Well, speaking from the point of view of someone, who is one of the guys fired from the Indian side of operations, let me clarify a few things here. True, DW came to India because we are cheap. The fact that a few individuals in here claim that Indian talent is on par or god forbid even better than the talent in the other branches, are just brainwashed by the management in India to believe they are so, we are cheap.... at least till the Chinese operations kick into high gear!
What i noticed working for DW India is that the studio management relishes the opportunity to put the fear of god into the artists. At least in India, the pressure to work is insane, not due to the work, but rather from the atmosphere of fear and intrigue permeating through the whole studio. Artists petrified that they may be on the chopping block next. This has been the modus operandi of DW India from day one. So yes my american friends they cannot behave like that with you. But yeah for any international hires.....they have them by the gonads! A thing they relish and a sense of power they are addicted to by now. Anyone who shows a modicum of questioning certain decisions is labeled a trouble maker and guess what.... the next round of layoffs...off they go. India lays off artists pretty regularly....practically every 6 months or so. Some senior artists ( with respect to India, guys who have been there since the beginning, we call em senior, just because they survived all the bullshit!...lol) have been let go, from what i heard for performance issues. If guy has been made team lead......how can he have a performance issue? He has proved himself. Unless he made the mistake of doing his job and not wanting to blow sunshine up some management arse....or he raised a few issues with the way the studio is run or brown nosed the wrong party... I donno.
Though my track record was good ( got my payhikes on time an' in full, which judgin' by the politics in DW India, is a miracle) i wasn't comfortable brown nosing the big dogs (though i do have a brown nose since i'm brown!...lol)
After reading what the guys in here have said and hearing the news of the state of the industry. It is surprising that even though State side the artists have a union, no action has been taken to remedy the situation. Instead of screaming at each other we need to find a solution to fix this seemingly endless cycle of management bungles that will only end badly. If it requires drastic action so be it.
Also, some guys talk about Katzenberg's business acumen... I just have to say for someone who fired Lasseter from Disney for talking about using 3D in animation and for later claiming that 2D is dead leading to Disney making that stupid decision. What do you expect? business men look at profits....artists look at products. I guess we as artists need to evaluate who we wanna work for.
cheers and good luck