Pixar: The Early Days A never-before-seen 1996 interview
8 comments
·November 21, 2025disillusioned
no_wizard
To be absolutely clear though, Pixar had very good compensation in addition to all this. It was never about either or. They had both
djmips
As Steve Jobs muses that Snow white was enjoyed 60 years after it's release but computers go to the sedimentary layer. While it's true that you can't re-release the 1984 Mac debut to fanfare and profit 40 years later - a small group of dedicated enthusiasts are still running their original Macs and others in emulation - so they arent' completely fossilized!
Wowfunhappy
But are they using it as the bicycle for the mind it was intended to be—to get work done, or at least be creative and express ideas—or are they just playing some games and seeing what they can get running?
popalchemist
The value of Snow White is not diminished with time, though. Whereas the value of the original Mac is very linked to its time, and diminishes with each passing day.
muglug
It does diminish slightly though? Snow White is not a Disney tentpole the way it was in the 50s or even in the 80s.
How many 8-year-olds could pick out Snow White in a line-up?
ayaros
Amen!
nobody_nothing
Direct link to the interview: https://youtu.be/R0XmBKsRJF8
(I was locked out of the embedded player on suspicion of being a bot)
Steve's comments around merging the culture of creatives and technologists, and how hard it is to attract and _retain_ the kind of world-changing talent that was necessary to invent a new category are interesting: "the very best creative people will only go to work at a few places, Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks,"... "in the same sense, the very best computer scientists and computer graphics people will only go work in a few places, and Pixar is one of those..." "I think Pixar is the only place in the world that can hire the best from both of these areas."
It feels like there are some obvious parallels to what we're seeing in AI hiring, where you have a firm like Anthropic that openly acknowledges that they're not going to try to compete on comp but on culture, compared to Meta which is basically saying "we'll give you more money than god if you join our efforts to throw things at the wall and be part of this," and watching as people churn out even though the opportunity cost on the surface may be unfathomable.
Put another way: Steve truly understood the virtue and value of that cultural component to not just attract but _retain_ that kind of world-class talent, and _that's_ what he attributes Pixar's success to. He goes on to talk about how getting those disparate talent worlds to stick together for a decade, and how valuable that is.