[greggman3]

As someone that once ran a company I could have easily and without malice been accused of something like wage fixing had I not had a partner more wise than me. Recruiter called, told me he wanted to recruit my employees. I asked my partner. My partner said it was up to the employee to decide, not us.

My gut would have been different. I would have considered that losing some of those employees could have killed the company and then all the other employees would be out of a job. I don't know that's the decision I would have made but the thought would have crossed my mind and it's possible I'd have made the wrong decision not knowing it was illegal.

The point I'm trying to make is it's possible Mr. Cathmull had no malicious intent and thought he was doing the right thing at the time to protect a 400 person company. If true that doesn't excuse the actual crime but it does mean he might not be the monster he's being painted to be here.

Half of HN seems to worship Steve Jobs who was also caught wage fixing. No excuse for him either.

[awal2]

I can buy this argument for a new leader of a small company, but at the time these things took place, Ed was a senior leader at a very high level for ~ten years. Also, at the time that the lawsuit covers, it was definitely not 400, but probably closer to a thousand employees, and more importantly for at least most of that period Pixar was a wholly owned component of one of the largest entertainment companies in the world (Disney). So Ed either should have known, or he shouldn't have been in a position to make those kinds of decisions. Furthermore, at the time of the lawsuit, this was not some small mom-and-pop shop trying to eke out an honest living, but was the most successful animation studio in the world for a decade, whose films were producing hundreds of millions in profits every twelve to eighteen months, so it's not like they were in some tight pinch and couldn't afford to compete on wages, they just didn't want to. As one of the principle people behind Pixar, Ed also benefited enormously from the studio's success, so to see him trying to suppress the wages of others is disappointing. In light of all this, the "oopsie, didn't mean to" line doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

With that said, he's done a lot of cool things, and deserves recognition and credit for a lot of important pieces of technology. This award is deserved.

For reference, I was involved in the class-action lawsuit as an employee of one of the other studios involved in the price fixing ring.

[tayistay]

You're missing important details. The wage fixing scheme lasted well into my time at Pixar, in which the company was over a thousand people (I received money in the settlement). Multiple executives at different companies were involved. It seems unlikely that an executive would not either know about the law, or have counsel advising on it. Let alone multiple executives at different companies.

After all, in your case, it took just two people, presumably neither lawyers, to know what not to do.

Pixar was paying software people significantly less than other companies. And they would try low-balling you, which sadly many of my colleagues fell for, all starry eyed about making movies, for whatever reason. That's just par for the course I suppose, but the wage fixing on top of that was a bit gross.

[bmm6o]

Not to sound too harsh, but it's only "without malice" when you tell it like that. It's also the story of a company that couldn't survive paying market wages, and so colluded to rob employees of a fair wage. The owners and managers benefited, the workers did not.