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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-

#81

Post by GBond »

thewopr wrote: post #19
privateersman wrote: post #13

I think this is a symptom that the movie industry is on its way out, in much the same way as has happened to music. They were flush with cash during the early 2000s thanks to TV and DVD. It was like a golden age with lots of studios producing unusual material. The problem is the internet has damaged their tiered selling technique, yet their projects are still as expensive and risky.

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…

Agile (Netflix OS) vs Waterfall (Hollywood blockbuster), perhaps?

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

#82

Post by thewopr »

bing_dai wrote: post #28
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…

I disagree with the opinion that "TV vs Movies, the risk in cost is the same but the upside is much higher for TV". Popular movies are almost always made into sequels/reboots/remakes. Out of the top 20 movies of domestic grosses[0], only 4 are not sequels or reboots(Zootopia, Secrete Life of Pets, Central Intelligence, The Angry Birds Movie). [0] http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2016

Yeah, that's actually kinda my point. A sequel is kinda the same as additional seasons (or episodes) of a TV show. With a TV show, additional seasons are basically assumed unless it doesn't do well with the target market. But movies are sometimes prepared for sequels, and sometimes not. But apparently, sequels (or additional seasons of a show) are the best way to make money. So movie studios have an inherent handicap in that they tend to create episodes (movies) that have to stand alone, whereas TV, if good, will just gain viewership as they create more seasons.

I'm curious too with your number. How often does it take a series until the second or third season to gain notoriety and a large following. I feel like "Breaking Bad" took into the second season to really get a following. There must be other examples.

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

#83

Post by jrnichols »

thewopr wrote: post #3

I am not an insider but wow, this really resonated with me. > We pursued a potentially great summer movie like Edge of Tomorrow and completely botched its release. Edge of Tomorrow was a pretty solid movie. I would absolutely have gone to it in the theater, but the marketing just did not connect with me. I've run into this with a number of movies now.

It reminded me a lot of "Source Code" in so many ways. I thought both were decent movies.

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

#84

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#85

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

aidenn0 wrote: post #73
20yrs_no_equity wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that (general intelligence aside) management skills are orthogonal to engineering/art/other creative work. This means that it takes a lot of work to find and train creators to be managers. On top of that (at least in engineering), a large fraction of the quality engineers I know actively do not want to be managers. If we haven't seen as many screw-ups due to lack of managerial skills among engineer-man…

Not in my experience. Or put another way, if you take someone with an MBA or a masters in engineering, neither of them intrinsically has more management skills or training. (IF colleges are teaching "management skills" they are not doing a good job of it.)

Yes, many engineers do not want to be managers, and unfortunately, too many non-engineers want the power. This is a good thing about engineers and a bad thing about those non-engineers.

I've seen lots of good engineers who manage, but almost no business people who are good managers of engineering.

I know that what you're saying is a popular perspective, but so is the idea that we should let wall street manage our retirements and real estate is always a good investment. Some of this perspective is self serving.

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

#86

Post by 20yrs_no_equity »

edanm wrote: post #69
20yrs_no_equity wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

I'm not aware of any statistics that qualify the CEOs of startups based on their background. Maybe you could do a rough pass based on degree program. My assertion is purely based on my experience, but it's not just anecdote- I've worked for 2 dozen startups and have visibility in to 3-4 times that.

> how do you know you're not talking about yourself as a maker?

This is a good point, and it gets to what my real point is: Culture. The issue is not lack of skills or integrity it's a different culture.

The culture of making things is different from the culture of running a 1950s era light manufactory. The latter is the "management" that most business people are taught. IT's woefully out of date. And it's predicated on the idea that you're stamping out the same parts over and over again. Tech is cutting edge and thus more of a craft than a manufacturing enterprise.

Engineers know this and so they know what to optimize for. Business people it seems can't or won't accept this.

They always want to know the date. IT's like its the only thing they care about. IF you ask an engineer to estimate something where the spec is a vague two sentence description they won't over-estimate themselves and think they can predict the time. Business guys, for instance, never seem to understand why you won't give them an estimate (which becomes a deadline, they don't seem to understand that estimates are %50 wrong if the are given correctly.)

this is because their culture is coming from a land where it takes exactly the same amount of time to stamp out a widget and predicting how long it will take to make 50 widgets is a no-brianer.

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