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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 Stev

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.
- corysama 12y ago
  Quick reminder to everyone: Please don't downvote comments that contribute to the conversation just because you disagree with them. You might think that cookiecaper is an insensitive clod. But, he's not posting fluff, off-topic or otherwise distracting material.
  - learc83 12y ago
    >Please don't downvote comments that contribute to the conversation just because you disagree with them. That's a rule on Reddit, but to my knowledge it's never been a rule here. Here's pg's own words on the subject. >I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
    - tzs 12y ago
      That would make sense if all down voting did was show the net score, or the up/down breakdown. However, when an article has a more down votes than up votes, it is also made harder to read, and the bigger the difference, the harder to read it becomes. That makes pg's remark make little sense, unless HN is supposed to be a place where disagreeing with the majority is discouraged, which is not very hackerish. Some clarification from pg would be helpful here.
      - cookiecaper 12y ago
        It also prevents someone who makes controversial posts from being able to post very much. Downvote as a disagree button only works if there are no consequences to being downvoted. Otherwise, it just reinforces an echo chamber. Substantive, reasoned posts that contain unpopular opinions should be more visible than the circlejerk that always percolates to the top in these situations.
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    If nothing else, cookiecaper represents the kind of thinking that leads to these situations in the first place. Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it's amoral. Yes, it betrays profound ignorance of the law and ethics, and yes, it's shot through with the kind of "logic" so poor it's actually repulsive. But that's actually the point. In the same way that smoke indicates fire, a stink like this indicates a giant pile of shit. And that's exactly what's just hit the fan. If you (a) agree with cookiecaper and (b) have anything to do with HR, now would be a great time to consider switching careers. You simply don't have the moral judgement your job requires. Better get out now before you find yourself in the middle of a similar mess.
vanwesson 12y ago
Steve Jobs once said in reference to Ed Catmull (and another Pixar co-founder): "They're babes in the woods. I think I can help turn Alvy and Ed into businessmen."[1] I guess training Mr. Catmull to do things like what we see in the above email was part of it... 1: http://izquotes.com/quote/240878 http://izquotes.com/quote/240878
egypturnash 12y ago
I'm an ex-animator. Reading the bit you excerpted didn't sound too bad at first - talking frankly about how someone burnt out is a pretty realistic view. Animation burns a lot of people out. The "she isn't so bad that she'd hurt Sony" starts to sound bad. But it really gets bad after the part you excerpted: We don’t have a no raid arrangement with Sony. We have set up one with ILM [Lucasfilm] and Dreamworks which has worked quite well. I probably should go down and meet with Sandy and Penney and Sony to reach some agreement. Our people are become [sic] really desirable and we need to nip this in the bud. At which point I was like, dude, fuck you Ed.
hyp0 12y ago
That specific quote sounds like a reasonable and fair assessment of a person with potential. I would expect the discussion to move to how could they keep her (more money, better position, or just extol the long-term benefits of staying), whether she was worth the cost of keeping her, the long term consequences on Sony and other employees etc. But unfortunately, he instead suggests a "no raid agreement" with Sony and that: Our people are becoming really desireable and we need to nip this in the bud. EDIT reading the whole thing, I see one aspect of Catmull's concern that seems reasonable. Entrants want to grow fast, and therefore offer unrealistically and unsustainably high wages - it's a bubble. It's disruptive to keep losing the people that you've trained - and then, the competitor goes out of business anyway. This hurts the industry as a whole, the employees and employers. Successful industry problems. But it's up to employees what they think is in their best interest - not for employers to decide.
DanBC 12y ago
"Good but fragile" - under English law this communication risks falling foul of disability discrimination and also health and safety law (protecting employees from harm, which includes stress). I have no idea how it works in the US.
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  It really depends on what was meant by "fragile". I read it as meaning that she was thin-skinned or temperamental (and therefore "fragile", i.e., she must be handled with unusual care in discussions or she'll react badly), not that she was unhealthy.

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.

corysama 12y ago
Quick reminder to everyone: Please don't downvote comments that contribute to the conversation just because you disagree with them. You might think that cookiecaper is an insensitive clod. But, he's not posting fluff, off-topic or otherwise distracting material.
- learc83 12y ago
  >Please don't downvote comments that contribute to the conversation just because you disagree with them. That's a rule on Reddit, but to my knowledge it's never been a rule here. Here's pg's own words on the subject. >I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
  - tzs 12y ago
    That would make sense if all down voting did was show the net score, or the up/down breakdown. However, when an article has a more down votes than up votes, it is also made harder to read, and the bigger the difference, the harder to read it becomes. That makes pg's remark make little sense, unless HN is supposed to be a place where disagreeing with the majority is discouraged, which is not very hackerish. Some clarification from pg would be helpful here.
    - cookiecaper 12y ago
      It also prevents someone who makes controversial posts from being able to post very much. Downvote as a disagree button only works if there are no consequences to being downvoted. Otherwise, it just reinforces an echo chamber. Substantive, reasoned posts that contain unpopular opinions should be more visible than the circlejerk that always percolates to the top in these situations.
- alexqgb 12y ago
  If nothing else, cookiecaper represents the kind of thinking that leads to these situations in the first place. Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it's amoral. Yes, it betrays profound ignorance of the law and ethics, and yes, it's shot through with the kind of "logic" so poor it's actually repulsive. But that's actually the point. In the same way that smoke indicates fire, a stink like this indicates a giant pile of shit. And that's exactly what's just hit the fan. If you (a) agree with cookiecaper and (b) have anything to do with HR, now would be a great time to consider switching careers. You simply don't have the moral judgement your job requires. Better get out now before you find yourself in the middle of a similar mess.

vanwesson 12y ago

Steve Jobs once said in reference to Ed Catmull (and another Pixar co-founder): "They're babes in the woods. I think I can help turn Alvy and Ed into businessmen."[1] I guess training Mr. Catmull to do things like what we see in the above email was part of it... 1: http://izquotes.com/quote/240878 http://izquotes.com/quote/240878

egypturnash 12y ago

I'm an ex-animator. Reading the bit you excerpted didn't sound too bad at first - talking frankly about how someone burnt out is a pretty realistic view. Animation burns a lot of people out. The "she isn't so bad that she'd hurt Sony" starts to sound bad. But it really gets bad after the part you excerpted: We don’t have a no raid arrangement with Sony. We have set up one with ILM [Lucasfilm] and Dreamworks which has worked quite well. I probably should go down and meet with Sandy and Penney and Sony to reach some agreement. Our people are become [sic] really desirable and we need to nip this in the bud. At which point I was like, dude, fuck you Ed.

hyp0 12y ago

That specific quote sounds like a reasonable and fair assessment of a person with potential. I would expect the discussion to move to how could they keep her (more money, better position, or just extol the long-term benefits of staying), whether she was worth the cost of keeping her, the long term consequences on Sony and other employees etc. But unfortunately, he instead suggests a "no raid agreement" with Sony and that: Our people are becoming really desireable and we need to nip this in the bud. EDIT reading the whole thing, I see one aspect of Catmull's concern that seems reasonable. Entrants want to grow fast, and therefore offer unrealistically and unsustainably high wages - it's a bubble. It's disruptive to keep losing the people that you've trained - and then, the competitor goes out of business anyway. This hurts the industry as a whole, the employees and employers. Successful industry problems. But it's up to employees what they think is in their best interest - not for employers to decide.

DanBC 12y ago

"Good but fragile" - under English law this communication risks falling foul of disability discrimination and also health and safety law (protecting employees from harm, which includes stress). I have no idea how it works in the US.

cookiecaper 12y ago
It really depends on what was meant by "fragile". I read it as meaning that she was thin-skinned or temperamental (and therefore "fragile", i.e., she must be handled with unusual care in discussions or she'll react badly), not that she was unhealthy.