I always wondered what Bruce would say of what istock was becoming, or what it is today. He didn't wait out his contract any longer than he had to and he was out the door the minute he was free of his obligations. I'm not surprised. istock today doesn't look anything like what Bruce probably had in mind, aside from it being big. Everything else, the greed, mismanagement, pay cuts, total disregard for contributors, it's not Bruce's style. It wasn't istock's style for a long time, either.

I don't think it's any coincidence that Rob left shortly after the royalty cut, either. These guys were probably sick to their stomachs of what istock had become.

Maybe they were just the only ones who had the guts to leave, and a paycheck wouldn't convince them otherwise. Not that Bruce needed the money, of course. But he could have had a nice cushy job at Getty for a long time if he wanted it, and he opted to walk away.

Those who stayed apparently are comfortable with helping H&F get what they want, regardless of what it ends up costing everyone.

I used to work for a company that made very high end technical equipment.  When I started we had an office in Australia with about 10 people in it.

The manager of that office came to HQ for meetings and I took him to dinner.  Don't know why he told me this, but according to him the Australian office was originally an independent distributor that he purchased with the idea that he could sell off the inventory in Australia at bargain basement prices, shut down the operation, fire the staff and still come out ahead.  In other words pull an H&F.  

Turned out he was wrong.  He could not even come close to breaking even, so he sold the company to my company and then became an employee.  He was stuck managing the vary people he had planned to fire and hated it.  

At least in this case the predator got screwed.  

I love a happy ending!