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An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

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Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#61

Post by bitJericho »

je42 wrote: post #56
Throwaway23412 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the weird thing. Is Disney Studios printing money because they're so incredibly excellent at making movies or because their competitors are doing so poorly at competing?

Disney looks like that have a process to deliver great movies. They are not hoping have one. There are engineering one. Repeatable.

At the same time their movie are starting to wear on me, being that the arc is always so similar. If star wars 8 fails to be a novel movie, I think things will not go well for ep 9. Same goes for althe marvel movies.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#62

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #48

The thing that I think makes this letter great, and the reason I upvoted it on a tech site, that I haven't seen anybody else mention yet is this: it's a universal point. Movies aside, I think his point applies to a lot of other industries, "If I worked at a donut stand, and I kept fucking up donuts, I'd be fired. Even if I made a tiny decent one every now and then, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna get fired." I have foun…

My experience made me identify with this letter very closely-- in broad generalized terms, you often have "management" which is a bunch of "business" people who are directing "creatives" (whether software engineers or movie artists) based on the management's perception of the state of the market.

Unfortunately, there is always a tendency to believe your own PR, believe you know more about things than you do, and to believe that, because you're on top and they are on bottom, you know better.

You see this in startups also when the "management" is a 20 year old CEO who just graduated business school, as much as when he is a 60 year old who has worked in the industry (but whose background is not in actually making things).

This is the big gulf between the makers and the managers.

And I think the correct response is, as makers, to make sure we are managed by other makers.

An engineer in the CEO role can manage a VP of marketing, or a VP of sales or a VP of engineering fine. Find a VP of marketing who wants to do customer discovery, find a VP of sales who can close (and incentivize him to do so, if he's not hungry don't hire him) and you'll do better, in my experience, than a CEO who doesn't understand how software is made (and subsequently keeps inadvertently undermining his own products as a result.)

Apologies if this seems like a bit of a rant- this is a comment on a letter that is a rant, though-- but I've seen this over and over and over in the past 30 years working for technology startups.

I would say having a technical CEO has a positive order of magnitude improvement on the outcome, and liklihood of a liquidity event and the size of that liquidity event, in my experience.

It lowers risks many ways, including increasing retention of your most valuable employees. (One of the key things that business people can't seem to get over is the idea that commoditizing employees leads to hiring what Paul Graham calls "blub" programmers, but that if you hire great programmers you can't treat them like cogs or they will leave.)

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#63

Post by clevernickname »

moultano wrote: post #34
kiba wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edge of Tomorrow was a hollywoodized happy version of the original Japanese novel, which ended on a very bittersweet note.

The original novel is terrible though. Everything that was interesting or moving in it was invented for the movie.

Your taste is terrible though.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#64

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

Grue3 wrote: post #60

Didn't Suicide Squad break the box office record? This whole post reads like sour grapes.

It was a fun movie, but it was weak in a lot of the same ways that Batman vs Superman were weak. So, I see the criticism.

Well and poorly executed movies both can connect with the audience, but the author of the letter presumably believes that well executed movies are more likely to do so.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#65

Post by sandworm101 »

jfoutz wrote: post #59
sandworm101 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iron man is a jerk. He is the embodiment of all that is wrong with our economy. But that is why the Marvel movies work. That's what I like about them. The characters are human enough for me to actually care. Superman? He is too flat for me to have any opinion. For all the bluster, the MCU is full of metaphor and leveled humor. My favorite is the 1-minute WWII skit in Avengers (The old jewish man about to be killed by…

> Superman? He is too flat for me to have any opinion. IMHO, Superman is ethical. He'll stop a nuclear launch and get a cat out of a tree, because he's the ultimate boy scout. Every problem is important to solve, and he has the power to, at least try, to solve them all. Violate ethics for the greater good? Never. I don't think the Superman point has really come across since Christopher Reeve. I really liked the Nolan…

That he is ethical is part of the problem. He is the perpetual rescuer. He doesn't initiate action, only reacts to situations forced upon him. IronMan does things because he wants to. He has an internal personality. Thor has an internal life. Even Hulk makes decisions on his own occasionally. Superman's role, like Captain America, is to apply ethics to a situation created by someone else. They are perpetually innocent, perpetually perfect, and therefore perpetually boring.

My favorite characters are probably Colson and Fury, both dynamic people who take action on their own. The make mistakes because they make mistakes, not because they are forced or tricked into doing so by evil guy. We don't always know what they are thinking, or by which ethical rules they operate. That's interesting. That's worth watching. Batman and Superman are empty shells in comparison.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#67

Post by manarth »

tw04 wrote: post #24
thewopr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's interesting is that TV is having such a different trajectory (TV as in video packaged as episodes, the lines have blurred). Netflix and the like. I often wonder if TV is winning because it has built-in sequels. If a series doesn't stick, whatever, money lost. If a new series does well, you can milk it for many many more seasons. TV vs Movies, the risk in cost is the same but the upside is much higher for T…

That's because instead of trying to fill 3 movies, TV can just flow naturally until it's done. Yes, for some shows they end up with filler either because they want to drag it out, or they don't have quite enough to fill an entire last season... but for the most part it feels like TV shows don't have that pressure to fit into a very tight box.

> TV can just flow naturally until it's done

If only it stopped when it really was done: Firefly, The 4400, Terra Nova, SGU…

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#68

Post by manarth »

jedberg wrote: post #46
kiba wrote: post #2

I wonder why story quality in movies such a toss-up? They got screenwriters, producers, and editors, right? You think movie studios should had managed to figure out 'consistent quality' by now.

Sunk cost fallacy. A director shoots bad material, they don't go back and start over. They make due with what they have because of what they've already spent on it. Disney does the opposite. Look at what we've heard about the Rogue One -- the studio felt that it was good but not great and sent them back for a whole bunch of (expensive) reshoots. Pixar does the same. If they don't like the final product they'll rip it…

> "If they don't like the final product they'll rip it apart and do it again"

Sometimes twice! http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/05/21/how-pixars-toy-story-...

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#69

Post by edanm »

20yrs_no_equity wrote: post #62
alexandercrohde wrote: post #48

The thing that I think makes this letter great, and the reason I upvoted it on a tech site, that I haven't seen anybody else mention yet is this: it's a universal point. Movies aside, I think his point applies to a lot of other industries, "If I worked at a donut stand, and I kept fucking up donuts, I'd be fired. Even if I made a tiny decent one every now and then, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna get fired." I have foun…

My experience made me identify with this letter very closely-- in broad generalized terms, you often have "management" which is a bunch of "business" people who are directing "creatives" (whether software engineers or movie artists) based on the management's perception of the state of the market. Unfortunately, there is always a tendency to believe your own PR, believe you know more about things than you do, and to b…

"I would say having a technical CEO has a positive order of magnitude improvement on the outcome, and liklihood of a liquidity event and the size of that liquidity event, in my experience."

Interesting assertion. Lucky for us, there are plenty of statistics available. So instead of going with gut feeling, do you have any sources to back this up? (Genuine question - I'd love to find out whether this is actually true).

"Unfortunately, there is always a tendency to believe your own PR, believe you know more about things than you do[...]".

While you make this point about CEOs, how do you know you're not talking about yourself as a maker?

Note: I'm not against your point, but I think the hubris of "makers" vs "everyone else" is just another example of people thinking their ingroup is the "right" and "successful" one.

Re: An Open Letter to Warner Bros CEO About Layoffs and Donuts-

#70

Post by [deleted] »

sandworm101 wrote: post #65
jfoutz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Superman? He is too flat for me to have any opinion. IMHO, Superman is ethical. He'll stop a nuclear launch and get a cat out of a tree, because he's the ultimate boy scout. Every problem is important to solve, and he has the power to, at least try, to solve them all. Violate ethics for the greater good? Never. I don't think the Superman point has really come across since Christopher Reeve. I really liked the Nolan…

That he is ethical is part of the problem. He is the perpetual rescuer. He doesn't initiate action, only reacts to situations forced upon him. IronMan does things because he wants to. He has an internal personality. Thor has an internal life. Even Hulk makes decisions on his own occasionally. Superman's role, like Captain America, is to apply ethics to a situation created by someone else. They are perpetually innocen…

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