Revealed Emails/Court Documents regarding Pixar/Steve Jobs Wage Fixing

[Landguy]

mornelithe said:

Landguy said:

Dreamworks actually released 25 movies between that time. But that is mostly not relevent.

The 6 animation movies went like this:

YR/Movie	US	Foreign	Budget of production	Marketing     (50% of budget))
1998  Antz	$          90,000,000	$       81,000,000	$   105,000,000	$      52,500,000
1998 Prince of egypt	$       101,000,000	$    117,000,000	$     70,000,000	$      35,000,000
2000 Road to Eldorado	$          50,000,000	$       25,000,000	$     95,000,000	$      47,500,000
2000 Chicken Run	$       106,000,000	$    118,000,000	$     45,000,000	$      22,500,000
2001 Shrek	$       267,000,000	$    216,000,000	$     60,000,000	$      30,000,000
2002 Spirit	$          73,000,000	$       49,000,000	$     80,000,000	$      40,000,000
	$       687,000,000	$    606,000,000	$   455,000,000	$    227,500,000
	Theatre Revenue	1,293,000,000
	40% of Revenue	517,200,000	usual take home of Movie
	Cost of production +Marketing	682,500,000

The debate really is about what percentage of the revenue is actually profit.  As the theatres take a chunk of that.   Also, Dreamworks used other companies to do their distribution who also took a chunk. 

I agree with you that if you take just Revenue and basic budgets, it would seem to be much more profitable than you would expect.

But, that is not the total of costs or profits.

That's actually the debate you're making, it's not the debate I'm making, nor was it ever my intent.  I'm simply showing that the numbers invested, and the returns (regardless of what percent, had to be at least what they put in, and then some) do not signify a 'small studio.'  Which gets back to the original point of, if your employer who's making a ton of money on your work, isn't showing that they value you and someone comes in and offers you a job with a salary/benefits that you think is more commensurate with your talent (ergo, market deciding salary), there should be no problems with that (which is why it's legal for companies to do just that).

I agree, I veered off the point.

 

I agree that it should be illegal for companies to stop you from pursuing other opportunities.  The reality is that some of the major companies may have had an understanding between them.  That didn't stop employees from seeking employment elswhere or in a different job.  Was that fair to the employees?  My other arguments show that for that particular employee it was probably harming them short term for sure, but the long term we will never know.  The "must have now" society that we live in today makes doing business rather difficult.  Employees make no effort to earn their way up in a company, they just jump from one company to another draining resources of the companies along the way.  Then everyone asks why everything is so expensive?  The internet has created a whole new world of pay opportunities for everyone, but also created a much higher cost to employ people.  This pretty much pushes the small companies out of the picture, as they can't compete with the larger ones.  But, when this law was made, I am sure that people didn't see the long term impacts on the businesses themselves and how the ensured freedom given to the employee would harm the greater marketplace too.