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Why is it that every discussion about Netflix somehow devolves into a discussion about their hiring/firing practices?
2. Because people care about having a job and earning money.
3. Because they literally make up about a third of the article.
TL;DR: Netflix changed everything when it switched from mail-order DVDs to streaming-video. Now, people find themselves (a) not watching commercials and (b) watching shows back-to-back. This has been lucrative for the company in terms of raw revenue, but not in terms of profits after costs: though the article is pretty murky on this (one part says that they made millions in profits; another says that they have a cons…
* Another is that they don't own the vast majority of their content* That's true now and probably will be for the foreseeable future but the content they do own is great IMO. For me it started with the obvious - Daredevil, Jessica Jones, etc. But lately I've dived into other things they've done and enjoyed just about all of it. Great example - River - a somewhat disturbing detective show with good acting, exciting ac…
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> You’ll have to fire some really nice, hard-working people. But you have to do it with dignity. I wonder if this is part of the reason why there are not too many Netflix-like high achieving companies in Europe -- firing people is not possible. Even totally sucking at your job isn't acceptable reason for employment contract termination, that'd be just a reason for further training. You'll have to go through different…
These are not firings technically - you are being paid a bonus on the condition that you resign, as I understand it. Has anyone ever said no or are the payouts that much ?
Spoiler: It's a long read! > Does this still holds? Is there any other organization in dissimilar industry where this works? McCord also convinced Hastings that he should ask himself a few times a year whether he would hire the same person in the same job if it opened up that day. If the answer was no, Netflix would write a larger check and let the employee go. “If you are going to insist on high performance,” McCord…
But I also find it a very strange thing to say, because the biggest challenge of hiring new people is that you really never know how they'll perform until you actually start working with them. In my case I've always hired for smaller organizations with a smaller pool of applicants, so I prefer to just roughly gauge for Spolsky's test of "smart and gets things done" as well as I can and then turn them loose to see what they can do. In large, well-known companies with huge hiring funnels false negatives matter much less and they are incentivized to screen very aggressively on whatever axes they can. However in either case, the existing employee has a known performance profile, and the new hire is unknown regardless of how good they look on paper. So I just find it an obtuse apples-to-oranges comparison to frame performance reviews this way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
* Another is that they don't own the vast majority of their content* That's true now and probably will be for the foreseeable future but the content they do own is great IMO. For me it started with the obvious - Daredevil, Jessica Jones, etc. But lately I've dived into other things they've done and enjoyed just about all of it. Great example - River - a somewhat disturbing detective show with good acting, exciting ac…
I think Netflix will face a problem of getting their customers find too well what they actually like, and not being happy with the content after this. Say, I loved River that you mentioned -- it's brilliant I think -- but can't really stand the superhero stuff now. And that's fine, but there are economic limits on how much of specific kind of content they can provide. I will obviously cancel the service if I run out…
So now I'm in this pattern where I find a few things I want to try, like enough of it to keep me happy for a month or two and then slowly run out of things to watch. I let it sit idle for a while and then lather, rinse, repeat.
But essentially every time I start to contemplate cancelling I tend to find something that makes me hang on for a little while longer.
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Instinctively and ideologically I mostly oppose the idea of this lack of loyalty toward employees. At the same time, for some reason it bothers me less the way it is presented to work within Netflix. I'm not sure why, though. Maybe it's to do with the fact that there are plenty of jobs in tech right now and Netflix apparently pays very well, enough for a future employee to accept that disadvantage. Partly it's also b…
The idea that there is an ideal place for everyone in capitalism and be able to pay for all the costs of day to day life is some kind of libertarian hacker news delusion.
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The idea that there is an ideal place for everyone in capitalism and be able to pay for all the costs of day to day life is some kind of libertarian hacker news delusion.
For me it seems like hacker news loves universal basic income, because they understand this might not be true today and even less likely to be true in the future.
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I hope there's more to it than that. Firing "really nice, hard-working people" is stupid. There are far better things to do with such people than firing them. All that teaches people is to have no loyalty whatsoever to their company since the company's leader directly gives them a reason not to. All that leads to is "really nice, hard-working people" you would not fire jumping ship at the first sign of a slightly bet…
> All that leads to is "really nice, hard-working people" you would not fire jumping ship at the first sign of a slightly better deal, because why not? If you combine this behavior with really high compensation for those you keep, you'll likely be the best deal. Most companies' compensation does not match their rhetoric about 'hiring the best' and will balk at the cost to poach from you. That and the fact that high-p…
Why is it that every discussion about Netflix somehow devolves into a discussion about their hiring/firing practices?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope there's more to it than that. Firing "really nice, hard-working people" is stupid. There are far better things to do with such people than firing them. All that teaches people is to have no loyalty whatsoever to their company since the company's leader directly gives them a reason not to. All that leads to is "really nice, hard-working people" you would not fire jumping ship at the first sign of a slightly bet…
> All that leads to is "really nice, hard-working people" you would not fire jumping ship at the first sign of a slightly better deal, because why not? If you combine this behavior with really high compensation for those you keep, you'll likely be the best deal. Most companies' compensation does not match their rhetoric about 'hiring the best' and will balk at the cost to poach from you. That and the fact that high-p…
That's not a good work environment.