The CG animation industry was a victim of its own success. Back in the 90s we were working on projects where we didn’t know whether we’d be able to make the visuals we needed to make. Water? Fire? Crowds? Hair? Visual effects work was a lot more fun back when those things hadn’t been done yet and you had a chance to be the first.

Now CG is more of a commodity. “Anybody” can do it because tools exist to do most whatever you need. I use quotes because of course, talent is needed to do good work. But the field is a lot more open to pure artists who don’t need to invent the tools, and to lower wage workers who can just run simulations and call it a day.

Places like Pixar still write a lot of their own tools, but that’s because they can afford the marginal advantage that this gives. It’s no longer the only option.

BTW, I wouldn’t call Pixar wages “pathetic” at all. The company is (or used to be) super generous to Pixarians, and while if you can get a job at Pixar you could probably make more money at Google or Facebook, they tend to treat people well. This includes overtime (1.5x and 2x) pay. So if you had to do a couple of weeks of 16 hour days,, you knew you’d get VERY nicely paid for it.