6 ms·

Emails, court docs show how Sony stood up to Steve Jobs’ and Pixar’s wage-fixing

201 points by mshafrir 12y ago

anateus 12y ago
The link goes to a specific comment, should strip that if possible.
chaostheory 12y ago
I often wondered why the salaries were relatively low for such a group of people. Now I know.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- chubot 12y ago
  Anyone know how much these types of employee at Pixar are paid? Since they do such specialized work, and since there is a very limited supply of such talent (i.e. it takes many years of experience you can't get in school), it would be surprising if their salaries weren't extremely high. When I worked at EA, we had technical artists come over from DreamWorks, Pixar, etc. But I don't know how much they were paid.
  - trhaynes 12y ago
    I'm not sure how good the data is, but this is what Glassdoor was designed for. http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Pixar-Salaries-E5118.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Pixar-Salaries-E5118.htm "All 307 salaries posted anonymously by Pixar employees."
samstave 12y ago
Totally not surprised: Back from ~2001-2004 when I was working on designing the Lucas Arts Letterman Digital Arts center in the Presidio, there was a certain CIO who wanted us to plan to build a studio in Asia. The reason was that "Asain animators are very cheap, and they aren't primadonna's like the overpaid ones here in the states." They saw animators as commodity COGs.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Which was not, and is not, an entirely invalid strategy.
  - samstave 12y ago
    But, please forgive me if I am wrong; While that may be true - if this strategy was at the core of fomenting an illegal wage-collusion between companies, than it doenst matter if the strategy is valid: what matters is that to achieve the most effective outcome of said strategy, CEOs of the biggest tech firms colluded to prevent worker wages from reflecting true market value for the enrichment/better-ment of their bottom line.
dickinurass 12y ago
whatever the damage is done he's probably sitting around on a beach with a dong up his butt not caring, just like that google exec with the whore and heroin.... scumbags
nikhizzle 12y ago
This is really sad, I greatly respect Ed Catmull for his work in graphics (z-buffer, catmull rom spline) and as a leader of extraordinarily consistently creative company. It just goes to show that even the best of us can succumb to greed.
- prawn 12y ago
  Not excusing the behaviour at all as it is damaging to those working down the chain, but would it feel like greed to someone in that position? Their first thought would be that they're competing with another team and want to succeed. Their job is to further the success of their crew. I don't think consideration of staff wages and so on would even enter their minds unless they really stopped to evaluate what they were doing. Could there be better business education in this regard?
incision 12y ago
I think the referenced bit on PandoDaily [1] has a bit more meat and seeing exactly what was said really drives home the point. From Ed Catmull's email to Steve Jobs: "...one of our department managers told me that she was offered a position as producer for Sony’s first CG film and is likely to accept. "The director of the movie is REDACTED [Jill Culton, ex-Lucasfilm and on Pixar-produced Monsters Inc—M.A.] who started off as head of story on Monsters but burnt out. She is good but fragile." REDACTED will talk with her [the Pixar manager that Sony was poaching]. She isn’t so great that we have to keep her, and she isn’t so bad that she would hurt Sony. Where wage-fixing is very general and hard to quantify this is quite personal and tangible. He's directly looking to derail someone's career by preventing them from seizing an opportunity he's not willing to give them. At the same time he craps on someone who even he can't deny was a founding part of what was at that point their biggest hit. It's a grown man treating people and careers the way a toddler does toys. 1: http://pando.com/2014/07/10/revealed-emails-court-docs-show-how-sony-stood-up-to-steve-jobs-and-pixars-wage-fixing-cartel/ http://pando.com/2014/07/10/revealed-emails-court-docs-show-...
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  I don't see anything exceptionally dirty about that mail. I went to the article to get the full context and still don't see it. The intimation of the article and, in fact, everything I've heard on this stuff, is that all anti-poaching agreements exist solely for the purpose of depressing employee wages, but I don't think that holds true. It may be technically illegal, but the potential moral implications of a no-poaching agreement are non-obvious and I think decent people can forge these agreements with good intentions. Reporting on staff movements isn't necessarily selfish or evil. It's important to understand what's going on with your workforce: know where they're going and why. Catmull's email seems totally fine to me -- he's reporting on a poached employee to Jobs, explaining that Sony is aggressively pursuing Pixar personnel, and that they were already taking a certain employee of moderate value particularly. Catmull reiterates that there is no extant no-poach arrangement with Sony. That's useful information for a CEO, right? I think some people are trying to make this a bigger deal than it has to be. If there's an email that shows direct evidence of conspiracy to fix wages, I'd be interested in seeing that, but I don't think the no-poach agreements need to be assumed to have been a bad-faith arrangement. EDIT: Woops, HN has decided I'm not allowed to talk anymore. Usually when this happens it lasts a pretty long time (at least several hours, I suspect something like 12-24). I'd like to continue discussing with you all, but that'll have to be it for me in this thread.
sergiotapia 12y ago
Makes you wonder how bad wage-fixing is in the Valley don't it?
- njloof 12y ago
  Pretty bad: http://pando.com/tag/techtopus/ http://pando.com/tag/techtopus/
- greenyoda 12y ago
  If you missed the countless articles on HN about the anti-poaching collusion case in which Apple, Google and other companies were implicated, this article provides a good overview: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing involved dozens more companies, over 1M employees https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449737
- jonknee 12y ago
  Not really, this case has long provided ample evidence that it was/is rampant and completely overt amongst the inner circle of CEOs in the Valley. It's actually quite centered around Steve Jobs, which means we're never going to get the high drama that something of this magnitude deserves.
- ranran876 12y ago
  It's not an entirely fair comparison b/c in animation there are only a few options, while in software there are tons of midsized companies to choose from. If Apple, Google, M$ and Amazon decided they will all cap salaries at 90K, people would just go elsewhere b/c they have that option. I wouldn't be surprised if it's happening for the $250K+ jobs though
  - joshAg 12y ago
    uhhh, you do realize this was part of the price fixing that included apple, google, and others right?
controversial 12y ago
Ed Catmull is a devout Morman. Has anyone ever seen any research into unethical business practices and Mormans? It seems rampant from my observations.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
This is so disappointing. I've always really respected Catmull. He has given many presentations and speeches with incredible value. His actions here are, I think, by definition evil. Decisions made with selfish intent with willful disregard to the negative consequences it has on others. That's my definition at least, everyone has their own. How utterly disappointing. :(
- chris_mahan 12y ago
  Agreed. I'm reading his book Creativity Inc. right now, and it's chock-full of goodness. Except that now, I question the very motives and integrity of the author, so the whole thing is completely suspect, and I might just not continue reading.
  - samstave 12y ago
    I think the thing is that while people can do good things, they can also do really bad/weird things to others when all of their hierarchy of needs is met. I he has money, power, comfort, is top-of-his-game -- then its very easy to really act as though it is a game and his actions only strengthening his position and the position of the system that supports his position (the company). So in his mind, he is just being efficient/business minded/shrewd etc... and doesn't realize he is actually fucking up the lives of others -- he is only seeing it from his own perspective; that he is an effective person making shit-tons of money. Utter lack of compassion/human perspective.
    - chris_mahan 12y ago
      Exactly right. They think it's just a game. Bastards.
    - sitkack 12y ago
      We are all our best when we are a _little_ hungry.
  - cookiecaper 12y ago
    We're too fast to discard people in this community. The linked article is heavily editorialized; it doesn't represent anything like even-handed coverage. We should give important figures in our community the benefit of the doubt, and learn how to respectfully disagree with one another. Even if something is illegal, it's not necessarily self-evidently immoral, and Catmull et al easily could've made anti-poaching pacts without the intention of suppressing employee wages. We're only getting one side of the story here: the story of the DOJ, which has its own political interests. And in typical fashion with these highly sensationalized scandals, bullying and shame are deployed to force people into one camp or the other. People are discouraged from finding a middle ground, trying to empathize with both sides, etc. They're told, "X is bad, and Y did X! How can you still act in any reasonable manner toward Y? He must be banished!" We need to be careful and we need to quit feeding our own to the wolves. We need to back off of our hair-trigger. So far, I know of no documentation that shows clear mens rea on the part of Catmull, and even if that is shown, it doesn't mean all of his contributions should be thrown out the door. That's very simple-minded, silly thinking.
dba7dba 12y ago
Let the payback begin, including interest. Many years ago (10?) I distinctively remember reading an article about the collapse of salary of animators. Their salary had shot up as much as a million a year thanks to surprise hits such as the first batch of hits from Pixar. But in a matter of a few months or a year or so, the salary had gone down drastically. The article was mentioning glut of animated movies etc, but I'm suspecting it was due to this illegal act.
- csbrooks 12y ago
  I don't feel like financial payback is sufficient. If laws were broken, people need to go to prison. Looks to me like all the evidence is right there.
confluence 12y ago
Fucking Catmull too? At this stage I'm no longer angry about the wage fixing scandal. I've moved into complete disappointment. Ed was someone I really looked up to.
paulhauggis 12y ago
He should have artificially controlled wages through legal means: start a union.
erichocean 12y ago
Does anyone know if animator wages (or programmer wages for that matter) have shot up substantially since the whole no-recruitment scandal came up? That'd give us some idea of how much wages were suppressed all those years...
dang 12y ago
Url changed from http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-emerges-as-central-figure-in-the-wage-fixing-scandal-101362.html http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-emerge..., which points to this.
vijayr 12y ago
Will anything come out of these investigations, other than fines? Fines are useless. How are the going to prevent such things in future?
rdl 12y ago
It's depressing that I'm far less surprised people are this evil than I am that high level execs are this fucking stupid about using logged, discoverable email to engage in criminal activity. There's no way being unethical (or at the very least, "an utter dick") in one area doesn't bleed over into other areas.

201 points by mshafrir 12y ago

anateus 12y ago

The link goes to a specific comment, should strip that if possible.

chaostheory 12y ago

I often wondered why the salaries were relatively low for such a group of people. Now I know.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
chubot 12y ago
Anyone know how much these types of employee at Pixar are paid? Since they do such specialized work, and since there is a very limited supply of such talent (i.e. it takes many years of experience you can't get in school), it would be surprising if their salaries weren't extremely high. When I worked at EA, we had technical artists come over from DreamWorks, Pixar, etc. But I don't know how much they were paid.
- trhaynes 12y ago
  I'm not sure how good the data is, but this is what Glassdoor was designed for. http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Pixar-Salaries-E5118.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Pixar-Salaries-E5118.htm "All 307 salaries posted anonymously by Pixar employees."

samstave 12y ago

Totally not surprised: Back from ~2001-2004 when I was working on designing the Lucas Arts Letterman Digital Arts center in the Presidio, there was a certain CIO who wanted us to plan to build a studio in Asia. The reason was that "Asain animators are very cheap, and they aren't primadonna's like the overpaid ones here in the states." They saw animators as commodity COGs.

CamperBob2 12y ago
Which was not, and is not, an entirely invalid strategy.
- samstave 12y ago
  But, please forgive me if I am wrong; While that may be true - if this strategy was at the core of fomenting an illegal wage-collusion between companies, than it doenst matter if the strategy is valid: what matters is that to achieve the most effective outcome of said strategy, CEOs of the biggest tech firms colluded to prevent worker wages from reflecting true market value for the enrichment/better-ment of their bottom line.

dickinurass 12y ago

whatever the damage is done he's probably sitting around on a beach with a dong up his butt not caring, just like that google exec with the whore and heroin.... scumbags

nikhizzle 12y ago

This is really sad, I greatly respect Ed Catmull for his work in graphics (z-buffer, catmull rom spline) and as a leader of extraordinarily consistently creative company. It just goes to show that even the best of us can succumb to greed.

prawn 12y ago
Not excusing the behaviour at all as it is damaging to those working down the chain, but would it feel like greed to someone in that position? Their first thought would be that they're competing with another team and want to succeed. Their job is to further the success of their crew. I don't think consideration of staff wages and so on would even enter their minds unless they really stopped to evaluate what they were doing. Could there be better business education in this regard?

incision 12y ago

I think the referenced bit on PandoDaily [1] has a bit more meat and seeing exactly what was said really drives home the point. From Ed Catmull's email to Steve Jobs: "...one of our department managers told me that she was offered a position as producer for Sony’s first CG film and is likely to accept. "The director of the movie is REDACTED [Jill Culton, ex-Lucasfilm and on Pixar-produced Monsters Inc—M.A.] who started off as head of story on Monsters but burnt out. She is good but fragile." REDACTED will talk with her [the Pixar manager that Sony was poaching]. She isn’t so great that we have to keep her, and she isn’t so bad that she would hurt Sony. Where wage-fixing is very general and hard to quantify this is quite personal and tangible. He's directly looking to derail someone's career by preventing them from seizing an opportunity he's not willing to give them. At the same time he craps on someone who even he can't deny was a founding part of what was at that point their biggest hit. It's a grown man treating people and careers the way a toddler does toys. 1: http://pando.com/2014/07/10/revealed-emails-court-docs-show-how-sony-stood-up-to-steve-jobs-and-pixars-wage-fixing-cartel/ http://pando.com/2014/07/10/revealed-emails-court-docs-show-...

cookiecaper 12y ago
I don't see anything exceptionally dirty about that mail. I went to the article to get the full context and still don't see it. The intimation of the article and, in fact, everything I've heard on this stuff, is that all anti-poaching agreements exist solely for the purpose of depressing employee wages, but I don't think that holds true. It may be technically illegal, but the potential moral implications of a no-poaching agreement are non-obvious and I think decent people can forge these agreements with good intentions. Reporting on staff movements isn't necessarily selfish or evil. It's important to understand what's going on with your workforce: know where they're going and why. Catmull's email seems totally fine to me -- he's reporting on a poached employee to Jobs, explaining that Sony is aggressively pursuing Pixar personnel, and that they were already taking a certain employee of moderate value particularly. Catmull reiterates that there is no extant no-poach arrangement with Sony. That's useful information for a CEO, right? I think some people are trying to make this a bigger deal than it has to be. If there's an email that shows direct evidence of conspiracy to fix wages, I'd be interested in seeing that, but I don't think the no-poach agreements need to be assumed to have been a bad-faith arrangement. EDIT: Woops, HN has decided I'm not allowed to talk anymore. Usually when this happens it lasts a pretty long time (at least several hours, I suspect something like 12-24). I'd like to continue discussing with you all, but that'll have to be it for me in this thread.

sergiotapia 12y ago

Makes you wonder how bad wage-fixing is in the Valley don't it?

njloof 12y ago
Pretty bad: http://pando.com/tag/techtopus/ http://pando.com/tag/techtopus/
greenyoda 12y ago
If you missed the countless articles on HN about the anti-poaching collusion case in which Apple, Google and other companies were implicated, this article provides a good overview: Apple and Google’s wage-fixing involved dozens more companies, over 1M employees https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449737 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449737
jonknee 12y ago
Not really, this case has long provided ample evidence that it was/is rampant and completely overt amongst the inner circle of CEOs in the Valley. It's actually quite centered around Steve Jobs, which means we're never going to get the high drama that something of this magnitude deserves.
ranran876 12y ago
It's not an entirely fair comparison b/c in animation there are only a few options, while in software there are tons of midsized companies to choose from. If Apple, Google, M$ and Amazon decided they will all cap salaries at 90K, people would just go elsewhere b/c they have that option. I wouldn't be surprised if it's happening for the $250K+ jobs though
- joshAg 12y ago
  uhhh, you do realize this was part of the price fixing that included apple, google, and others right?

controversial 12y ago

Ed Catmull is a devout Morman. Has anyone ever seen any research into unethical business practices and Mormans? It seems rampant from my observations.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

This is so disappointing. I've always really respected Catmull. He has given many presentations and speeches with incredible value. His actions here are, I think, by definition evil. Decisions made with selfish intent with willful disregard to the negative consequences it has on others. That's my definition at least, everyone has their own. How utterly disappointing. :(

chris_mahan 12y ago
Agreed. I'm reading his book Creativity Inc. right now, and it's chock-full of goodness. Except that now, I question the very motives and integrity of the author, so the whole thing is completely suspect, and I might just not continue reading.
- samstave 12y ago
  I think the thing is that while people can do good things, they can also do really bad/weird things to others when all of their hierarchy of needs is met. I he has money, power, comfort, is top-of-his-game -- then its very easy to really act as though it is a game and his actions only strengthening his position and the position of the system that supports his position (the company). So in his mind, he is just being efficient/business minded/shrewd etc... and doesn't realize he is actually fucking up the lives of others -- he is only seeing it from his own perspective; that he is an effective person making shit-tons of money. Utter lack of compassion/human perspective.
  - chris_mahan 12y ago
    Exactly right. They think it's just a game. Bastards.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    We are all our best when we are a _little_ hungry.
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  We're too fast to discard people in this community. The linked article is heavily editorialized; it doesn't represent anything like even-handed coverage. We should give important figures in our community the benefit of the doubt, and learn how to respectfully disagree with one another. Even if something is illegal, it's not necessarily self-evidently immoral, and Catmull et al easily could've made anti-poaching pacts without the intention of suppressing employee wages. We're only getting one side of the story here: the story of the DOJ, which has its own political interests. And in typical fashion with these highly sensationalized scandals, bullying and shame are deployed to force people into one camp or the other. People are discouraged from finding a middle ground, trying to empathize with both sides, etc. They're told, "X is bad, and Y did X! How can you still act in any reasonable manner toward Y? He must be banished!" We need to be careful and we need to quit feeding our own to the wolves. We need to back off of our hair-trigger. So far, I know of no documentation that shows clear mens rea on the part of Catmull, and even if that is shown, it doesn't mean all of his contributions should be thrown out the door. That's very simple-minded, silly thinking.

dba7dba 12y ago

Let the payback begin, including interest. Many years ago (10?) I distinctively remember reading an article about the collapse of salary of animators. Their salary had shot up as much as a million a year thanks to surprise hits such as the first batch of hits from Pixar. But in a matter of a few months or a year or so, the salary had gone down drastically. The article was mentioning glut of animated movies etc, but I'm suspecting it was due to this illegal act.

csbrooks 12y ago
I don't feel like financial payback is sufficient. If laws were broken, people need to go to prison. Looks to me like all the evidence is right there.

confluence 12y ago

Fucking Catmull too? At this stage I'm no longer angry about the wage fixing scandal. I've moved into complete disappointment. Ed was someone I really looked up to.

paulhauggis 12y ago

He should have artificially controlled wages through legal means: start a union.

erichocean 12y ago

Does anyone know if animator wages (or programmer wages for that matter) have shot up substantially since the whole no-recruitment scandal came up? That'd give us some idea of how much wages were suppressed all those years...

dang 12y ago

Url changed from http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-emerges-as-central-figure-in-the-wage-fixing-scandal-101362.html http://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/pixars-ed-catmull-emerge..., which points to this.

vijayr 12y ago

Will anything come out of these investigations, other than fines? Fines are useless. How are the going to prevent such things in future?

rdl 12y ago

It's depressing that I'm far less surprised people are this evil than I am that high level execs are this fucking stupid about using logged, discoverable email to engage in criminal activity. There's no way being unethical (or at the very least, "an utter dick") in one area doesn't bleed over into other areas.