So if you are asking yourself: Why haven’t I been promoted yet? This section might be for you.

I find that the main thing companies look at when promoting people is how they fit into their team.

You can think of having the Mid-Level title as “Assistant to the Lead”, “Lead in Training” , or even “TD in Training”. Because this is what the role should be. When you are an Intermediate artist you are proving that you know the basics, and you need to start specializing your skill. So if you don’t know the basics of FX or CG in general, you will really suffer in this role.

You also need to be able to communicate with other departments at this level as well. Not to mention communicate with your HOD, FX Supervisor, and Leads. If your communication isn’t up to par, then you might be overlooked for this role. Sometimes rereading your Team's messages and emails to your teammates can help you see what you are doing wrong communication wise.

Studios need artists that can follow creative direction, and stick to the theme. They need artists who are reliable, and will be able to match their client’s visions correctly. If you ever want to practice following different themes, then you might have to create some side projects for yourself. I recommend googling a few images, maybe go onto Midjourney and generate some, then start building an effect off that image.

Now this point is fairly small, but it could also play a significant factor if you are trying to get promoted. Junior artists make a lot of versions of their work. A very big Junior habit to have is to re-daily your work every time you make a change to it. This sometimes creates an overwhelming amount of slapcomps and renders for the leads and HODs to review. Not only that, but most of the work gets sent back because more changes to it need to be made. Which wastes everyone's time. If you want to get out of this process, you need to slow down your approach to things. Review your work more, ask for more feedback from people on your team, or even ask for more reference for your effect.


Is age a factor?

I had someone quite close to me, suggest that age would not be in my favor if I wanted to move up the ladder. That people would assume my age, before they saw my level of experience. I am not going to lie, I found it a bit offensive at the time. But the more I thought about it, he might have had a point. For example, if you are like me, and the crossing guard outside your work mistakes you for a teenager everyday, you might have a problem.

So I researched the heck out of this. If you would like to see the official studies, please see the links below:

Studies suggest that younger employees experience shorter promotion times than older workers. Men are promoted more often than women. However, on average women have shorter survival times to promotion than men.

What this means is that most employers want to promote younger workers. They see them as a long term investment, and that they have the ability to learn tasks quickly. Employers on average will overlook older workers, as they see them as “oldschool”, and are less flexible in their lives. Or they might cost more! So being young does help. Now none of these studies I was able to find were specific to VFX, but I think they give us a pretty good base line of what can happen.

Now you might be confused by what “survival time” is. I was a bit confused when I first read it. But what this means, is that women have a shorter window of possible promotions than men based on their age. This could be because the older a lady is, there is a greater assumption she has kids, or other activities going on in her life. There are also assumptions that women will have to take more time off than men health wise.

Also for this article, I wanted to see if agism was also applicable to POCs,or other ethnicities when it came to promotions. However, the lack of research out there was very disappointing.

So for both of these issues I gathered some more specifics. Most of these statistics are from The ILC-UK:

Promotion rates for women tend to young persons, but the opposite is true for men. This is mainly caused by women being underrepresented in senior roles. This is why career equity matters! Without career equity, we all can’t get equal pay.

Companies that hire older workers actually have a greater chance at creating a better work environment. Reference: https://ilcuk.org.uk/the-intersection-of-age-gender-and-promotion/ There isn’t enough data yet to explain this. But it is thought that older employees with high levels of experience create better levels of mentorship with younger ones.

In a 2008-2009 study, researchers found out that regardless of age, if you can maintain a self-relevant positive image, it improves your promotion chances.

In a 2017 paper, researchers also noticed a difference on how women were treated past the age of 40 in the workplace. They found out that employers often view them as less energetic, and/or lacking ambition.

There is a lot of studies out there to suggest that older employees are the most productive and have the highest levels of commitment and loyalty to their jobs. There is also no evidence to suggest they cannot be trained in new ideas and methods.

There are some methods to help combat ageism in your company. The first step is alway education, and to be open minded to everyone. The next is that companies have to create better levels of age diversity through their ranks. Companies also need to allow for better flexible working options.

These points are very applicable to VFX. There are several studios I’ve worked at, and when I look around the room, 90% of the workers in the FX department around me are under the age of 40. It’s pretty much an open secret in VFX that you don’t see a lot of people in the industry over the 5 experience mark. Burnout strikes fast, and the older you are, the less likely you are to tolerate it. We do need better inclusion tactics in VFX for our experienced VFX vets. And more flexible working options for retention as well.
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Sometimes, promotions just don’t happen. Which can be devastating.Sometimes you can try over and over again to prove yourself, and nothing will happen. Sometimes it’s not you, it's the company. For example, I have been in this scenario. It sucked.

Sometimes management in VFX studios can come between department interests, and overall studio interests. Sometimes people get forgotten about in larger studios. There are tons of small reasons why you might be overlooked for something. Being overlooked for something you know you are more than capable of doing hurts alot. It causes additional work anxiety to try harder. Sometimes, you might be overlooked for promotions multiple times. If that is the case, you might have to leave your studio.

Leaving ……It hurts even more, but sometimes leaving a company is your best way to grab more experience. If they like you, you can always come back. :)