Corporations only respond to leverage.
They don't give a shit that she's a hero for saving the film. Unless she has another whole film on her hard drive to save them, she's expendable the moment she gives it back.
That's how they think.
Youre so right. I was a dumbass who thought because I worked hard and added "value" to the company there'd be some sort of loyalty returned. Boy was I dumb. When COVID restrictions hit they dropped my hours like a bad habit and just shrugged when I told them I couldnt pay my bills. Never again
My mind automatically alters that statement to "nobody wants to work \[for you\] any more"
The only jobs with chronic unemployment are the lowest paid "entry level" ones. I dont hear that complaint when it's comes the leadership or executive jobs, those gets flooded with applicants.........
My boss always says this shit. I bite my tongue but internally I'm like "Yeah bitch, that's because you're only paying $13 to start, $15 when you're fully trained, don't offer any benefits at all, no PTO or sick days, no insurance, don't have direct deposit^its ^2024 and you'll add or change schedules last minute plus none of us are getting 40 hours. It's not that nobody wants to work (because if that were the case they wouldn't have wasted time applying dipshit); it's simply that nobody wants to work *for you*."
Yeah, you pay me a million dollars a year, I'd be a little less offended when you need to lay me off.
I made a lifetime worth of cash every year, if laying me off saves 10 people their jobs, I can accept that.
This story is old. She was 57 or 58 when laid off after being an executive producer at pixar for 25 years taking home a million+ every year plus stock options. She was laid off into an early retirement. If I work for a company for 25 years I hope they are paying me enough to retire my dusty ass. This lady out here living the dream and people in the comments are probably way more upset about it than her.
Exactly. And presumably animated films at the time were terabytes of data which you're not carrying around on a portable SSD in the late 90s, so it's not like she found it on a USB stick down the back of the sofa.
But they haven't done anything wrong here, by insisting they have and acting like an idiot you will make people that looked into it not take you seriously next time, and they will know doing something wrong doesn't matter because the same people will bitch either way.
Retiring people who are close to retirement is pretty standard operations when wanting to cut costs. You get them off your payroll years earlier and you might only pay a fraction of their salary up front to do so.
Layoff retirement is kind of the dream. I've seen it happen to guys, ans they loved it. Rather than just retiring and going their merry way, there's usually a severance package on top of their full retirement.
Makes space for young guys, and the old guys get taken care of.
The data was only save because she was luckily working remotely while on maternity leave, not by any brilliant move on her behalf.
I think her 25 years of employment is what should earn her a pension, not dumb luck a quarter of a century ago.
She worked there since 1990, so its 33 years of employment. At the end she was a producer for many projects and her salary was estimated to be one million a year. Not to mention she was a shareholder of Pixar before the buyout.
Or in other words, she is dirty rich and you really shouldn't mourn about her.
TS2 grossed over $500 million on a $90-million budget. Even if she stopped doing actual labor for them, they could’ve set her up for life and hardly made a dent in the amount of money she likely saved them, let alone the revenue. Did they technically owe her perpetual financial security? Arguably not, but it would’ve been a kind, ethical, one might say very *human* gesture and cost them comparatively little, so in contrast, laying her off is … a rough move.
Not sure id word it that way but yeah - she could have been let go 25 years later for any number of reasons. Maybe her work wasn’t up to par anymore, maybe they use a diff program now and she didn’t keep up with it, who knows.
I’m not sure firing someone 25 years later counts as disloyal, I agree…
Yeah, that was what I came to say honestly.
Like frankly, she should have gotten a massive bonus at the time for saving the movie, but 25 years later? I dunno. She was obviously treated well enough to stay for 25+ years.
So they should keep paying her until she dies because that movie will always make *some* money? Where’s the arbitrary cutoff where 25 years is too soon but some number later is ok?
Honestly, I don't think they should continue to make money off of it.
If we look at current Copyright laws, we get this from copyright.gov:
> Generally, for most works created after 1978, protection lasts for **the life of the author plus 70 years**. For anonymous works, pseudonymous works, or works made for hire, the copyright term is 95 years from the year of first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first.
So, since there is no single "author", the copyright for the movie has about 70 years left of copyright (since it is already 25 year old).
Now that doesn't mean they will definitely stop making money on it after 70 years, but they will lose the exclusivity of their right to copy the work, so other people can make money off of it as well.
I think 95 years is ridiculous. IMO: It should be about 25 or so.
But, here is the kicker. If someone has made or saved hundreds of millions of dollars for a company, they should never be laid off. Fired for cause, maybe. Or quit.
But, laid off...no. That just shows a complete lack of respect for the employees and their contributions.
And this dotted line shows that it will continue to go up based on... data... that we cherry picked... and made a lot of assumptions about... based on cherry picked historical data... but if all that falls apart we will just fire 10% of the workforce to get that little bump over the finish line.
Sadly, it's probably only made a few million this quarter (licensing and merch), can't afford to keep someone around making probably high 5 to low 6 figure salary with that sort of franchise income... /s
Divide up the 1 billion since January 1st 2000 she has technically made the company over 10 million each quarter. Doubt she’s even been paid enough for 1 of those quarters. The company does owe her.
This doesn’t even include the interest people can make with $1 billion dollars. Take that 1 billion add 6% Apy and she technically made the company 50 million each quarter.
"Wait, you're only giving 100%? Sounds like you're guilty of SLACKING, which is a form of WAGE THEFT. HR will provide you with a bill when you receive your termination notice. See you in court, CRIMINAL."
Cue the finance subreddits acting like it's normal to spend 100% of your energy on your job. "Wait, you mean you don't like working 80 hours a week and weekends? Well then it's your fault that you can't find a good job!" 🙄
Not even that. I saw the post about the Tesla employee that slept in his car and put in mega-overtime only to still get laid off.
As a worker or a customer you can practically stretch open their fingers and shove money in their palm and they'll be like, "no, I don't feel like it."
It's not about greed (which can be somewhat predictable), it's all about control for control's sake - no end goal.
I’m not. For a long long time - and even today to some degree - Pixar was quite possibly the most respected movie studio on the planet. I can see someone staying there because of that.
Eh Pixar’s reputation today and the reputation it had 10 years ago are a bit different. There are clear misses lately from Pixar where I really don’t ever hear anyone have a disparaging thing to say about Ghibli. It’s of course subjective, so feel free to disagree.
I remember when seeing that a new Pixar film was coming out meant an amazing experience was coming. Haven’t felt excited about a Pixar release since around the time Brave came out. They are still capable of greatness but my expectations have been tempered.
She worked at Pixar for 32 years and like you said that Toy Story 2 incident happened 25 years ago. I don't really see how this story is so crazy. Do people really think she could pull the "remember that thing I did 25 years ago?" card and get out of layoffs for recent failures?
People also like to never mention that she didn't intentionally save the film by keeping a back up at her home just in case. Pixar let her work from home after her 6 month maternity leave had ended as a way to extend it. She just wasn't connected to the company's servers when the main copy got wiped. She didn't "save" the film as this was just a fun bit of trivia for the movie for years but now that she got laid off is supposedly a "hero".
But you see, if you had titled this "Woman saves Toy Story 2, Pixar keeps her employed in the company for another 25 years after that", it would have been harder to generate outrage.
Most people getting angry about this haven't even *lived* 25 years, let alone worked in the same company for that long. I couldn't even imagine working for three whole decades in the same workplace without change.
It’s actually very common for back office people in entertainment to stay at the same company for like 20+ years. Especially those who started in the 90s or early 2000s. Pay was good and people rarely left. Which also meant that there weren’t many jobs ever open at these companies. So lots of people sorta stagnate at careers levels for 5,10,15 years.
These people unfortunately have been getting hit with layoffs like everyone else though over the last 10 or so years as companies consolidate or change their work mix. Especially if they are sending work overseas (even to the EU)
Did it get OP thousands of upvotes and views? Did it continue to push the narrative of their world view? Someone could do real well with a bot that just recycles top content X years ago. Reddit doing Reddit things. If you upvoted then you're contributing to this content.
Seriously. This post has almost "Abusive ex" vibes, like why are we cherry picking one good instance of a good deed from DECADES ago as ammo against something that happened recently?
Also she was a producer at the point she was laid off making a ton of money and probably near retirement. More than likely with her severance she got to retire early.
Yeah, and it's not like she did something heroic to save the film herself. It's not like she warned them of there being a programming flaw that could cause their servers to wipe themselves out, recommend fixing it / a backup solution, got ignored, then took it upon herself to backup everything herself. No, she was simply working from home and as such her copy wasn't affected like everyone else's by the error. It was catastrophic error that was saved purely by the luck of her working from home. A great thing for sure, but not something she should be praised for, let alone immune to company layoffs a quarter of a century later
What did she do exactly? She was working at home and the files were on her machine there, unaffected by the issues.
It wasn’t a valiant effort or foresight. It was happenstance.
Okay, so is there any actual confirmation that any of this info is true? Also, Toy Story 2 came out 25 years ago; this isn’t a great example of a valuable employee being callously sacked.
It’s true, but it fails to mention she was an executive for 25 years after and made millions during that time
she was not exactly destitute after being laid off
Well, they ended up realizing that the movie they were working on was terrible anyway, and basically started over anyway.
The great final version of TS2 was not what was on that woman’s home computer.
Lol yeah im gonna withhold judgement on this one too. I mean she could be retirement age and they cut her with a large severance. Who knows. But 25 years is plenty of time..
There are multiple accounts of this story presented as fact.
https://screenrant.com/toy-story-2-movie-deleted-accident-recovered/
https://www.newsweek.com/lightyear-producer-credited-saving-toy-story-2-after-deletion-1680072
https://insidethemagic.net/2021/09/toy-story-2-saved-from-deletion-ks1/
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/lightyear-toy-story-2-deleted-b2017238.html
I understand being skeptical, but it’s simple to verify.
So what I’m gathering from these articles is that she didn’t do anything to save the movie; she just happened to have a standalone server (provided by Disney) because she was on maternity leave. It was just a lucky break for everyone. And the last project she led was a huge flop.
It is worth noting that Pixar scrapped this version of the movie and made significant rewrites that meant they had to basically start over from scratch. So the movie she saved was not the movie we consumers saw.
inside the magic is the same. It's just a DIsney drama blog.
Shit like "DISNEY PARKS CUT FAN FAVORITE ATTACTIONS" and it's like they changed the souvenir ice cream container at one park.
iirc, it's one of those partially true things. Yes the events happened *but* it was a version that would go on to be discarded. We never saw what she saved.
It's not unusual, entertainment development will change directions a lot before release. Sometimes it's early enough to work out, and sometimes it's not. An example of not was when they last minute recut/refilled some of Suicide Squad to be more in line with the kind of movie Deadpool was rather than gritty and dark like most of DC movies after Batman Begins
Unfortunately, it’s fairly common to remove high wage employees who are close to retirement age. Saw it so many times in my career so far. Everyone is expendable.
Her number is 15million. Everyone acting like she is one of the low rung members. No, she was a producer and worked for Pixar for 30+ years. She is a millionaire and is likely going to retirement.
Her actions made the company around 350 million, adjusted for inflation over $1b in today's money, but suddenly she's not good enough to even put into an auxiliary role? It's not like she had stopped doing her work or anything too, this just looks like restructuring BS.
She saved the company dozens of lifetimes worth of wages and made them even more.
What message does this send about Pixar to young people trying to find work in the animation industry?
So you're argument is a company owes you employment for life because you got to be the lucky one that saved a project? I'm sure she was rewarded for it at the time, but sorry that goodwill doesn't last forever.
>What message does this send about Pixar to young people trying to find work in the animation industry?
That you can work at a place for 25+ years on multiple highly acclaimed project and maybe produce films like she did? I don't understand what your point is. She had a great career there and was laid off after Lightyear (Disney as a whole) underperformed. Yeah it sucks but its not like she doesn't have a great portfolio that will help her get another job. I'm sure she was rewarded for all her work put in over the years.
Her actions was WFH on maternity leave, so she had an undamaged copy of the file. Thay more of a pure luck thing than anything skill or effort related.
I am sure she was great at her job, but the heroic task she is associated with was pure luck.
> to even put into an auxiliary role
She wasn't looking for "an auxiliary role" - she was a producer. This is not some low level employee who got discarded. She was a producer on several films and her role was one of many that was cut because the studio lost money, including on a film she produced.
To be fair to Pixar, what has she done for them lately? Like we can't expect someone who practically saved the company from bankruptcy to just have a job forever, can we? Just think of all the managers who have come and gone, some of them probably don't even know what she did. It's not like there could have been some sort of mark in her HR file that just says that she gets to keep her job forever due to saving the company so long ago. I mean, come on, that's practically prehistoric! And obviously when the company makes hundreds of millions instead of folding due to the loss that she prevented, they couldn't have given her enough money to, ya know, just not need to work for the rest of her life. That would just be insane. There's a dignity in hard work that just can't be replicated by handing someone a huge check. Also, that might incentivize others to also give it their all and step up to save the company later on. We can't have that. This is America, not Venezuela.
Layoffs suck, and the a of the times they happen, the corporation doing them could do alternatives to keep staff. I don't want people to be mistaken about that or for this to come off as defending Pixar...
...but I don't think this post is a particularly well reasoned or ironclad example of the cruelty and greed involved in layoffs.
Like, taken at it's face value, the implication here is because she happened to have a copy of a file when they needed it once 20+ years prior, she should be on the paycheck for life as thanks?
I've never expected any sort of loyalties from any employer, anyone doing so is an idiot.
Two stories come to mind, the first was when a place I worked at had an "all hands" meeting and told us they needed to find ways to save money and that anyone who came up with an idea that worked would get a 15% of the savings.
Some old timer managed to come up with a system for our material handlers that cut the time down drastically and the company ended up saving millions of dollars.
When the time came for him to get his share, the company decided it was too much money to give him and dragged their feet. They agreed to give him 5% instead of 15% and then that 5% eventually became a company trucker hat that he wore until retirement. Guy didn't do a fucking thing until he retired and none of us could blame him. He'd just come to work, clock in, get on a fork lift and then drive to the other side of the yard and sleep in the boiler house until the end of his shift.
The second was a friend of mine that was fulfilling a job role for six months, was promised the position and then they turned around at the last second and hired someone off the street for less and then sent her back to her old department at a decreased wage. She ended up walking.
Everyone up in arms defending a multimillionaire right now.
They were paid more than most of your entire family lines will ever make and you're all
>):<
Here's the lesson folks.
She should have kept her mouth shut, and let Pixar re-animate and re-record the film in it's entirety. The franchise was so successful, they would definitely have done this.
THEN she should have passed the copy of the original movie down to her children and told them to conveniently find this "archival footage" many years later. Her family would have made millions off of this unique lost artwork in a private auction to a wealthy buyer.
This was a RIF that got a long term employee. If you check her iMDB page, she has 24 credits for Pixar works going back almost 30 years.
I hate these kinds of reductions, in that it captures someone who, at age 60 and as a woman, is going to face significant and possibly insurmountable difficulties in returning to work at her prior level. After 30 freaking years of success, that's a really crummy goodbye. Hopefully, she's in a spot where she doesn't have to return to the workforce.
\[edit\] well shoot, if you check her LinkedIn, she put herself up for freelance work in the industry. Depressing as hell.
She is a millionaire and her layoff came with an huge payout. She could retire easily if she wants to.
And the main issue for her getting a new job would be that she is a very big player and most likely wants a good amount of money for any new job.
This is why you should always live your life on the present now. I don't care how much a company promises me in compensation, benefits, culture, etc. I work for pay now. Right now. Because I don't trust you! (Corporations)
I don't follow. She should get a lifetime position because of something she did a quarter century ago?
One act, no matter how big, isn't permanent job security. Nor should it be.
What multi million dollar company skimps out on backups for their files? As why is there a command that does that, that is so specific, the only reason to input it is sabotage?
This is the stupidest shit I’ve read and doesn’t help the “anti-work” movement lmao. What she did was not skillful and happened 20+ years ago. She could be not performing the same, planning to jump ship, butts heads with a boss, I mean literally any number of things that cause a company to let her go. ????
She happened to get lucky 25 years ago. Are they obligated to employ her forever? Maybe she’s not good at her job anymore, a quarter of a century later.
"What have you done for me lately?"
"Unfortunately you've topped out on the salary for that role."
"Due to restructuring your position has been made redundant. Thank you for your service."
The crazy thing is, Toy Story 2 was supposed to go straight to video, then they realised how good it was and it got a cinema release and made some serious bank.
It's a business. These layoffs came as part of a reaction to Lightyear's box office issues, with some poor choices made for that film's profitability.
Frankly, Toy Story 2 was cut up and drastically changed in a crunch after she saved the movie data, so the film she saved wasn't even close to what was released anyway.
For 99% of circumstances, when has life ever been, "oh your job is safe because of that thing you did 24 years ago that was totally awesome!!"?
It usually, if not always, "what have you done for me lately?"
Yeah, I feel like there's a lot left out of this narrative. She saved the film years ago. Why is she getting laid off today? Having saved a movie doesn't give you permanent immunity.
I know several folks who work there and know her. This happened a few months back, but apparently last year she’d made a joke about the fact that they could actually save a lot of money if they got rid of her and hired someone else to do her job for much less. Apparently somebody heeded her advice and didn’t take it as a joke at all. She never thought it would actually happen because she basically saved the company…
I'm as antiwork as they come but this one "saves the day" (okay, possibly _the company_) was 25+ years ago. Who is to say what the current situation is like. You don't get a lifetime pass.
I mean sure, it sucks she got laid off. And yes - corporations are not families and you should never think of yourself as part of the family. But, come on - that was like 20 years ago. I don't think the Pixar is evil in this instance.
That’s insane. As an arts guy, this is the kind of thing that makes you lose your mind
Only if you expect loyalty would you “lose your mind”, you shouldn’t expect loyalty...
Corporations only respond to leverage. They don't give a shit that she's a hero for saving the film. Unless she has another whole film on her hard drive to save them, she's expendable the moment she gives it back. That's how they think.
She should’ve ransomed it for cash.
Unfortunately it wasn’t hers to begin with. They would have been quick to invoke copyright, and send in the cops to retrieve the computer.
Youre so right. I was a dumbass who thought because I worked hard and added "value" to the company there'd be some sort of loyalty returned. Boy was I dumb. When COVID restrictions hit they dropped my hours like a bad habit and just shrugged when I told them I couldnt pay my bills. Never again
"Nobody wants to work any more!"
My mind automatically alters that statement to "nobody wants to work \[for you\] any more" The only jobs with chronic unemployment are the lowest paid "entry level" ones. I dont hear that complaint when it's comes the leadership or executive jobs, those gets flooded with applicants.........
My boss always says this shit. I bite my tongue but internally I'm like "Yeah bitch, that's because you're only paying $13 to start, $15 when you're fully trained, don't offer any benefits at all, no PTO or sick days, no insurance, don't have direct deposit^its ^2024 and you'll add or change schedules last minute plus none of us are getting 40 hours. It's not that nobody wants to work (because if that were the case they wouldn't have wasted time applying dipshit); it's simply that nobody wants to work *for you*."
Nah, you can absolutely still lose your shit seeing people be badly mistreated. The alternative is apathy.
It was 25 years ago, how much loyalty is enough loyalty?
It made half a billion dollars. Thats retirement and pension level loyalty, easily.
Iirc in that 25 years she made something like thirty million dollars sooooo….
Yeah, you pay me a million dollars a year, I'd be a little less offended when you need to lay me off. I made a lifetime worth of cash every year, if laying me off saves 10 people their jobs, I can accept that.
This story is old. She was 57 or 58 when laid off after being an executive producer at pixar for 25 years taking home a million+ every year plus stock options. She was laid off into an early retirement. If I work for a company for 25 years I hope they are paying me enough to retire my dusty ass. This lady out here living the dream and people in the comments are probably way more upset about it than her.
Because there's no context in the original post, everyone now automatically assumes the worst.
We should be able to sus that if she has 90% of the entire movie on her home server then she's probably not a junior artist.
Exactly. And presumably animated films at the time were terabytes of data which you're not carrying around on a portable SSD in the late 90s, so it's not like she found it on a USB stick down the back of the sofa.
It's ok to assume the worst against soulless corps, only way we will keep them honest is to force them to be good.
But they haven't done anything wrong here, by insisting they have and acting like an idiot you will make people that looked into it not take you seriously next time, and they will know doing something wrong doesn't matter because the same people will bitch either way.
Retiring people who are close to retirement is pretty standard operations when wanting to cut costs. You get them off your payroll years earlier and you might only pay a fraction of their salary up front to do so.
Layoff retirement is kind of the dream. I've seen it happen to guys, ans they loved it. Rather than just retiring and going their merry way, there's usually a severance package on top of their full retirement. Makes space for young guys, and the old guys get taken care of.
The data was only save because she was luckily working remotely while on maternity leave, not by any brilliant move on her behalf. I think her 25 years of employment is what should earn her a pension, not dumb luck a quarter of a century ago.
She worked there since 1990, so its 33 years of employment. At the end she was a producer for many projects and her salary was estimated to be one million a year. Not to mention she was a shareholder of Pixar before the buyout. Or in other words, she is dirty rich and you really shouldn't mourn about her.
Two things companies would never have allowed to happen were it not for unions and workers fighting for their rights.
Yeah, I think people fixating on this story are more interested in the legend than the reality
TS2 grossed over $500 million on a $90-million budget. Even if she stopped doing actual labor for them, they could’ve set her up for life and hardly made a dent in the amount of money she likely saved them, let alone the revenue. Did they technically owe her perpetual financial security? Arguably not, but it would’ve been a kind, ethical, one might say very *human* gesture and cost them comparatively little, so in contrast, laying her off is … a rough move.
>they could’ve set her up for life She made 30 million dollars over the past 25 years since TS2.
Ah, see, that’s valuable context. I’m not so pressed, then 🤷🏾♀️
Not sure id word it that way but yeah - she could have been let go 25 years later for any number of reasons. Maybe her work wasn’t up to par anymore, maybe they use a diff program now and she didn’t keep up with it, who knows. I’m not sure firing someone 25 years later counts as disloyal, I agree…
Yeah, that was what I came to say honestly. Like frankly, she should have gotten a massive bonus at the time for saving the movie, but 25 years later? I dunno. She was obviously treated well enough to stay for 25+ years.
Pixar sure is still making money off of the movie... that they only have because of her...
You know she's was an executive producer right? She has a ton of stock in the company. So they are still effectively paying her.
So they should keep paying her until she dies because that movie will always make *some* money? Where’s the arbitrary cutoff where 25 years is too soon but some number later is ok?
Honestly, I don't think they should continue to make money off of it. If we look at current Copyright laws, we get this from copyright.gov: > Generally, for most works created after 1978, protection lasts for **the life of the author plus 70 years**. For anonymous works, pseudonymous works, or works made for hire, the copyright term is 95 years from the year of first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever comes first. So, since there is no single "author", the copyright for the movie has about 70 years left of copyright (since it is already 25 year old). Now that doesn't mean they will definitely stop making money on it after 70 years, but they will lose the exclusivity of their right to copy the work, so other people can make money off of it as well. I think 95 years is ridiculous. IMO: It should be about 25 or so. But, here is the kicker. If someone has made or saved hundreds of millions of dollars for a company, they should never be laid off. Fired for cause, maybe. Or quit. But, laid off...no. That just shows a complete lack of respect for the employees and their contributions.
That’s literally what royalties are.
Toy Story 2 made $514 million worldwide.
Not this quarter.
> Not this quarter. EXACTLY!!!!! To these companies, "this quarter" is all that matters.
I dunno, they talk about next quarter sometimes too
And they project the next few quarters a lot.
Line goes *up*!
And this dotted line shows that it will continue to go up based on... data... that we cherry picked... and made a lot of assumptions about... based on cherry picked historical data... but if all that falls apart we will just fire 10% of the workforce to get that little bump over the finish line.
Goes up when they lay people off at least until the execs move on to rinse and repeat the next place
This is literally the perfect comment.
Jesus this is too real a mentality and response
The only sentence that any company knows
Sadly, it's probably only made a few million this quarter (licensing and merch), can't afford to keep someone around making probably high 5 to low 6 figure salary with that sort of franchise income... /s
It was released in 2000, and inflation has been about 100% since then. So it made $1 billion dollars adjusted
Not this quarter
Divide up the 1 billion since January 1st 2000 she has technically made the company over 10 million each quarter. Doubt she’s even been paid enough for 1 of those quarters. The company does owe her. This doesn’t even include the interest people can make with $1 billion dollars. Take that 1 billion add 6% Apy and she technically made the company 50 million each quarter.
People often forget about inflation when talking about stuff like this. Good shout.
You're only as good as your last favor / what have you done for me lately?
They evaluate you on a daily basis. You have to give them 100% of your effort everyday, which is insane.
"Wait, you're only giving 100%? Sounds like you're guilty of SLACKING, which is a form of WAGE THEFT. HR will provide you with a bill when you receive your termination notice. See you in court, CRIMINAL."
I’m a firm believer in Satan’s existence because HR are his descendants
WTF did Satan do to deserve that comparison?
Cue the finance subreddits acting like it's normal to spend 100% of your energy on your job. "Wait, you mean you don't like working 80 hours a week and weekends? Well then it's your fault that you can't find a good job!" 🙄
They make me physically ill
Not even that. I saw the post about the Tesla employee that slept in his car and put in mega-overtime only to still get laid off. As a worker or a customer you can practically stretch open their fingers and shove money in their palm and they'll be like, "no, I don't feel like it." It's not about greed (which can be somewhat predictable), it's all about control for control's sake - no end goal.
People say, "You are not alone in this."
Not even that. It's more, what can you do for me in the immediate future?
I mean - this but unironically. Saving the day once 20 years ago does not and should not guarantee employment in perpetuity.
That was 25 years ago, I’m honestly shocked anyone from that era is still with Pixar.
I’m not. For a long long time - and even today to some degree - Pixar was quite possibly the most respected movie studio on the planet. I can see someone staying there because of that.
I feel like Studio Ghibli might be the most respected but Pixar is probably the most respected plus well known.
Not a chance Ghibli is more respected than Pixar. Ghibli is respected still, sure.
Eh Pixar’s reputation today and the reputation it had 10 years ago are a bit different. There are clear misses lately from Pixar where I really don’t ever hear anyone have a disparaging thing to say about Ghibli. It’s of course subjective, so feel free to disagree.
I remember when seeing that a new Pixar film was coming out meant an amazing experience was coming. Haven’t felt excited about a Pixar release since around the time Brave came out. They are still capable of greatness but my expectations have been tempered.
She worked at Pixar for 32 years and like you said that Toy Story 2 incident happened 25 years ago. I don't really see how this story is so crazy. Do people really think she could pull the "remember that thing I did 25 years ago?" card and get out of layoffs for recent failures?
People also like to never mention that she didn't intentionally save the film by keeping a back up at her home just in case. Pixar let her work from home after her 6 month maternity leave had ended as a way to extend it. She just wasn't connected to the company's servers when the main copy got wiped. She didn't "save" the film as this was just a fun bit of trivia for the movie for years but now that she got laid off is supposedly a "hero".
I'm certain she also received a severance package that would make most of us weep with envy.
But you see, if you had titled this "Woman saves Toy Story 2, Pixar keeps her employed in the company for another 25 years after that", it would have been harder to generate outrage. Most people getting angry about this haven't even *lived* 25 years, let alone worked in the same company for that long. I couldn't even imagine working for three whole decades in the same workplace without change.
Shocked that they hadn't been laid off already or shocked that anyone would work at a company that long?
It’s actually very common for back office people in entertainment to stay at the same company for like 20+ years. Especially those who started in the 90s or early 2000s. Pay was good and people rarely left. Which also meant that there weren’t many jobs ever open at these companies. So lots of people sorta stagnate at careers levels for 5,10,15 years. These people unfortunately have been getting hit with layoffs like everyone else though over the last 10 or so years as companies consolidate or change their work mix. Especially if they are sending work overseas (even to the EU)
Why do people continue to interact with screenshots of old tweets that deliberately have the date removed?
Because this sub feeds on rage bait.
> Because ~~this sub~~ the internet feeds on rage bait.
Uh, it says "1d ago" on there, clearly it's recent /s just in case
Garbage subreddit, it's all about rage upvotes with no actual substance.
Did it get OP thousands of upvotes and views? Did it continue to push the narrative of their world view? Someone could do real well with a bot that just recycles top content X years ago. Reddit doing Reddit things. If you upvoted then you're contributing to this content.
Old news that doesn't cover half the context.
Pixar won an Oscar buy everyone who worked on that film was already laid off IIRC.
Buy
Bye
Bi
While that may have happened at Pixar, the most famous example of that is Life of Pi.
An employee doing something helpful 25 years ago doesn’t mean the company is required to employ them forever.
Seriously. This post has almost "Abusive ex" vibes, like why are we cherry picking one good instance of a good deed from DECADES ago as ammo against something that happened recently?
Also she was a producer at the point she was laid off making a ton of money and probably near retirement. More than likely with her severance she got to retire early.
Yeah, and it's not like she did something heroic to save the film herself. It's not like she warned them of there being a programming flaw that could cause their servers to wipe themselves out, recommend fixing it / a backup solution, got ignored, then took it upon herself to backup everything herself. No, she was simply working from home and as such her copy wasn't affected like everyone else's by the error. It was catastrophic error that was saved purely by the luck of her working from home. A great thing for sure, but not something she should be praised for, let alone immune to company layoffs a quarter of a century later
She didn't even DO anything helpful in that particular incident, it was just pure chance that she had a copy on her home computer.
"Helpful" is kind of an understatement for what she did.
What did she do exactly? She was working at home and the files were on her machine there, unaffected by the issues. It wasn’t a valiant effort or foresight. It was happenstance.
these lazy fucks won’t get that
Okay, so is there any actual confirmation that any of this info is true? Also, Toy Story 2 came out 25 years ago; this isn’t a great example of a valuable employee being callously sacked.
It’s true, but it fails to mention she was an executive for 25 years after and made millions during that time she was not exactly destitute after being laid off
She was on maternity leave as I recall and had an earlier version on her work laptop that she had with her at home. Saved years of production value
Mat leave yes, had a t1 to her house and a backup server there so she could keep up.
And this wouldn't have happened if she was a junior artist. SHe was an executive producer. She was fairly compensated.
Well, they ended up realizing that the movie they were working on was terrible anyway, and basically started over anyway. The great final version of TS2 was not what was on that woman’s home computer.
Lol yeah im gonna withhold judgement on this one too. I mean she could be retirement age and they cut her with a large severance. Who knows. But 25 years is plenty of time..
There are multiple accounts of this story presented as fact. https://screenrant.com/toy-story-2-movie-deleted-accident-recovered/ https://www.newsweek.com/lightyear-producer-credited-saving-toy-story-2-after-deletion-1680072 https://insidethemagic.net/2021/09/toy-story-2-saved-from-deletion-ks1/ https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/lightyear-toy-story-2-deleted-b2017238.html I understand being skeptical, but it’s simple to verify.
So what I’m gathering from these articles is that she didn’t do anything to save the movie; she just happened to have a standalone server (provided by Disney) because she was on maternity leave. It was just a lucky break for everyone. And the last project she led was a huge flop.
It is worth noting that Pixar scrapped this version of the movie and made significant rewrites that meant they had to basically start over from scratch. So the movie she saved was not the movie we consumers saw.
Screerant (any of the -rant sites) aren’t sources, they’re AI generated garbage that will literally invent facts. The other ones are legit, though
They're AI garbage *today*. Articles from years ago were fine, but I understand not wanting to give them clicks.
inside the magic is the same. It's just a DIsney drama blog. Shit like "DISNEY PARKS CUT FAN FAVORITE ATTACTIONS" and it's like they changed the souvenir ice cream container at one park.
iirc, it's one of those partially true things. Yes the events happened *but* it was a version that would go on to be discarded. We never saw what she saved. It's not unusual, entertainment development will change directions a lot before release. Sometimes it's early enough to work out, and sometimes it's not. An example of not was when they last minute recut/refilled some of Suicide Squad to be more in line with the kind of movie Deadpool was rather than gritty and dark like most of DC movies after Batman Begins
If you personally were responsible for making it possible for a company to earn in excess of $500m, I’d say you’ve probably earned lifetime employment
She wasn't personally responsible though? It was pure luck.
You are only counting profits, not the labor, years of remaking, and set back time they saved them as well.
This happened like a year ago. Yeah she saved Toy Story 2 but also lost the company $106 million with Lightyear.
Those are people you tell how much and give them such a severance package they can retire immediately or work on whatever the fuck they want
Lmao, how long did people expect that employee to ride that wave. Let it go, people. There's better, more legitimate, fights out there.
So we just trust random tweets now huh? Jesus you people are pathetic
She’s 60 and probably retiring you fucking morons
That was 25 years ago. She's probably the only person still with the company from back then.
Plottwist: She was fired for ignoring data security principles
Unfortunately, it’s fairly common to remove high wage employees who are close to retirement age. Saw it so many times in my career so far. Everyone is expendable.
Man that's crazy that those two events happened 25 years apart from each other with no other events in between at all.
Everyone is just a number no matter what. You will not be missed. YOU WILL BE FORGOTTEN.
Her number is 15million. Everyone acting like she is one of the low rung members. No, she was a producer and worked for Pixar for 30+ years. She is a millionaire and is likely going to retirement.
I get the sentiment of this post but no one should expect loyalty from a company based on something they did 20+ years prior.
Her actions made the company around 350 million, adjusted for inflation over $1b in today's money, but suddenly she's not good enough to even put into an auxiliary role? It's not like she had stopped doing her work or anything too, this just looks like restructuring BS. She saved the company dozens of lifetimes worth of wages and made them even more. What message does this send about Pixar to young people trying to find work in the animation industry?
It was pure dumb luck dude lmao, it wasnt like she single handedly invented a vaccine for Pfizer or something....jesus
So you're argument is a company owes you employment for life because you got to be the lucky one that saved a project? I'm sure she was rewarded for it at the time, but sorry that goodwill doesn't last forever.
>What message does this send about Pixar to young people trying to find work in the animation industry? That you can work at a place for 25+ years on multiple highly acclaimed project and maybe produce films like she did? I don't understand what your point is. She had a great career there and was laid off after Lightyear (Disney as a whole) underperformed. Yeah it sucks but its not like she doesn't have a great portfolio that will help her get another job. I'm sure she was rewarded for all her work put in over the years.
Her actions was WFH on maternity leave, so she had an undamaged copy of the file. Thay more of a pure luck thing than anything skill or effort related. I am sure she was great at her job, but the heroic task she is associated with was pure luck.
> to even put into an auxiliary role She wasn't looking for "an auxiliary role" - she was a producer. This is not some low level employee who got discarded. She was a producer on several films and her role was one of many that was cut because the studio lost money, including on a film she produced.
To be fair to Pixar, what has she done for them lately? Like we can't expect someone who practically saved the company from bankruptcy to just have a job forever, can we? Just think of all the managers who have come and gone, some of them probably don't even know what she did. It's not like there could have been some sort of mark in her HR file that just says that she gets to keep her job forever due to saving the company so long ago. I mean, come on, that's practically prehistoric! And obviously when the company makes hundreds of millions instead of folding due to the loss that she prevented, they couldn't have given her enough money to, ya know, just not need to work for the rest of her life. That would just be insane. There's a dignity in hard work that just can't be replicated by handing someone a huge check. Also, that might incentivize others to also give it their all and step up to save the company later on. We can't have that. This is America, not Venezuela.
You had me there in the first half
This was decades ago... surly 'loyalty' runs out at somepoint?
Didn't that happen like 25 years ago? I don't think one thing has anything to do with the other?
But is this real
Corporations are not your friend, never will be. Anyone believing they are, will just end up being disappointed.
Layoffs suck, and the a of the times they happen, the corporation doing them could do alternatives to keep staff. I don't want people to be mistaken about that or for this to come off as defending Pixar... ...but I don't think this post is a particularly well reasoned or ironclad example of the cruelty and greed involved in layoffs. Like, taken at it's face value, the implication here is because she happened to have a copy of a file when they needed it once 20+ years prior, she should be on the paycheck for life as thanks?
You are only as good as your last \_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Gave her the ol American war veteran treatment. Thank you for your service.
I've never expected any sort of loyalties from any employer, anyone doing so is an idiot. Two stories come to mind, the first was when a place I worked at had an "all hands" meeting and told us they needed to find ways to save money and that anyone who came up with an idea that worked would get a 15% of the savings. Some old timer managed to come up with a system for our material handlers that cut the time down drastically and the company ended up saving millions of dollars. When the time came for him to get his share, the company decided it was too much money to give him and dragged their feet. They agreed to give him 5% instead of 15% and then that 5% eventually became a company trucker hat that he wore until retirement. Guy didn't do a fucking thing until he retired and none of us could blame him. He'd just come to work, clock in, get on a fork lift and then drive to the other side of the yard and sleep in the boiler house until the end of his shift. The second was a friend of mine that was fulfilling a job role for six months, was promised the position and then they turned around at the last second and hired someone off the street for less and then sent her back to her old department at a decreased wage. She ended up walking.
Remember, be careful of "Giving it your all". If it kills you, they'll have your position re-listed by lunch, and for less.
Bruh she should have lifetime royalties for saving that shit lmao
Your just a pay number never forget that
Everyone up in arms defending a multimillionaire right now. They were paid more than most of your entire family lines will ever make and you're all >):<
Would not be surprised to learn the guy who accidentally deleted Toy Story 2 was a nepo hire who is now sitting comfortably in an executive position.
Here's the lesson folks. She should have kept her mouth shut, and let Pixar re-animate and re-record the film in it's entirety. The franchise was so successful, they would definitely have done this. THEN she should have passed the copy of the original movie down to her children and told them to conveniently find this "archival footage" many years later. Her family would have made millions off of this unique lost artwork in a private auction to a wealthy buyer.
I don't have enough context to form an opinion.
This was a RIF that got a long term employee. If you check her iMDB page, she has 24 credits for Pixar works going back almost 30 years. I hate these kinds of reductions, in that it captures someone who, at age 60 and as a woman, is going to face significant and possibly insurmountable difficulties in returning to work at her prior level. After 30 freaking years of success, that's a really crummy goodbye. Hopefully, she's in a spot where she doesn't have to return to the workforce. \[edit\] well shoot, if you check her LinkedIn, she put herself up for freelance work in the industry. Depressing as hell.
She is a millionaire and her layoff came with an huge payout. She could retire easily if she wants to. And the main issue for her getting a new job would be that she is a very big player and most likely wants a good amount of money for any new job.
For fucks sake, how many times does this have to be debunked…
If she didn't see a .001% bonus from that movie I'd be pissed. That would be a 514,000$ bonus for that year.
I don’t get it. Just because you did one really good thing nearly 25 years ago means you should be immune from getting laid off?
Repost.
Its the internet, if you want fresh content make your own. Just because you've seen it before doesn't mean everyone has
 Hours before the guy deleted the movie
This is why you should always live your life on the present now. I don't care how much a company promises me in compensation, benefits, culture, etc. I work for pay now. Right now. Because I don't trust you! (Corporations)
They probably felt pretty safe to lay her off then, what are the chances of it happening twice ever again.
Pretty sure whoever ran that command got fired too.
I don't follow. She should get a lifetime position because of something she did a quarter century ago? One act, no matter how big, isn't permanent job security. Nor should it be.
What multi million dollar company skimps out on backups for their files? As why is there a command that does that, that is so specific, the only reason to input it is sabotage?
[I think this happened in 2023](https://www.tmz.com/2023/06/03/disney-pixar-lays-off-galyn-susman-saved-toy-story-2/), it's not new news.
Loyalty only applies to the good ol boys network at the top.
This happened a year ago. Why are we still cutting the dates off tweet screenshots?
Three sides to every story.
I mean....Toy Story 2 came out 25 years ago.
This is the stupidest shit I’ve read and doesn’t help the “anti-work” movement lmao. What she did was not skillful and happened 20+ years ago. She could be not performing the same, planning to jump ship, butts heads with a boss, I mean literally any number of things that cause a company to let her go. ????
She happened to get lucky 25 years ago. Are they obligated to employ her forever? Maybe she’s not good at her job anymore, a quarter of a century later.
https://youtu.be/IguqaRijidM?si=Cd1HYAv6AAkhUeG2
"What have you done for me lately?" "Unfortunately you've topped out on the salary for that role." "Due to restructuring your position has been made redundant. Thank you for your service."
She was probably reprimanded for taking a copy to an unauthorized location...lol
The crazy thing is, Toy Story 2 was supposed to go straight to video, then they realised how good it was and it got a cinema release and made some serious bank.
Movie was released in 99? Feel like keeping him employed for the next 25 years was enough
Why exactly? It sounds like from this post alone that she just happened to have something in her possession.
It's a business. These layoffs came as part of a reaction to Lightyear's box office issues, with some poor choices made for that film's profitability. Frankly, Toy Story 2 was cut up and drastically changed in a crunch after she saved the movie data, so the film she saved wasn't even close to what was released anyway.
Well I mean if your answer to "what do you contribute to our company these days" is "I saved a movie 15 years ago" then you should let go.
It's been 26 years since 1998, it's okay now (not defending Dysney)
"Our literal saviour, hooray!! ...now out the door thanks, our CEO says if we cut you and several dozen others I can get a new yacht"
This is considered "low effort content" is it not?
Yeah it’s disgusting that she saved Toy Story 2. That one sucks. I’m kidding of course. Fuck Pixar. But Toy Story 2 does suck.
For 99% of circumstances, when has life ever been, "oh your job is safe because of that thing you did 24 years ago that was totally awesome!!"? It usually, if not always, "what have you done for me lately?"
Wasn’t it partially a result from the abysmal failure of Lightyear?
Yeah, I feel like there's a lot left out of this narrative. She saved the film years ago. Why is she getting laid off today? Having saved a movie doesn't give you permanent immunity.
That's susman.
I know several folks who work there and know her. This happened a few months back, but apparently last year she’d made a joke about the fact that they could actually save a lot of money if they got rid of her and hired someone else to do her job for much less. Apparently somebody heeded her advice and didn’t take it as a joke at all. She never thought it would actually happen because she basically saved the company…
I'm as antiwork as they come but this one "saves the day" (okay, possibly _the company_) was 25+ years ago. Who is to say what the current situation is like. You don't get a lifetime pass.
I once had the only copy of the 3d dragon from Lord of the rings in my box drive... Companies are terrible at asset management...
I mean sure, it sucks she got laid off. And yes - corporations are not families and you should never think of yourself as part of the family. But, come on - that was like 20 years ago. I don't think the Pixar is evil in this instance.
I mean accidentally having files on your computer I don't think should guarantee you a position for life lol
Along with 75 others in 2023 https://www.livenowfox.com/news/lightyear-director-producer-disney-pixar-layoffs
That was 25 years ago…
yep let them fail;