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Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

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Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#111

Post by coredog64 »

bbarn wrote: post #37
quantumhobbit wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix gets a lot of flack for their approach here, but at least they are honest about it and try to compensate by paying employees very well. The truth is there are many companies that are just as ruthless about firing employees they view as underperforming but try to hide it with layoffs and don't compensate employees nearly as well. If you take a job with Netflix at least you know what you are getting into.

Yeah, but the one problem is other companies you're going to afterwards don't know what you were getting into. So you are interviewing and they interviewer is impressed you led X big project at Netflix, recieved a promotion, etc.. and were fired for non performance. How do you explain that without saying "I was no longer good enough, but I'm way good enough for this job"

There's plenty of places like that. We couldn't hire the former CTO from Netflix, but maybe we could hire some VP/director that couldn't go any higher as our CTO.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#112

Post by knicholes »

ergothus wrote: post #106
sevensor wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points, both of them. My experience with indispensable people comes from a big manufacturing organization. When I talk about people trying to become indispensable, I mean the engineer who had her hand in everything her department did and supported the line 24/7, and the technician who told me, "they'll never get rid of me, this place would fall apart without me." Among others. They really do exist, but perhaps i…

Software is by no means immune to what you list. Indeed, as Hubris is one of the Three Virtues of a Programmer, you definitely find it. That said, I think (my opinion) that you'll find more devs/admins that are PROUD to be indispensable than you will devs/admins that SEEK to become indispensable. Both cases are ignoring what you point out: having a indispensable person is a bad thing for the long term health of your…

I think that these devs writing spaghetti code to stay indispensable should never get their code into the codebase through code reviews. Then that person would fail to contribute anything.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#113

Post by mathattack »

mercer wrote: post #9
kefka wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this precisely is why we Millenials have no qualms about leaving a job. They have no problem divorcing us because of some vapid "performance" metric. How do they quantify understanding how to get things done in that org? I know with my job, I'm learning how the institution hinders growth, except through certain channels. That meta-knowledge is absolutely essential... yet seemingly ignored.

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…

There's a tradeoff of general human capital ("best athlete") versus specific human capital ("best specialist"). I used to be more in the latter camp. Over time I've moved to the former.

The system works because the severance is very generous, and it's not considered a career risk to leave Netflix.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#114

Post by dexterdog »

ergothus wrote: post #109

Stepping away from hiring/firing practices, I had a very visceral reaction to this: >“Five years ago,” says Richard Greenfield, a media and technology analyst at BTIG who happens to be Netflix’s most vocal proponent on Wall Street, “we wrote a piece saying that the networks shouldn’t license to Netflix because they were going to unleash a monster that would undermine their business.” This exposes to me how capitalism…

But Netflix was just a distributor then and not a creator. The biggest problem in this is middle men. People want to pay the creators for their work, but there are layers upon layers of middle men that end up getting a far larger slice of the overall pie than the people who actually create the stuff. With the technology we have and systems similar to (but more open than) Netflix, we should be able to have a proper compensation mechanism.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#115

Post by dcole2929 »

The thing is Sports is the key! Cable and Network television exists almost entirely due to revenue generated from Sports Viewers. Seriously, like the majority of your cable bill is used to pay for licensing to air live games. Cable is the only way for people to legally watch the majority of NBA and NFL games (in HD). We are making stride with stuff like NFL Sunday Ticket, but honestly those services still aren't great. When current license agreements end Netflix (and by extension Amazon, Hulu and whoever else) should back up a dump truck full of money to league offices and offer whatever terms they want. In the game of Internet TV you get sports and you win. It's as simple as that.

I don't believe that any of these networks competing services will ever take off because fragmentation is bad for consumers and they know it. Bundling is hugely important in this market. No one is going to be willing to pay $10 a month for a streaming service for every Network that decides it needs it's own. Sure a lot of people will be willing to pay for more than one but certainly not enough for all or even a lot of networks to go this route. HBO can survive that way but does NBC for instance have any show compelling enough to spend $10 for it separate from other networks shows.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#116

Post by dexterdog »

smhenderson wrote: post #42
drostie wrote: post #35

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…

How many shows are like River where they just bought an existing show? There's a difference between buying a show that worked somewhere and investing in a concept that hasn't been made and nobody has seen.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#117

Post by fma »

ergothus wrote: post #40

One of the best professional pieces of advice I've ever read said something like "Think you're indispensable? Do they know that?". It made me aware that often the people making the hiring/firing decisions aren't actually aware of my day-to-day. Rather, they know only the summary info. Those kudos to fellow employees and in-house "awards" that I'd been ignoring? Those are documentation that someone is worthwhile, and…

I don't want to be indispensable. The last guy at my company that was indispensable, quit because he was indispensable. His manager relied on him too much. His manager was contemplating going to his house at 2AM when neither him nor is wife (he got her phone number from the emergency contact) could not be reached. The team survived just fine without, BTW.

Although I'm a team lead, I make sure 1 other person knows what someone else has done, even my own work. I can go on vacation without worry. I can have someone else take up other people's task if someone is too much allocated.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#118

Post by ben_jones »

dcole2929 wrote: post #115

The thing is Sports is the key! Cable and Network television exists almost entirely due to revenue generated from Sports Viewers. Seriously, like the majority of your cable bill is used to pay for licensing to air live games. Cable is the only way for people to legally watch the majority of NBA and NFL games (in HD). We are making stride with stuff like NFL Sunday Ticket, but honestly those services still aren't grea…

The problem with NFL Sunday Ticket and NBA League Pass is that they both feel extremely nerfed as to not get in the way of TV. I have trouble believing the NFL and even the NBA actually have problems putting out a decent streaming service, they just don't want to because they're getting all their money from TV. I would have absolutely no problem paying like $5 a game for the amount of entertainment I get from it, but they don't even let me do that! I have to pay for an entire season in which some games won't even be shown on the service. They basically force you to watch illegal streams. It's ridiculous.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#119

Post by mbesto »

sevensor wrote: post #95
ergothus wrote: post #40

One of the best professional pieces of advice I've ever read said something like "Think you're indispensable? Do they know that?". It made me aware that often the people making the hiring/firing decisions aren't actually aware of my day-to-day. Rather, they know only the summary info. Those kudos to fellow employees and in-house "awards" that I'd been ignoring? Those are documentation that someone is worthwhile, and…

> Think you're indispensable? Do they know that? Indispensable employees are a sign of organizational failure. They indicate a weak point in the organization -- if that person gets hit by a bus, or walks off the job, or is on vacation during a crisis, we're all in trouble. And if an employee becomes indispensable on purpose, that person is a problem and should be let go before the situation gets worse. Where I used t…

> Indispensable employees are a sign of organizational failure. They indicate a weak point in the organization

> All this is to say that if you ever find yourself thinking, "this place would fall apart without me," you have a big problem.

Just to be clear. _You_ don't have the problem, the organization does. If you're the head of software development at Netflix, you can easily find another job tomorrow if you leave. But if you're indispensable and Netflix falls over after you leave, then you don't have a problem, Netflix does.

Re: Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

#120

Post by jrs235 »

fma wrote: post #117
ergothus wrote: post #40

One of the best professional pieces of advice I've ever read said something like "Think you're indispensable? Do they know that?". It made me aware that often the people making the hiring/firing decisions aren't actually aware of my day-to-day. Rather, they know only the summary info. Those kudos to fellow employees and in-house "awards" that I'd been ignoring? Those are documentation that someone is worthwhile, and…

I don't want to be indispensable. The last guy at my company that was indispensable, quit because he was indispensable. His manager relied on him too much. His manager was contemplating going to his house at 2AM when neither him nor is wife (he got her phone number from the emergency contact) could not be reached. The team survived just fine without, BTW. Although I'm a team lead, I make sure 1 other person knows wha…

>I make sure 1 other person knows what someone else has done, even my own work

I try to do the same. I've often viewed my job as trying to eliminate my job by slowly delegating and having others able to fulfill my current responsibilities. Then I take on the next "level" of responsibilities and/or provide either more slack in my schedule or others. Slack is what allows organizations to operate smoothly and deal with change(s).

If you aren't familiar with the concept of slack, I highly recommend reading "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency" by Tom DeMarco

http://amzn.to/1sGWsWe (affiliate link)

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