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How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs

geekosystem.com

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Re: How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs

#2
Great story. But look how times have changed. I can't imagine many company leaders today choosing to stand their ground and put their own heads on the chopping block. I'm not sure when it happened, but this kind of servant leadership doesn't seem to exist today. Anyone have recent examples of stories like this?

Re: How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs

#3
post #2

Great story. But look how times have changed. I can't imagine many company leaders today choosing to stand their ground and put their own heads on the chopping block. I'm not sure when it happened, but this kind of servant leadership doesn't seem to exist today. Anyone have recent examples of stories like this?

Times have not changed. This level of commitment of managers to their employees is rare now, and always has been.

Re: How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs

#6
post #2

Great story. But look how times have changed. I can't imagine many company leaders today choosing to stand their ground and put their own heads on the chopping block. I'm not sure when it happened, but this kind of servant leadership doesn't seem to exist today. Anyone have recent examples of stories like this?

What has changed is the size of the industry. There are so many animation studios these days that the chances of landing in a studio with leaders like Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith are far, far smaller than they were back then.

Re: How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs

#7
I'm worried about future of Pixar, they always valued original and insightful stories. All of their early and recent productions were delightful to watch. Understandably, this approach left not so many space for sequels.

They recently committed to making of Monsters 2 and Cars 2. Story outline for Cars 2 is just terrible. It seems that financial concerns under Disney leadership are prevailing and bits of integrity are slipping away.

Re: How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs

#8
post #4

According to this article, Pixar doesn't treat its employees as nicely these days: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-stranahan/lucasfilm-and-pi...

Actually, Pixar is probably one of the best places on the planet to work.

The no-cold-call policy did not mean that employees were off limits completely. We hired lots of people from ILM, Lucasfilm, Dreamworks, etc, but they came to us.

The "evil" of this particular case is pretty overstated. I was there at the time, and basically understood it was happening, and it didn't bother me in the slightest. All those other VFX houses treated their employees like cattle.

Re: How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs

#9
post #8
post #4

According to this article, Pixar doesn't treat its employees as nicely these days: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lee-stranahan/lucasfilm-and-pi...

Actually, Pixar is probably one of the best places on the planet to work. The no-cold-call policy did not mean that employees were off limits completely. We hired lots of people from ILM, Lucasfilm, Dreamworks, etc, but they came to us. The "evil" of this particular case is pretty overstated. I was there at the time, and basically understood it was happening, and it didn't bother me in the slightest. All those other…

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