Based on what we've seen, Frankie and Andi are equally as smart as each other, both talented engineers who work their asses off to make a living.
But whenever Frankie talks about wanting to be a Park Planet imagineer engineer, Andi gets that pained look on her face. On the surface, it's likely because she doesn't want Frankie's dream to be crushed to death by the gears of late-stage amuse-metainment, but I think it's also because she knows Frankie wouldn't be accepted by "crownies."
Frankie's casual explanation of the problem helps Andi fix the animatronic and she (Frankie) wasn't even trying.
Frankie is very clearly neurodivergent, which is unsurprising considering the creative team behind KoG. To me, it seems like AuDHD and schizophrenia. Despite being extremely intelligent, she works labor jobs that are more about physical strength (you won't catch me calling that unskilled labor lol). We don't know the nature or background of her relationship with Sparky, but it feels very transactionally parental. Instead of firing her for whatever she did to piss him off, he takes her teeth out. See? Anyone else would've dumped your ass in the gutter for that. But I'm doing you a favor.
So Frankie puts up with the abuse. She shows up to her factory job and does more than what she's paid to do by fixing machinery for other employees. Because her coworkers know that she's good with machines. Everyone knows Frankie is good with machines.
So why does Andi get to be an engineer while Frankie is stuck on the surface?
Andi doesn't seem even a little surprised that Frankie is unresponsively staring at a screen of static. Andi doesn't act like anything is unusual until Frankie starts talking to herself about Sparky dismembering a woman.
Andi and Frankie grew up together. They've always had each other's backs. Andi knows Frankie better than anyone else. Andi knows that Frankie, despite her skills and intelligence and desire to be an engineer, would be destroyed by working in the tower. Not just because her idealized view of Guinevere would be crushed by cruel reality, but because those people would never see her as an equal. They probably never saw Andi as an equal, but Frankie with her "daydreams" and forgetfulness and her-ness would be infantilized and ridiculed and Andi couldn't bear to see that happen. She also can't bear to tell Frankie that. She wants to protect Frankie from that cruelty.
Maybe I'm just projecting as a mentally ill autistic person who, despite having the skills and intelligence to do so, can't work a job or go to school full-time, but yeah. I think there's more to Andi's hesitation around the idea of Frankie being an engineer than the fact that Park Planet is a shitty dream-crushing corporation.
