undefined | Better HN

story

0 pointscookiecaper11y ago0 comments

I agree that a likely effect was artificial depression of employee salaries, but I don't think we've seen it adequately demonstrated that that was the primary intended effect and not just an unintentional or tertiary side effect of the agreement. Frequent poaching is often considered unsportsmanlike competition by business people; I know several of the companies I've been affiliated with have felt that way. It's possible that Pixar et al had the best intentions when establishing this protocol.

It doesn't really leave the employee without somewhere to go, it just makes it harder for them to find employment at a direct competitor while still employed. I would bet that most people who would've been poached would've been hired by a competitor within hours of resigning at their current employer.

That doesn't make it OK, and like I said, it's very possible all of this was illegal from the get-go. I'm just saying there's no need to jump to the conclusion that malice and conspiracy were the primary motives behind these compacts, and there's no need to drag someone's name through the mud when definitive evidence doesn't exist.

0 comments

potatolicious11y ago

> " but I don't think we've seen it adequately demonstrated that that was the primary intended effect and not just an unintentional or tertiary side effect of the agreement"

Do we need to demonstrate intention? You brought up mens rea elsewhere in the thread but it hardly seems relevant at the end of the day. Someone with a clear intent to screw his employees certainly is more despicable and villainesque, but the practical impact on the employees is the same even if he did so unintentionally.

And we can frown upon it all the same, because it's not as if he did something innocent with unforeseen side effect - the agreement was illegal, and the fact that it was secret suggests everyone involved knew this.

So yeah, I'm maybe willing to believe that Ed Catmull didn't go out there with the explicit intent of screwing his employees. He may have engaged in this agreement in protection of his company, or of his work, but ultimately he (and every other SV CEO involved) kept it hush-hush because they knew it was illegal and immoral, and that the wider world would cry foul at what they were doing.

Mens rea would make the morality of this more open and shut, but I do not believe it is critical to our ability to judge the impact and legacy of these actions.

> "Frequent poaching is often considered unsportsmanlike competition by business people; I know several of the companies I've been affiliated with have felt that way."

But yet this isn't a game. These are people, not basketballs. It's careers, not the soccer field. It's families, children, vacations, dreams, plans, not points in to be scored against your opponent.

You're being unfairly downvoted IMO and you've brought up some good points, but what you're seeing (some have stated this explicitly) is backlash against business folk who are so concerned about the high-level game being played that they've forgotten that the pieces on the board are people.

The mistake here is the belief that this is somehow unique to Ed Catmull, Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, et al. The demonization of him I'm seeing in this thread is disappointing because a large percentage of the people doing the pitchfork-waving would have done the exact same thing in his position. All sufficiently complex systems (the movie industry certainly one of them) evolve complex rules and strategies, and it's remarkably easy to get lost in them and forget that these systems are built on top of people.

It's tempting to think of people who do bad things as "evil men", because it gives us security: "I'd never do something like that, phew". In reality though there are few evil men, but many men who do evil things. The notion that some people are capable of evil while others are not is hubris, and is a great way to end up on the wrong side of the morality scale without even knowing it. I personally doubt Ed Catmull ever got out of bed in the morning and decided he was going to screw a bunch of animators and inhibit their careers, but yet it happened, and I'd encourage all the pitchfork-wavers in this thread to consider that they themselves can just as easily end up in that position, especially if they approach life with the assumption that they're one of the Good Guys.

cookiecaperOP11y ago

>And we can frown upon it all the same, because it's not as if he did something innocent with unforeseen side effect - the agreement was illegal, and the fact that it was secret suggests everyone involved knew this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most corporate agreements like this secret by default? It's an internal business mechanic and can be considered proprietary based on that. The press releases only come out when a company thinks something is of low enough tactical value that it can be revealed without harming the company and high enough PR value that it can be used to woo investors or consumers.

I don't think there's any inference that the pacts were considered immoral by the signatories in the fact that they weren't publicly declared. There were obviously many people between all of the participant companies that knew about these pacts, and it doesn't sound like it was considered super-duper-top-secret and could only be mentioned behind the closed doors of the CEO's office.

As I stated elsewhere, we should also consider the DOJ's angle on this. Prosecutors want to make a name for themselves and it's in their interest to portray all of their defendants as scoundrels. They want to blow open a big public scandal. They want to leave a legacy before the next president comes in and restocks the department with his own people. The prosecutor's job is practically to convince everyone that the defendants are evil, but in cases like this, it's rarely true. We need to acknowledge these perverse incentives as we read about this case, too.

>what you're seeing (some have stated this explicitly) is backlash against business folk who are so concerned about the high-level game being played that they've forgotten that the pieces on the board are people.

I don't think that's a fair characterization either. An executive's concern for everyone on his staff causes him to act in the best interest of the company as a whole, and not just the best interest of a specific individual or a specific type of employee that may be in greater demand. If bidding wars and poaching becomes disruptive, it's natural to seek a remedy. Catmull states several times in these articles that poaching is "bad for everyone" and seems sincere in that belief. He believes it's bad for executives, employees, competing studios, etc., and one can see the logic in that belief. He tried to stop a practice that he viewed as parasitic. In Catmull's view, even if an animator got poached with a big raise, this practice is still a net negative, presumably because it destabilizes the industry and potentially decreases the longevity of that career.

Maybe he was wrong and maybe he broke the law. But it doesn't mean that he forgot that his employees were real people.

I appreciate the rest of your post, which acknowledges that Catmull is probably not irredeemably evil.

mullingitover11y ago

> It doesn't really leave the employee without somewhere to go, it just makes it harder for them to find employment at a direct competitor while still employed.

They stopped being direct competitors the minute they agreed to collude. The term you're looking for is 'fellow cartel member.'

chrismcb11y ago

Did you miss this part: “…even raiding other studios has very bad long term consequences [i.e., higher benefits for employees, lower profits for companies and executives—M.A.].”

It looks like the primary intended effect was to keep salaries and benefits low

cookiecaperOP11y ago

The brackets are editorial from the editor of the post. They're not in the original email. That's the author's opinion on the bad consequences that Catmull is referencing.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

potatolicious11y ago

> " but I don't think we've seen it adequately demonstrated that that was the primary intended effect and not just an unintentional or tertiary side effect of the agreement"

Mens rea would make the morality of this more open and shut, but I do not believe it is critical to our ability to judge the impact and legacy of these actions.

> "Frequent poaching is often considered unsportsmanlike competition by business people; I know several of the companies I've been affiliated with have felt that way."

But yet this isn't a game. These are people, not basketballs. It's careers, not the soccer field. It's families, children, vacations, dreams, plans, not points in to be scored against your opponent.

cookiecaperOP11y ago

Maybe he was wrong and maybe he broke the law. But it doesn't mean that he forgot that his employees were real people.

I appreciate the rest of your post, which acknowledges that Catmull is probably not irredeemably evil.

mullingitover11y ago

> It doesn't really leave the employee without somewhere to go, it just makes it harder for them to find employment at a direct competitor while still employed.

They stopped being direct competitors the minute they agreed to collude. The term you're looking for is 'fellow cartel member.'

chrismcb11y ago

Did you miss this part: “…even raiding other studios has very bad long term consequences [i.e., higher benefits for employees, lower profits for companies and executives—M.A.].”

It looks like the primary intended effect was to keep salaries and benefits low

cookiecaperOP11y ago

The brackets are editorial from the editor of the post. They're not in the original email. That's the author's opinion on the bad consequences that Catmull is referencing.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse