how to work with a team. The “how many hours did you put in?” discourse is also too simple. Some people learn fast. Some people need more reps. I was one of those people. I needed hundreds and hundreds of hours to build the hard skills. But the soft skills mattered just as much: how you take notes, how you speak to people, how you handle critique, how you show up when things are hard. I just don’t think all this negative mindsets helps juniors. And fighting vets doesn’t help either. The industry is small. We need more honesty, less ego, and more people pulling each other forward. It’s bleak right now, yes. But bleak isn’t forever. The tide goes out, the tide comes back in. The ones who stay kind, keep learning, and keep building usually find their way back to shore.