Perhaps we can agree that to make a truly exceptional performer like Pixar, you need something of a perfect storm:
Great people (in the trenches and at the top)
Patient, very deep-pocketed investors
A certain amount of good luck (market/economy timing-wise)
As you reduce or remove these elements, you quickly end up with an average or sub-par company, which is pretty much the normal state of affairs.
Talent plays a part in what Pixar is. But culture allows them to be what they are.
I supposed, to refine my point: while culture makes a big difference (in the way you say), that's ONLY true if the employees within that culture are able to rise to the occasion. Many, many companies simply don't have that sort of staff - at least, not across all aspects of their company, the way Pixar does. And while a change of culture might raise up the odd suppressed talent here and there, most people simply have it or don't to work at Pixar-type levels. In other words, in a lot of settings, allowing the coders to chime in on what the marketing people are recommending for artwork on a print ad would be, well, ugly.
Re:Treating employees like human beings?
on
Inside Look at Pixar HQ
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think you're giving Pixar too much credit.
Probably not enough, actually.
But one difference is that they're not all exactly IT people, they're artists, IT folks, directors, voice actors, etc. Just some of the jobs are IT and Technology related, everyone else works with technology.
Yup, but none of that changes my points about their overall profile or the fact that they've got the cream of the crop working for them (across all disciplines). That's not to say that Weta, or Industrial Light & Magic, or any of a number of other studios and related companies don't also have way, way talented people... it's just that Pixar (as an example, and as the topic of this whole thread) is able to (and must) afford people way outside the normal curve of people that most of us work with (or are).
And they know that to get that quality they have to trust their people and have to work collaboratively.
Surely you don't mean that the difference between their output, and that of some other company that's also techie-creative, is that Pixar "trusts" people to work collaboratively? I'd say that's backwards: Pixar has the pick of the litter for staff, and doesn't have to "trust" people of that quality to be engaged and energetically doing their piece of the work. When you're in a setting where the budget or other circumstances mean that you're working with less stellar people, you can usually "trust" that at least some of them will be weighing down the team, and require nagging from a project manager to get anything done, and simply not contributing to the project in proportion to their share of the payroll budget.
says they hire the best people
Meaning, they hire the best people they can afford. Pixar can afford better people than most of their competition, and they spend the money because of the results (and people) they get.
Pixar just appears to treat them better
Because if they don't those people will just leave. The more talented you are, the more you can expect that sort of treatment. For the vast majority of us, though, the stakes are lower, the risks are lower, the pay is lower, the performance is more average, and the co-workers are not 100% rock-star.
You mention 140+ IQs. My friend from a former job now at Pixar used to bring his glock pistol to work and thinks that alien abductions are a common occurance. Create and talented as hell, but no shot at 140+ on the IQ scale.
Obviously I'm being general. Since I have a family member who works for Pixar, I have a little insight into the place. They definately don't hire people out of pity - they find something very valuable or they don't bother (since there are thousands of people in line to choose from).
That being said, maybe your friend got some proper meds and stopped watching old X-Files re-runs, and picked up a copy of The Demon Haunted World for a little perspective. Or, maybe Pixar is working up a tongue-in-cheek UFO movie, and he's actually a character muse. You never know!
Oh: and being delusional definitely has nothing whatsoever to do with IQ. Other than that it's a fine film regardless, see "A Beautiful Mind" for some pretty-well-based-on-reality story telling along those lines. Or, just follow along with any number of brilliant social misfits and slightly off-center people who can be incredibly innovative, if a little (or a lot) odd. Now, on the other hand, I'm not sure how much I trust someone who really can't get past the alien abduction thing. On the other hand, the Glock is a fine weapon, but that depends on the alien you're shooting at.
You're deliberately missing the point. The people at Pixar are better than you at being the sort of people that Pixar will hire. So what if they're not all command line geniuses? That's not what Pixar needs in every slot! They need what (and who) they need, and can pay for it, and those are rare, well-compensated people. Period.
Have you considered that maybe you look at yourself as "mediocre" because you have not been given the chance to tap into your potential?
Actually, I'm suggesting that mediocrity - pretty much by definition - is the normal state of affairs. There's a reason that Garrison Kealer's joke about an idyllic town in the upper midwest where "all the kids are above average" is actually funny: because it's a nice sounding, but logically impossible state of affairs. If no one was mediocre, there would be no middle-of-the-road, and then we'd all be Outstanding. At which point, of course, we'd just have moved the yardsticks that define where "average" is!
Pixar is not doing this because they have the Smartest people!!! Look around you, there are companies out there that have so much more talent than Pixar, yet they don't reach their potential because they treat their talented employees like machines.
Well, that I doubt. Maybe teams of people as talented as Pixar's, and perhaps not as well leveraged by the investors and management for whom they work - but taken as a cross-section of the population, a place like Pixar (as defined by the skills of the people they recruit) is definately unusual.
I'd say you're mostly right... and what it takes is a company that's willing to operate at a huge loss for some period of time. And that takes investors with very deep pockets who have some sense of longer-term vision. Those people are definately out there, else we wouldn't have Googles or Pixars. But that's exactly what a market economy is all about. People with good ideas (like, seeing past this quarter) can be bigger risk takers (like gambling that losing money for two years straight is OK), and can ultimately come out on top. But a lot of very smart people backed by smart investors with very deep pockets still sometimes blow it (see dot-com implosion), and so some (most) investors get gun shy. This swings back and forth, and always will, and periodically we hit the sweet spot and a Pixar or a Google is born.
Re:Treating employees like human beings?
on
Inside Look at Pixar HQ
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Are you always so negative?
Actually, I don't think I was being negative at all - just realistic. Being negative is what I was responding to - the implication that if only the average employee was treated differently he/she'd actually be smarter, more creative, etc. I don't buy that, not in so many words. Truly crappy work environments certainly taint creativity, but truly great environments can only do so much to make a non-creative person a creative rock star (which is to say, not much at all if you're not already that kind of person).
Most of us are human beings, each with the same built in potential.
That, I definately don't buy. Even if we were to stipulate that at birth, everyone has the same capacity for the type of work that makes a Pixar shine, by the time that people are in their 20's and 30's, and filling in that job application at Pixar/Google/wherever, life has happened to them. They have (or have not) been intellectually nurtured, have (or have not) had the discipline to polish their critical and creative thinking skills, have (or have not) spent their time in a way that prepared them for a job as challenging as a gig at a top-flight shop. We do not all arrive at the human resources office "equal" in our potential. A prospective employer's choice of decor and office culture will not make up for the substantial differences in experience and intellect that truly do exist, no matter how politically incorrect that may sound.
Point of interest: I'm going to say that my brother and I are probably equally bright and creative. But our characters, academic histories, and pursuits have been different enough that we've cut ourselves out for different activities. He actually does work at Pixar, and is definately thriving there. I'm more of an IT cowboy, and it brings me to different sorts of work. The specific character traits and skills that work for me in my setting are definately at odds with what's working for him (and thus, for Pixar, too). So, the point is: our potential to be valuable to Pixar is substantially different, just as our potential to be valuable to my customers (a more 1-on-1 consulting type audience) is different. We couldn't switch jobs now, and I don't think we could have switched paths years ago, either. Made of different stuff!
Re:Treating employees like human beings?
on
Inside Look at Pixar HQ
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
What a concept! Wow!
Of course, if the average people employed (or employable) by the average business could ever, ever come close to being as smart, inspired, productive, and profitable as the army of PhDs and 140+ IQ types at Pixar, then we'd have more reason to wonder why the average employer doesn't look more like Pixar. But every company cannot have Pixar's capital (intellectual or financial) - there just aren't that many people of that caliber adrift looking for (and able) to do that sort of work. Hell, there isn't really even a market for more than a couple more Pixars, per se.
So, the uncomfortable truth: most of us (myself very definately included) are way, way too mediocre to demand the costs (which are way higher than the paycheck) that Pixar has to cover to keep a body around, productive, and happy. It's like looking at the New York Yankees and wondering why your farm-league team's locker room isn't just as nice, and why it's take-the-bus instead of take-the-Gulfstream.
Native talent. Raw brain horsepower. Big up-front financial investment. Hugely lucrative actual results. That's what enables that tech Valhalla you see at Pixar. Sure, you could have all of those things, treat people like crap, and then chase off all of that talent in about 6 months... but they're smarter than that. But what about all of the folks who try to get jobs at Pixar and just don't cut it? They, like me, toil in less idyllic environments, for less cash, with less cool office lighting, and with fewer Mr. Fusion-powered robo-scooters bringing them cardemom-enhanced lattes for "free." Oh well! It would all fall down if they didn't use their one-in-million people to make exceptional products. The other 999,999 of us per million get to have regular jobs, sometimes managed by average people without a large budget (because the average workers don't generally produce the above-average revenue that make fantasy office environments an asset rather than a liability).
If we only had a foosball table for every average office worker that deserved better... oh, wait.. we did! And we financed them with crashed dot-com stocks! There's a reason that didn't work out except for a handful of Pixars and their equivalents in other areas (Google, et al).
So when Congress does something like increase the number of H1B's allowed in the US at the expense of the American work force, would you consider that an act of terrorism?
No, pretty much just a troll. Rather than wonder about congress, why not wonder about the pursuasive powers of the people looking to keep US citizens in those jobs? The market doesn't seem to be there. Mandating that it be there isn't much different than mandating the value of any other service or product. At least with the H1Bs, the employer, the business activity, and the taxes are still here in the country. That beats the hell out of shipping the work overseas.
I always enjoyed how we would refer to terrorists that supported the United States as "freedom fighters". This was nicely driven home with Osama -- he was a "freedom fighter" when he was killing Russians, but suddenly became a "terrorist" when he started killing Americans.
Bin Laden, when supporting the Afghans against the Soviets, was fighting a totalitarian communist regime that had invaded Afghanistan strictly as a territorial grab, with no intention of setting up a local democracy and a free economy. Of course, Bin Laden wasn't there because he wanted democracy or a free economy, but because the Soviets were a threat to his vision of a pan-Islamic future. So, they're gone, and we're the next obstacle to his notion of a first-rate 1000-years-too-late Caliphate.
When an Internet worm destroys two buildings in New York City and kills thousands of people, THEN maybe you can compare 13 year old boys with too much time on their hands with terrorists.
First, let's define what a terrorist is. Where do you draw the line? 3000 people dead? 300? 30? 3? I say that someone who deliberately sets out to cause havoc, knowing that their actions will cost jobs, induce fear, require cleanup, new security measures, etc.... that person is terrorizing their audience/victims, and is a terrorist. Some are more effective at smashing store windows during witless demonstrations than they are killing people, and some are more effective at burning cash in the economy as businesses, schools, and grandmas fight malware, and some manage to kill thousands of people - but they all, by choice and deed, are causing pain, expense, suffering, and sometimes death. Those are terrorists, varying only in scope and effectiveness.
Now, is the 14 year old kid that's in to model rocketry a terrorist when his latest experiment goes sideways and catches someone's hayfield on fire? An idiot, perhaps, but not arguably someone that set out to terrorize the farmer or cost the township thousands of dollars to put out the blaze. Is the 14 year old kid that's deliberately looking for malware to kiddie-script into his own flavor and set loose in an attempt to be cool or flail against "corporations" (while using corporately made computer parts, listening to his decidedly not made-by-old-world-artisans iPod, wearing his corporately made clothing, and still alive past childbirth and unafflicted by polio and other nasties because of corporately made medical supplies) the same? No. He's intent on damage, and on making the news. He's a terrorist, just a lame one. But he's in the same camp as the guys who would blow up bridges or poison wells: chaos, fear, damage - all in the name of recognition.
Don't think hackers can physically damage things? Right here is someone's copy-and-paste of a recent article about infrastructure threats from hackers. The director of the federal agency tasked with worrying about this stuff "wished he was wearing a diaper" while watching a demo of a guy hacking a SCADA-controlled turbine at a power generating plant. Just a few clicks, turn off the lube oil pump, and you're out millions of dollars of equipment and have a piece of the grid down for weeks or months. Multiply that times several power plants at the peak of a hot August Friday night across, say, most of California, and you're going to get deaths from failed safety equipment, chaos and social damage as often happens in those circumstances, and a huge economic upheaval.
Where do the folks with an axe to grind get the chops for that stuff? From young, net-savvy kids with, as you put it, "too much time on their hands" who are disaffected, susceptible to bent ideolgies because of the feeling of inclusion, and easily intimidated. Whether young people like that are tools, or have it in them to dream up and execute stuff like this on their own, for their own Columbine-like revenge fantasy reasons, don't dismiss it as just kids' stuff. The consequences for millions of lives, jobs, and for history could be huge.
Lastly, if you (as you do seem to) consider the 9/11 attacks as terrorism - what would you have been willing to tolerate, law-enforcement-wise, intelligence-gathering-wise, to prevent them? What should the people in Spain have been willing to put up with at their train stations before 3/11? Would any of us have tolerated the preventative measures before that stuff happened? Will we have the same conversation after a large municipal drinking water supply gets raw sewage pumped into it by a cranky ex-employee who knows that the SCADA system controlling the treatment plant still has the factory default password set? Or, posts that info on some forum where a 13-year-old kid with "too much time on his hands" decides to try his hand at it?
You mean, the same Star Trek that routinely portrays the Federation as protective of its territory, people, and resources? Ignoring that for a moment:
Of course my argument is based on a capitalist's viewpoint. That's the only rational system by which to value production, innovation, creation, and the supply/demand realities of those things. There's a reason that creativity and innovation suffer (or are even punished) in communist settings - because the inherent differences between the levels of energy, creativity, and demand for those things between different people sticks out like a sore thumb. In a market economy, it's rewarded. In a communist setting, those people are slaves. You're not talking about a different "poliical" system, you're talking about a the difference between owning your own life, or having someone else own your life. My life's work IS my life, so you can imagine how I feel about people taking it without asking me what I think about that.
Don't scold me for using a generalization when I'm replying to a post that makes a ridiculous (and ridiculously generalized) point about "property." Note the lack of specificity, not even taking into account the nonsensical nature of the point (which didn't get made very well at all, in my opinion). From the author's context, we could assume that he considers the clothes on his back to be the necessary evil of "property," but that it's really theft. It's just blathering and sophistry meant to make people who produce things feel bad for charging for them.
"Robin [H]ood" was seen as, and it always portrayed as, a hero in stories including him. Why is the modern 'Robin Hood' suddenly the villain?
Because we're not talking about the same thing. If fact, if you look at the hostorical (well, obviously fictional) Robin Hood, and step back for a moment: what was he an outlaw from? He was cast outside a brutal, feudal system run by parasitic thugs that used violence to make slaves of the local peasants. "Stealing" the product of those peasants, from whom it was stolen, not purchased, is a lot different than stealing movies and music and given it teenagers too lazy to mow lawns so they can afford to pay for their own witless entertainment.
Only the top end of the scale get paid enough to support themselves.
Which is exactly my point! I cited Neal Stephenson specifically because, as a supremely creative writer and all around cool guy, he still only makes (by his own description) a middle class income. If he couldn't bank on that income, he couldn't even begin to put in the uninterrupted creative hours that it takes to produce recent treasures like The Baroque Cycle. His work would be wildly inferior if he also had to wait tables, or crunch insurance numbers, etc.
I do write. I produce web content, which pays a trickle. I have a "day job" consulting on web technology. I'd much, much rather be writing all day long, but my work is not of suffience value to enough people for me to be able to switch into that mode full time and still be able to feed my dogs (let alone myself).
shouldn't expect a paycheck from book royalties, because you probably aren't going to get one any time soon, and if you ever do, it's not going to be very much.
You know that's not my point. We're talking about whether or not a creative artist that actually has a large following should be able to expect that paycheck. If the original poster's sentiments were correct, the answer would be no, and that group of people on the top end of the scale would never be able to stay there, doing nothing but writing, and actually own clothing and eat. Most of us are mediocre at best. But I'm glad that the really talented people can make a living creating what they create... so that I can buy a copy of it and savor it.
How can something that you just synthesized - produced where it didn't exist before - be theft? You must mean that producing something, and then not giving it to someone for free is what you consider theft. So, how do you rate labor? Is not laboring for someone for free also theft? If that's the case, than not agreeing to be your slave is the same as stealing from you. Your concept makes everyone a slave to everyone else, all the time, and if they don't like being a slave, then they are a thief.
You'll be a lot more pursuasive if you actually use words in a meaningful way. Defining the limits by which you're willing to spread around that which you have created is not "limiting other people's right to intellect."
Intellect - a: the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will: the capacity for knowledge b: the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed
That's a good definition of the word. Your intellect is your capacity for intelligence. My not entertaining you for free with my music or movie does not limit your intellect. Limited intellect is as limited intellect does (and argues).
I think the phenomenon of artists and musicians being paid huge amounts of money for their work is relatively new.
Adjust for inflation, both cultural and financial. Financial, in the sense that an artist that makes, say, $200,000 over the life of an album's sales is hardly making "huge" sums of money. Cultural inflation: the "artists" who make truly huge sums of money are way more than just singers, etc. They are cultural icons (for better or worse - gag me with a Britney), and are the loose equivalent of royalty in the past. They are rich for being famous, and rich for simply being an icon, and can lose it all very quickly when the emptiness of that eclipses the substance (see Marie Antoinette, etc).
I don't think anyone would accuse, say, Mick Jagger, of not working hard for his money. But making an album absolutely is a full time job while you're doing it, and then keeping it alive in a marketplace crowded with thousands of other performers means doing the very full-time work of keeping it promoted and selling. Appearances, tours, promotions, etc are long hard work. I spent years in that industry and know the toll it can take, especially on younger, unprepared artists.
People who love making music and art will do it regardless of whether they need to work another job or not.
No doubt! And they presumably won't care, then, if you get their music without paying for it. They may even want you to. That's great. But what if they don't want you to? Surely you wouldn't want such a lazy, selfish artist's music anyway, would you? Great: you won't pay for it, and you don't have to worry about whatever legal arrangements that artists has made to earn that money, because it won't apply to you regardless. Unless, of course, you secretly do want that artist to entertain you, and just don't feel like paying for it, in which case you start sliding down the slippery slope of hypocrisy on the subject.
I look at it this way: if you think you can satisfy your thirst for movies, music, reading material, etc., by only patronizing those artists that are willing to entertain you for free, then I'm sure you'll all get along fine. There are certainly plenty of people in that camp (both producing and consuming). But for the other artists who choose to produce and distribute their work within an I-don't-work-for-free environment, the choice is pretty simple: just don't buy their stuff. But if you're not going to buy it, and not going to listen to it through a channel like radio (where you buy it indirectly by listening to ads), then at least have the integrity to not go out and find someone who has posted a "free" copy of it and take it that way.
Certainly! On that note, I hereby grant you unlimited license to my contribution to that somewhat strained metephor. Um, unless my contribution was too derivative, in which case we'll have to defer to the guy I was responding to! Seriously, though, it's nice to have a chance at some back-and-forth that doesn't decay, immediately, into an ad hominem flamefest. Thanks for actually noticing an effort at critical thinking on an obviously contentious subject.
Anyone who takes sacks of pebbles from the mountain and says "these are now mine" is a simple rogue, legalised or not, and we all know it.
There are some "pebbles" that simply would not be added to your metaphorical mountain if their creators/innovators didn't have some expectation of being able to earn a living while producing them. Most creative types don't say to themselves, "I'm about to invest a couple-plus years of my life writing Cryptonomicon... but I'd better keep sucking up to my boss at the IHOP because my cultural history tells me I shouldn't expect a paycheck from book royalties, ever."
There is a contradiction in your message. People create under a legal framework upon which they base their expectations of interaction with other people. If they want to GPL their work, great. That defines a certain expected course of events and options. If they want to limit the distribution of their years of work to those people that are willing pay for entertainment, and thus stop waiting tables at IHOP (I know, Neal did not wait tables at IHOP), then that choice is also well supported under law. The problem we have is that people confuse the technical ability to avoid paying for someone's labor of years with the right to do so. Those authors/artists/developers that do indeed want a broader audience for their work do not necessarily mean that they want that to happen without expecting that audience to realize that the work has value, and to pay for it.
Your cultural stack of pebbles wouldn't exist without the daily work of creative people who continually add to it and also need to pay the rent. Culture is not some fixed pie to be divided up for free. It's the result of people's daily work, creativity, and commerce, and it thrives best when the most creative people available know that they can make a living doing what they do best. We all benefit, and paying an artist a few cents for their song is just fine. If you don't like that approach, then that means you don't like the artist for having made the choice to profit from their labors. And if you have any intellectual honesty, you'll decide you don't want to hear that artist's music anyway (since you can't stand the idea of them having decided to earn a living by selling, rather than giving away, their life's work).
OK then, how about Trusting The Karma. Just trying to avoid the spam, dude. I don't care what a user's name is, and there are time when anonymity makes perfect sense (say, when your job may be at stake)... but ad hominem attacks aren't one of those times. Leave a trail when you're hassling somebody - it's only sporting.
Actually, I use Firefox all day long, even though I frequently turn to MSIE for some testing or specific corporate sites. I build pages for a living, and I've a long, long list of gripes about every browser, in every version. Opera in particular seems to give some table nesting some trouble that IE doesn't exhibit, but all things considered, I'd rather use FF. There's a lot of pot-calling-kettle-black about the Opera challenge, that's all. All of the kettles and pots are black. That being said, I think some sort of Ultimate Browser Agony Test is a good idea. But to suggest that it's somehow Microsoft's fault that we need one is, well, just dumb.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps we can agree that to make a truly exceptional performer like Pixar, you need something of a perfect storm: Great people (in the trenches and at the top) Patient, very deep-pocketed investors A certain amount of good luck (market/economy timing-wise) As you reduce or remove these elements, you quickly end up with an average or sub-par company, which is pretty much the normal state of affairs.
Talent plays a part in what Pixar is. But culture allows them to be what they are.
I supposed, to refine my point: while culture makes a big difference (in the way you say), that's ONLY true if the employees within that culture are able to rise to the occasion. Many, many companies simply don't have that sort of staff - at least, not across all aspects of their company, the way Pixar does. And while a change of culture might raise up the odd suppressed talent here and there, most people simply have it or don't to work at Pixar-type levels. In other words, in a lot of settings, allowing the coders to chime in on what the marketing people are recommending for artwork on a print ad would be, well, ugly.
I think you're giving Pixar too much credit.
Probably not enough, actually.
But one difference is that they're not all exactly IT people, they're artists, IT folks, directors, voice actors, etc. Just some of the jobs are IT and Technology related, everyone else works with technology.
Yup, but none of that changes my points about their overall profile or the fact that they've got the cream of the crop working for them (across all disciplines). That's not to say that Weta, or Industrial Light & Magic, or any of a number of other studios and related companies don't also have way, way talented people... it's just that Pixar (as an example, and as the topic of this whole thread) is able to (and must) afford people way outside the normal curve of people that most of us work with (or are).
And they know that to get that quality they have to trust their people and have to work collaboratively.
Surely you don't mean that the difference between their output, and that of some other company that's also techie-creative, is that Pixar "trusts" people to work collaboratively? I'd say that's backwards: Pixar has the pick of the litter for staff, and doesn't have to "trust" people of that quality to be engaged and energetically doing their piece of the work. When you're in a setting where the budget or other circumstances mean that you're working with less stellar people, you can usually "trust" that at least some of them will be weighing down the team, and require nagging from a project manager to get anything done, and simply not contributing to the project in proportion to their share of the payroll budget.
says they hire the best people
Meaning, they hire the best people they can afford. Pixar can afford better people than most of their competition, and they spend the money because of the results (and people) they get. Pixar just appears to treat them better
Because if they don't those people will just leave. The more talented you are, the more you can expect that sort of treatment. For the vast majority of us, though, the stakes are lower, the risks are lower, the pay is lower, the performance is more average, and the co-workers are not 100% rock-star.
You mention 140+ IQs. My friend from a former job now at Pixar used to bring his glock pistol to work and thinks that alien abductions are a common occurance. Create and talented as hell, but no shot at 140+ on the IQ scale.
Obviously I'm being general. Since I have a family member who works for Pixar, I have a little insight into the place. They definately don't hire people out of pity - they find something very valuable or they don't bother (since there are thousands of people in line to choose from).
That being said, maybe your friend got some proper meds and stopped watching old X-Files re-runs, and picked up a copy of The Demon Haunted World for a little perspective. Or, maybe Pixar is working up a tongue-in-cheek UFO movie, and he's actually a character muse. You never know!
Oh: and being delusional definitely has nothing whatsoever to do with IQ. Other than that it's a fine film regardless, see "A Beautiful Mind" for some pretty-well-based-on-reality story telling along those lines. Or, just follow along with any number of brilliant social misfits and slightly off-center people who can be incredibly innovative, if a little (or a lot) odd. Now, on the other hand, I'm not sure how much I trust someone who really can't get past the alien abduction thing. On the other hand, the Glock is a fine weapon, but that depends on the alien you're shooting at.
No, they're not. Bzzzt. Try again
You're deliberately missing the point. The people at Pixar are better than you at being the sort of people that Pixar will hire. So what if they're not all command line geniuses? That's not what Pixar needs in every slot! They need what (and who) they need, and can pay for it, and those are rare, well-compensated people. Period.
Well, see, that's why I can't get a job a Pixar. Eye done't half what it's take to bee a gud righter.
Have you considered that maybe you look at yourself as "mediocre" because you have not been given the chance to tap into your potential?
Actually, I'm suggesting that mediocrity - pretty much by definition - is the normal state of affairs. There's a reason that Garrison Kealer's joke about an idyllic town in the upper midwest where "all the kids are above average" is actually funny: because it's a nice sounding, but logically impossible state of affairs. If no one was mediocre, there would be no middle-of-the-road, and then we'd all be Outstanding. At which point, of course, we'd just have moved the yardsticks that define where "average" is!
Pixar is not doing this because they have the Smartest people!!! Look around you, there are companies out there that have so much more talent than Pixar, yet they don't reach their potential because they treat their talented employees like machines.
Well, that I doubt. Maybe teams of people as talented as Pixar's, and perhaps not as well leveraged by the investors and management for whom they work - but taken as a cross-section of the population, a place like Pixar (as defined by the skills of the people they recruit) is definately unusual.
I'd say you're mostly right... and what it takes is a company that's willing to operate at a huge loss for some period of time. And that takes investors with very deep pockets who have some sense of longer-term vision. Those people are definately out there, else we wouldn't have Googles or Pixars. But that's exactly what a market economy is all about. People with good ideas (like, seeing past this quarter) can be bigger risk takers (like gambling that losing money for two years straight is OK), and can ultimately come out on top. But a lot of very smart people backed by smart investors with very deep pockets still sometimes blow it (see dot-com implosion), and so some (most) investors get gun shy. This swings back and forth, and always will, and periodically we hit the sweet spot and a Pixar or a Google is born.
Are you always so negative?
Actually, I don't think I was being negative at all - just realistic. Being negative is what I was responding to - the implication that if only the average employee was treated differently he/she'd actually be smarter, more creative, etc. I don't buy that, not in so many words. Truly crappy work environments certainly taint creativity, but truly great environments can only do so much to make a non-creative person a creative rock star (which is to say, not much at all if you're not already that kind of person).
Most of us are human beings, each with the same built in potential.
That, I definately don't buy. Even if we were to stipulate that at birth, everyone has the same capacity for the type of work that makes a Pixar shine, by the time that people are in their 20's and 30's, and filling in that job application at Pixar/Google/wherever, life has happened to them. They have (or have not) been intellectually nurtured, have (or have not) had the discipline to polish their critical and creative thinking skills, have (or have not) spent their time in a way that prepared them for a job as challenging as a gig at a top-flight shop. We do not all arrive at the human resources office "equal" in our potential. A prospective employer's choice of decor and office culture will not make up for the substantial differences in experience and intellect that truly do exist, no matter how politically incorrect that may sound.
Point of interest: I'm going to say that my brother and I are probably equally bright and creative. But our characters, academic histories, and pursuits have been different enough that we've cut ourselves out for different activities. He actually does work at Pixar, and is definately thriving there. I'm more of an IT cowboy, and it brings me to different sorts of work. The specific character traits and skills that work for me in my setting are definately at odds with what's working for him (and thus, for Pixar, too). So, the point is: our potential to be valuable to Pixar is substantially different, just as our potential to be valuable to my customers (a more 1-on-1 consulting type audience) is different. We couldn't switch jobs now, and I don't think we could have switched paths years ago, either. Made of different stuff!
What a concept! Wow!
Of course, if the average people employed (or employable) by the average business could ever, ever come close to being as smart, inspired, productive, and profitable as the army of PhDs and 140+ IQ types at Pixar, then we'd have more reason to wonder why the average employer doesn't look more like Pixar. But every company cannot have Pixar's capital (intellectual or financial) - there just aren't that many people of that caliber adrift looking for (and able) to do that sort of work. Hell, there isn't really even a market for more than a couple more Pixars, per se.
So, the uncomfortable truth: most of us (myself very definately included) are way, way too mediocre to demand the costs (which are way higher than the paycheck) that Pixar has to cover to keep a body around, productive, and happy. It's like looking at the New York Yankees and wondering why your farm-league team's locker room isn't just as nice, and why it's take-the-bus instead of take-the-Gulfstream.
Native talent. Raw brain horsepower. Big up-front financial investment. Hugely lucrative actual results. That's what enables that tech Valhalla you see at Pixar. Sure, you could have all of those things, treat people like crap, and then chase off all of that talent in about 6 months... but they're smarter than that. But what about all of the folks who try to get jobs at Pixar and just don't cut it? They, like me, toil in less idyllic environments, for less cash, with less cool office lighting, and with fewer Mr. Fusion-powered robo-scooters bringing them cardemom-enhanced lattes for "free." Oh well! It would all fall down if they didn't use their one-in-million people to make exceptional products. The other 999,999 of us per million get to have regular jobs, sometimes managed by average people without a large budget (because the average workers don't generally produce the above-average revenue that make fantasy office environments an asset rather than a liability).
If we only had a foosball table for every average office worker that deserved better... oh, wait.. we did! And we financed them with crashed dot-com stocks! There's a reason that didn't work out except for a handful of Pixars and their equivalents in other areas (Google, et al).
So when Congress does something like increase the number of H1B's allowed in the US at the expense of the American work force, would you consider that an act of terrorism?
No, pretty much just a troll. Rather than wonder about congress, why not wonder about the pursuasive powers of the people looking to keep US citizens in those jobs? The market doesn't seem to be there. Mandating that it be there isn't much different than mandating the value of any other service or product. At least with the H1Bs, the employer, the business activity, and the taxes are still here in the country. That beats the hell out of shipping the work overseas.
You doth protest too much, and you know it.
I always enjoyed how we would refer to terrorists that supported the United States as "freedom fighters". This was nicely driven home with Osama -- he was a "freedom fighter" when he was killing Russians, but suddenly became a "terrorist" when he started killing Americans.
Bin Laden, when supporting the Afghans against the Soviets, was fighting a totalitarian communist regime that had invaded Afghanistan strictly as a territorial grab, with no intention of setting up a local democracy and a free economy. Of course, Bin Laden wasn't there because he wanted democracy or a free economy, but because the Soviets were a threat to his vision of a pan-Islamic future. So, they're gone, and we're the next obstacle to his notion of a first-rate 1000-years-too-late Caliphate.
When an Internet worm destroys two buildings in New York City and kills thousands of people, THEN maybe you can compare 13 year old boys with too much time on their hands with terrorists.
First, let's define what a terrorist is. Where do you draw the line? 3000 people dead? 300? 30? 3? I say that someone who deliberately sets out to cause havoc, knowing that their actions will cost jobs, induce fear, require cleanup, new security measures, etc.... that person is terrorizing their audience/victims, and is a terrorist. Some are more effective at smashing store windows during witless demonstrations than they are killing people, and some are more effective at burning cash in the economy as businesses, schools, and grandmas fight malware, and some manage to kill thousands of people - but they all, by choice and deed, are causing pain, expense, suffering, and sometimes death. Those are terrorists, varying only in scope and effectiveness.
Now, is the 14 year old kid that's in to model rocketry a terrorist when his latest experiment goes sideways and catches someone's hayfield on fire? An idiot, perhaps, but not arguably someone that set out to terrorize the farmer or cost the township thousands of dollars to put out the blaze. Is the 14 year old kid that's deliberately looking for malware to kiddie-script into his own flavor and set loose in an attempt to be cool or flail against "corporations" (while using corporately made computer parts, listening to his decidedly not made-by-old-world-artisans iPod, wearing his corporately made clothing, and still alive past childbirth and unafflicted by polio and other nasties because of corporately made medical supplies) the same? No. He's intent on damage, and on making the news. He's a terrorist, just a lame one. But he's in the same camp as the guys who would blow up bridges or poison wells: chaos, fear, damage - all in the name of recognition.
Don't think hackers can physically damage things? Right here is someone's copy-and-paste of a recent article about infrastructure threats from hackers. The director of the federal agency tasked with worrying about this stuff "wished he was wearing a diaper" while watching a demo of a guy hacking a SCADA-controlled turbine at a power generating plant. Just a few clicks, turn off the lube oil pump, and you're out millions of dollars of equipment and have a piece of the grid down for weeks or months. Multiply that times several power plants at the peak of a hot August Friday night across, say, most of California, and you're going to get deaths from failed safety equipment, chaos and social damage as often happens in those circumstances, and a huge economic upheaval.
Where do the folks with an axe to grind get the chops for that stuff? From young, net-savvy kids with, as you put it, "too much time on their hands" who are disaffected, susceptible to bent ideolgies because of the feeling of inclusion, and easily intimidated. Whether young people like that are tools, or have it in them to dream up and execute stuff like this on their own, for their own Columbine-like revenge fantasy reasons, don't dismiss it as just kids' stuff. The consequences for millions of lives, jobs, and for history could be huge.
Lastly, if you (as you do seem to) consider the 9/11 attacks as terrorism - what would you have been willing to tolerate, law-enforcement-wise, intelligence-gathering-wise, to prevent them? What should the people in Spain have been willing to put up with at their train stations before 3/11? Would any of us have tolerated the preventative measures before that stuff happened? Will we have the same conversation after a large municipal drinking water supply gets raw sewage pumped into it by a cranky ex-employee who knows that the SCADA system controlling the treatment plant still has the factory default password set? Or, posts that info on some forum where a 13-year-old kid with "too much time on his hands" decides to try his hand at it?
Just think Star Trek!
You mean, the same Star Trek that routinely portrays the Federation as protective of its territory, people, and resources? Ignoring that for a moment:
Of course my argument is based on a capitalist's viewpoint. That's the only rational system by which to value production, innovation, creation, and the supply/demand realities of those things. There's a reason that creativity and innovation suffer (or are even punished) in communist settings - because the inherent differences between the levels of energy, creativity, and demand for those things between different people sticks out like a sore thumb. In a market economy, it's rewarded. In a communist setting, those people are slaves. You're not talking about a different "poliical" system, you're talking about a the difference between owning your own life, or having someone else own your life. My life's work IS my life, so you can imagine how I feel about people taking it without asking me what I think about that.
Don't scold me for using a generalization when I'm replying to a post that makes a ridiculous (and ridiculously generalized) point about "property." Note the lack of specificity, not even taking into account the nonsensical nature of the point (which didn't get made very well at all, in my opinion). From the author's context, we could assume that he considers the clothes on his back to be the necessary evil of "property," but that it's really theft. It's just blathering and sophistry meant to make people who produce things feel bad for charging for them.
"Robin [H]ood" was seen as, and it always portrayed as, a hero in stories including him. Why is the modern 'Robin Hood' suddenly the villain?
Because we're not talking about the same thing. If fact, if you look at the hostorical (well, obviously fictional) Robin Hood, and step back for a moment: what was he an outlaw from? He was cast outside a brutal, feudal system run by parasitic thugs that used violence to make slaves of the local peasants. "Stealing" the product of those peasants, from whom it was stolen, not purchased, is a lot different than stealing movies and music and given it teenagers too lazy to mow lawns so they can afford to pay for their own witless entertainment.
Only the top end of the scale get paid enough to support themselves.
Which is exactly my point! I cited Neal Stephenson specifically because, as a supremely creative writer and all around cool guy, he still only makes (by his own description) a middle class income. If he couldn't bank on that income, he couldn't even begin to put in the uninterrupted creative hours that it takes to produce recent treasures like The Baroque Cycle. His work would be wildly inferior if he also had to wait tables, or crunch insurance numbers, etc.
I do write. I produce web content, which pays a trickle. I have a "day job" consulting on web technology. I'd much, much rather be writing all day long, but my work is not of suffience value to enough people for me to be able to switch into that mode full time and still be able to feed my dogs (let alone myself).
shouldn't expect a paycheck from book royalties, because you probably aren't going to get one any time soon, and if you ever do, it's not going to be very much.
You know that's not my point. We're talking about whether or not a creative artist that actually has a large following should be able to expect that paycheck. If the original poster's sentiments were correct, the answer would be no, and that group of people on the top end of the scale would never be able to stay there, doing nothing but writing, and actually own clothing and eat. Most of us are mediocre at best. But I'm glad that the really talented people can make a living creating what they create... so that I can buy a copy of it and savor it.
Property is by nature theft
How can something that you just synthesized - produced where it didn't exist before - be theft? You must mean that producing something, and then not giving it to someone for free is what you consider theft. So, how do you rate labor? Is not laboring for someone for free also theft? If that's the case, than not agreeing to be your slave is the same as stealing from you. Your concept makes everyone a slave to everyone else, all the time, and if they don't like being a slave, then they are a thief.
You'll be a lot more pursuasive if you actually use words in a meaningful way. Defining the limits by which you're willing to spread around that which you have created is not "limiting other people's right to intellect."
From M-W:
Intellect - a: the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will: the capacity for knowledge b: the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed
That's a good definition of the word. Your intellect is your capacity for intelligence. My not entertaining you for free with my music or movie does not limit your intellect. Limited intellect is as limited intellect does (and argues).
I think the phenomenon of artists and musicians being paid huge amounts of money for their work is relatively new.
Adjust for inflation, both cultural and financial. Financial, in the sense that an artist that makes, say, $200,000 over the life of an album's sales is hardly making "huge" sums of money. Cultural inflation: the "artists" who make truly huge sums of money are way more than just singers, etc. They are cultural icons (for better or worse - gag me with a Britney), and are the loose equivalent of royalty in the past. They are rich for being famous, and rich for simply being an icon, and can lose it all very quickly when the emptiness of that eclipses the substance (see Marie Antoinette, etc).
I don't think anyone would accuse, say, Mick Jagger, of not working hard for his money. But making an album absolutely is a full time job while you're doing it, and then keeping it alive in a marketplace crowded with thousands of other performers means doing the very full-time work of keeping it promoted and selling. Appearances, tours, promotions, etc are long hard work. I spent years in that industry and know the toll it can take, especially on younger, unprepared artists.
People who love making music and art will do it regardless of whether they need to work another job or not.
No doubt! And they presumably won't care, then, if you get their music without paying for it. They may even want you to. That's great. But what if they don't want you to? Surely you wouldn't want such a lazy, selfish artist's music anyway, would you? Great: you won't pay for it, and you don't have to worry about whatever legal arrangements that artists has made to earn that money, because it won't apply to you regardless. Unless, of course, you secretly do want that artist to entertain you, and just don't feel like paying for it, in which case you start sliding down the slippery slope of hypocrisy on the subject.
I look at it this way: if you think you can satisfy your thirst for movies, music, reading material, etc., by only patronizing those artists that are willing to entertain you for free, then I'm sure you'll all get along fine. There are certainly plenty of people in that camp (both producing and consuming). But for the other artists who choose to produce and distribute their work within an I-don't-work-for-free environment, the choice is pretty simple: just don't buy their stuff. But if you're not going to buy it, and not going to listen to it through a channel like radio (where you buy it indirectly by listening to ads), then at least have the integrity to not go out and find someone who has posted a "free" copy of it and take it that way.
Certainly! On that note, I hereby grant you unlimited license to my contribution to that somewhat strained metephor. Um, unless my contribution was too derivative, in which case we'll have to defer to the guy I was responding to! Seriously, though, it's nice to have a chance at some back-and-forth that doesn't decay, immediately, into an ad hominem flamefest. Thanks for actually noticing an effort at critical thinking on an obviously contentious subject.
Anyone who takes sacks of pebbles from the mountain and says "these are now mine" is a simple rogue, legalised or not, and we all know it.
There are some "pebbles" that simply would not be added to your metaphorical mountain if their creators/innovators didn't have some expectation of being able to earn a living while producing them. Most creative types don't say to themselves, "I'm about to invest a couple-plus years of my life writing Cryptonomicon... but I'd better keep sucking up to my boss at the IHOP because my cultural history tells me I shouldn't expect a paycheck from book royalties, ever."
There is a contradiction in your message. People create under a legal framework upon which they base their expectations of interaction with other people. If they want to GPL their work, great. That defines a certain expected course of events and options. If they want to limit the distribution of their years of work to those people that are willing pay for entertainment, and thus stop waiting tables at IHOP (I know, Neal did not wait tables at IHOP), then that choice is also well supported under law. The problem we have is that people confuse the technical ability to avoid paying for someone's labor of years with the right to do so. Those authors/artists/developers that do indeed want a broader audience for their work do not necessarily mean that they want that to happen without expecting that audience to realize that the work has value, and to pay for it.
Your cultural stack of pebbles wouldn't exist without the daily work of creative people who continually add to it and also need to pay the rent. Culture is not some fixed pie to be divided up for free. It's the result of people's daily work, creativity, and commerce, and it thrives best when the most creative people available know that they can make a living doing what they do best. We all benefit, and paying an artist a few cents for their song is just fine. If you don't like that approach, then that means you don't like the artist for having made the choice to profit from their labors. And if you have any intellectual honesty, you'll decide you don't want to hear that artist's music anyway (since you can't stand the idea of them having decided to earn a living by selling, rather than giving away, their life's work).
When Slashdot makes their code sane, then we can blame the browser.
Well, what's esepcially funny is that it always renders just fine for me using MSIE. Always. Every time. Heh.
OK then, how about Trusting The Karma. Just trying to avoid the spam, dude. I don't care what a user's name is, and there are time when anonymity makes perfect sense (say, when your job may be at stake)... but ad hominem attacks aren't one of those times. Leave a trail when you're hassling somebody - it's only sporting.
Actually, I use Firefox all day long, even though I frequently turn to MSIE for some testing or specific corporate sites. I build pages for a living, and I've a long, long list of gripes about every browser, in every version. Opera in particular seems to give some table nesting some trouble that IE doesn't exhibit, but all things considered, I'd rather use FF. There's a lot of pot-calling-kettle-black about the Opera challenge, that's all. All of the kettles and pots are black. That being said, I think some sort of Ultimate Browser Agony Test is a good idea. But to suggest that it's somehow Microsoft's fault that we need one is, well, just dumb.
You win. At least my loserness is attached to my user account, you AC.