I'm considering accepting an opportunity at Netflix, but I'm not sure what the environment is like. Can someone at Netflix or who has worked at Netflix give an objective description as to what it's like there? I've read that everyone there is very smart, and the bar is set extremely high. I am very good (amongst the top people in every group I've worked at), but I'm not a god so I'm worried that I'm not good enough and that I will be let go within a month. Are things really that competitive and cutthroat as I've heard, given what I heard was a 10%/quarter turnover rate?
Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
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Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#2I had a manager who worked for Netflix, and looked into a position with them after leaving his group, asking him roughly this question.
Unsatisfyingly, his answer was, it depends on who you work for. They have a "Freedom and Performance" culture that I'm sure you have seen a slideshow PDF for, and my old manager said that to some people this means, "Get your shit done and work when / wherever you want", to others it means, "Categorically you must work 80 hours a week". Since he was of the former school, I got the impression he worked for someone from the latter school.
I didn't get an offer, so it was an easy choice. ;)
Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#3I had a manager who worked for Netflix, and looked into a position with them after leaving his group, asking him roughly this question. Unsatisfyingly, his answer was, it depends on who you work for. They have a "Freedom and Performance" culture that I'm sure you have seen a slideshow PDF for, and my old manager said that to some people this means, "Get your shit done and work when / wherever you want", to others it…
In my experience, the corporation's culture matters much less than the personalities of those you frequently interact with, whether those people are colleagues, customers, or vendors.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#4I worked in two different groups while I was at Netflix. I loved it. The engineers on their team are consistently good and there is low tolerance for under performers. They take their culture seriously and their leadership is very strong. I'd be happy to work for them again in the future.
Re: expectations about excess work. It's your own responsibility to set expectations about what you can get done and how quickly you can get it done. I was reasonably successful at this and took lots of time off the last year I was there, m wife had our first baby. Since I was able to set reasonable expectations I got a great raise that year, despite the time that I took off.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#5Just out of interest, Did you ask about this in the interview, and if not, is there a reason you didn't? Did it feel "not very open"?
Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#6Don't work there but friends in ops industry have them as a client. Cool story: to handle EC2 performance variance, they systematically spin up some multiple of required capacity, have all the instances run a benchmark, then terminate the slowest and least deterministic.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#7Don't treat HN like Quora.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#8I don't have any intimate knowledge of working at NetFlix, but holy crap they pay well: http://data.jobsintech.io/companies/netflix-inc/2015
PS - In almost every business I've ever encountered, people are a lot less godlike than you might perceive from an external view.
Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#9I worked in two different groups while I was at Netflix. I loved it. The engineers on their team are consistently good and there is low tolerance for under performers. They take their culture seriously and their leadership is very strong. I'd be happy to work for them again in the future. Re: expectations about excess work. It's your own responsibility to set expectations about what you can get done and how quickly y…
> low tolerance for under performers
I panic whenever I read stuff like this. What is an under performer? How do I know if I'm one? How can it be expected that everyone in an environment is a spectacular code ninja that does utterly awesome stuff all the time?
Re: Ask HN: What is it like working at Netflix?
#10I don't have any intimate knowledge of working at NetFlix, but holy crap they pay well: http://data.jobsintech.io/companies/netflix-inc/2015 PS - In almost every business I've ever encountered, people are a lot less godlike than you might perceive from an external view.
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