Less than 15% of AV directors remain active after 10 years. The rest exit to mainstream production, real estate, or completely unrelated fields, often carrying a unique form of professional PTSD masked as "stories from the road."

The ability to answer "What do you do for a living?" at a parent-teacher conference or a bank loan meeting without flinching—or, more commonly, the preparation of a convincing fake job title (e.g., "media logistics consultant").