Kiss the Ring vs.Build it Fast
When Old Hollywood Hiring Collides with New Tech SOURCING
The other day I was having coffee with a friend who works at a major studio. We were talking about the mergers and acquisitions going on between tech companies and studios, and this lead us to unpack the way studios bring in talent vs. the way tech companies do the same. He told me something that, coming from the tech world, sounds almost upside down: “Studios work with individuals, not businesses.”
Not “my company can bring a crew.” Not “I’ve got some guys.” Not “we can staff this up.”
His take was blunt: walk into a film office pitching a crew of tech bros and you’ll get shown the door. Because in that ecosystem, the studio is the one that decides who gets hired, department by department, role by role. And the more we talked, the more I realized this isn’t just a quirk of one studio.
It’s a whole philosophy. A whole economy. Maybe even a whole religion? And it is very different from the industry I came up in.
Hollywood is a craft ecosystem, not a vendor ecosystem
If you grew up in tech, your brain is wired for:
• staffing partners
• managed services
• omni channel agencies
• subcontractors on subcontractors
• “I’ve got a team ready to go tomorrow”
Film and TV, especially studio work, is built around something else:
• defined crafts
• defined roles
• defined ladders
• defined relationships
• and, yes, union rules and union culture
When your buddy tells you “they hire individuals,” what he’s really describing is a system designed to protect the labor pool as a labor pool. Partly for fairness. Partly for stability. Partly because the work is expensive, and time-sensitive. And partly because a lot of people have been getting squeezed.
Hollywood has been living through shutdowns, strikes, slowdowns, offshoring pressure, a steady wave of layoffs, and an AI bubble. When the work comes back, the instinct is not “let’s let a new vendor roll in with a fresh crew.”
The instinct is: take care of the people who already bled for this town. That’s not gangster. It’s more like a guild city. You don’t hire a “castle-building company.” You hire stonemasons.
Tech is a venture ecosystem, not a guild ecosystem
Now swing the camera to tech. Tech is built on the myth of the big, bad, brash individual:
• the Founder
• the Builder
• the Shipper
• the person who “Moves Fast”
Tech hiring reflects that. If I’m running a deployment and I need a crew in three cities by Monday, I’m not thinking, “who does the hiring hall recommend.” I’m thinking: Who can execute? Who do I trust? Who can I hire today?
Tech is fundamentally comfortable with vendors. It’s comfortable with outsourcing. It’s comfortable with staffing up and down. It’s comfortable with the idea that a business can “bring the solution.” Hollywood is much less comfortable with that… especially inside the studio walls.
The clash that’s ALREADY HERE: AI + real-time production + labor protection
Here’s where it gets interesting, because these worlds are not staying separate. Like I said this all came out of a conversation with my friend about tech companies buying and running studios, but it goes deeper. The tools that are reshaping film are (you guessed it) tech tools:
• real-time engines and virtual production
• massive scale cloud pipelines
• automation inside post/VFX
• AI-assisted workflows
And the labor side is reacting accordingly. Hollywood unions have been publicly focused on consent, compensation, and control around AI. And that isn’t some abstract fear: there are ongoing public disputes around AI-generated performers and likeness.
Meanwhile, the production ecosystem is trying to reboot throughout an inconsistent cycle, with signals that pipelines are filling again going into 2026. So you get a pressure cooker:
• Studios want speed and cost control.
• Tech tools promise speed and cost control.
• Labor wants guardrails, credit, protections, and continuity of work.
That’s the setup for the next decade, folks.
The bridge: translate “crew” into “capability”
If you’re coming from tech and you want to work with studios, the best performance is to speak the system’s language. In tech, “I’ve got a crew” means: I can reduce risk by providing a known team. In studio culture, “I’ve got a crew” can sound like: I’m trying to take hiring power away from the production hierarchy. Same intent, different translation.
So the bridge looks like this:
1) Lead with your craft, not your LLC
Pitch yourself like a department hire:
• your role
• your credits (or adjacent experience)
• your reliability (never been late? talk about it!)
• your ability to function under production constraints
2) Offer a network quietly, not as a power move
Studios still need recommendations, and they still need people who can say “I know someone great.”
But the posture matters, and “I’m bringing my guys.” is better phrased as: “If you need additional specialists, I can suggest names.”
3) Respect the classification culture
Tech loves generalists, Hollywood loves specialists. Tech celebrates full-stack, Hollywood celebrates “that guy/gal is the best in the world at that one thing.”
If you can do ten things, great. But you may need to pick the one thing you’re marketable as (Pro Tip: this can help in the tech world too, but the success varies widely).
4) Align with the shared goal: fewer surprises
This is where both worlds actually agree:
• nobody wants a blown day
• nobody wants a safety incident
• nobody wants a schedule cascade
• nobody wants a finger-pointing face-off
Film and tech both worship execution. They just ritualize it differently.
What this looks like going forward
My bet: we’re heading into a hybrid era. Studios are going to keep the guild logic going for core production labor, because it’s the best way they have to manage risk, and because the industry’s workforce has been through the wringer.
At the same time, more of production will start to resemble tech:
• real-time pipelines
• modular toolchains
• decentralized teams
• cloud-like infrastructure mindset
And that means the people who can live in both worlds will become the most valuable. We’re talking about people who understand:
• how to respect labor structures and
• how to ship modern production with modern tools
That’s the new archetype: Not the disruptor, or the rebel. And not the ring-kisser, either. The translator.
Final thought
Tech has a blind spot: it often treats labor like a variable cost.
Hollywood has its own blind spot: it can treat access like a priesthood.
The future belongs to the people who can keep the dignity of craft and the velocity of innovation in the same frame.
