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Comment by mdre | Hacker News Reader

What's really funny is that this guy had the balls to publish a book named "Creativity inc." which talked about the "culture of candor", the egalitarian culture of Pixar... much of this talk was later challenged by numerous women who opened up about the sexism and misogyny they'd faced there. And of course the other guy that founded Pixar, John Lasseter, turned out to be a molester and so was laid off. Great company!

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I was at Pixar 2006-2011. On several occasions, I would see Lasseter hugging various people in his entourage. Hugs so long, I initially wondered if someone had died. It was a bit strange. At a company meeting, in front of the entire staff, he made a comment about how attractive the women at some film festival were. I looked around at people standing next to me thinking I just had misheard. Nobody seemed particularly phased.

So the creepyness was apparent even to this lowly software engineer. Of course it was the tip of the iceberg with Lasseter.

There was this other guy who was an art director or something like that, and we used to call him a walking HR violation. Once he cornered me in the locker room and told me how all his friends are out of shape and have lousy sex. I shrugged it off as just one of the eccentric characters you encounter at the cartoon factory. He was extremely macho, and a fan of Putin, which actually made him somewhat interesting to me politically, though I disagreed with him about practically everything. Then came the 2016 election and his sexism got way out of hand and I couldn't stand him any more. I found it strange that someone with two daughters would be such a misogynist.

Turns out he had been saying creepy things to one of the same women that HR was trying to keep away from Lasseter, limiting her career. She wrote an article about her whole experience: https://byrslf.co/pixars-sexist-boys-club-9d621567fdc9

Of all the people in Hollywood who we've found out are creeps, Lasseter is the most depressing. He seemed like such a wholesome guy.

The two things need not be exclusive: you can have a company that is egalitarian and candid in matters related to the actual creative work and definitely superior to other companies at the time, and still have issues at the interpersonal level. I can think a person is unlikeable and stay as away as possible from them, and then have a productive conversation with them in an open meeting that advances the company output. Even the Beatles didn't like each other that much, and I'm sure the production of Casablanca was plagued by "couches", but they still made masterpieces that were superior to anything seen before.

Well, they don't need to be exclusive as long as you're in the group that's not being excluded or treated badly. If you are, then you don't have the luxury of ignoring it and separating those issues so cleanly.

I agree, but those groups have always had that problem, and progress on that front is orthogonal to other issues.

I very much doubt that he wrote most of that book.

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