Pixar History Revisited: A Corrective (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Pixar History Revisited: A Corrective (2011)

alvyray.com

50 pointsguiambros15 comments

Written by Alvy Ray Smith [1], Pixar co-founder, former Xerox PARC researcher, and inventor of the HSV color space, alpha channel to represent transparency in images, and other advancements in computer graphics.

Related read: "Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)" [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvy_Ray_Smith

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Valley-Genius-Uncensored-History-Foun...

While Alvy Ray Smith's role as Pixar co-founder shouldn't be diminished, the tone of "Pixar History Revisited - A Corrective" should be regarded cautiously. Smith hated Jobs and their last encounter was a shouting match after Smith deliberately provoked Jobs.

From the Wikipedia article you linked:

> Alvy Ray quit Pixar after a heated argument with Jobs over use of a whiteboard. It was an unwritten rule that none other than Jobs was allowed to use it, a rule Smith decided to break in front of everyone after Jobs went "total street bully" on him and they ended up screaming into each other's face "in full bull rage".

> "in front of everyone * after *"

Your own quote makes it equally arguable Jobs was the provoker? It's not like it would be out of character given what's publicly known about Jobs. Maybe what you say is true but this quote could just as easily be taken as someone standing up to Jobs as "deliberately provoking him".

It sounds more likely that this is the real story. Jobs, from everything I’ve read, was the ultimate needler, and quoting over a whiteboard sounds like the very last action of a series of bullying actions. The fact that there is so much mythology around Jobs and Pixar that necessitates these clarifications really makes me believe that this is the case.

Alvy Ray Smith gives his version of the story in the "Valley of Genius" [1]:

> "Life with Steve was awful. There was this famous board meeting at NeXT. Steve comes in and he’s busting Ed and me for being late on a circuit board for the image computer, which we were. And I said, “But Steve, you’re late on one of your boards.” Which was true. Now normally that would have just been okay. Not this time. He starts insulting me, making fun of my accent, playground bully stuff. This was not two intelligent people having a conversation or even a healthy debate. This was just sheer bullying. And what did I do? I just stood up and went right into him. Now I’m very proud of that, but it probably was an insane thing to do. I went right up into his face, screaming in rage. I still can’t believe it happened. Just weird, just screaming at each other. And at that point I forced my way past him and wrote on the whiteboard. I wished I had written something clever. I was too insane. I just made a mark. It was a forbidden act, so he said, “You can’t do that.” And I said, “What? Write on the whiteboard?!” That was it. He stormed out of the room."

And later:

> "It was when I looked at the prospectus for the IPO when I first realized that Steve lies. He claimed to be the cofounder of Pixar and the CEO since its founding. In the prospectus! Cofounder and CEO forever! Bullshit. Both of those are wrong: lies. I don’t like this “reality distortion field” idea. He lies. But you know his genius was to take the company public on nothing. The movie wasn’t even a hit yet, and there was essentially no cash at all. But he saw his chance to make his $50 million back. And he did."

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Valley-Genius-Uncensored-History-Foun...

It’s not totally uncommon to list folks as co-founders that didn’t actually co-found the company, but had a major influence on its direction, E.g. at Polyvore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvore

Also, he stops footnoting during the final myth:

“Jobs poured more money in to cover the losses each time. It's sometimes construed that he did this because he saw the long-term potential of the movie business and held on to "his vision" with further investments. This wasn't the case at all, however. Jobs kept pouring money into the company so that he wouldn't have to sustain the embarrassment that his first company - after being booted from Apple - was a failure.”

I am surprised Steve had no inclination that a studio who had wanted to make animated film all these years at least had the potential to do so. So clearly Steve wasn’t just investing into a hardware company.

Alan Kay's take on Jobs and Pixar is pretty illuminating regarding this -

>Steve wasn’t capable of being friends. That wasn’t his personality. Besides the Apple stuff, I had a lot to do with his Pixar thing. I was contacted by the people who became Pixar–I knew them well, and they wanted to get out of Lucasfilm. They called me up and asked me for advice, and so I said, I can talk to Steve. I explained very carefully to him who these people were, and you shouldn’t fuck around with them, like he did with his normal employees. He did a good job with them. [Pixar] was the most honest billion he ever made, because he put a lot of his own personal money into nurturing those guys. They got fabulous. That was Steve’s best hour.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...

The whole article is worth reading for Kay's take on a variety of stuff.

All of this is covered in Creativity Inc, Ed Catmull's book that's been out for four years now. The first section of the book is entirely the history of Pixar, and it's fascinating. I recommend it.

Did not expect such a spiteful account from such a respected figure. In some places he makes statements that can only be true if he could read Jobs's mind, e.g. he states that Jobs "would have bolted" before Pixar became successful. You don't repeatedly sink large tranches of your personal fortune into something you don't believe in or don't care about.

The article(s) reads quite spiteful, petty and angry - I’m not surprised learning that it comes from a guy who hates Steve. One example that reads odd is how the author claims that Steve’s financial backing didn’t save Pixar (when clearly it seems they’d have gone bankrupt if he hadn’t kept poring money into it). And in one article he mentions that Steve’s deal with Disney for Toy Story was a stroke of business genius and in another he says “What saved Pixar was Disney's asking it to make a movie” as if Steve has nothing to do with the important/successful details of that arrangement.

I'm not seeing the spite. The author several times credits Jobs for his actual contributions (such as the IPO), calling them/him "brilliant". It reads as a fairly factual and neutral setting-straight of some common misconceptions, while still giving Jobs plenty of credit for his actual contributions.

It doesn’t sound terribly spiteful. He praises Jobs as a great businessman!

I'm not sure where these myths are coming from, even The Pixar documentary go through some of those details

Myth 1 seems to be more about details than simply a myth: George Lucas needed money

Seems this[1] is the page with "myths" that Alvy Ray is reacting to. Not a single mention of his name, and Jobs is mentioned as "having purchased the computer graphics division from George Lucas and established the group as an independent company" in 1986.

[1] https://www.pixar.com/our-story-1/

Agreed. Also casts doubt on rest of the myths.

Also why does Alvy Ray refer to himself in the third person? If it is written by someone else it isn't clear.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com