Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created? • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by zeveb » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #93

rpgmaker wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I'm sure Netflix would claim the same, I doubt McCord was expecting the axe to fall... Exactly. How likely is Hastings to adopt that standard if he knew that it would apply to him too?

> How likely is Hastings to adopt that standard if he knew that it would apply to him too? He probably knows it applies to him whether or not he adopts it for people below him: CEOs usually have contracts that not only state that a "if you decide you don't want me, you write me a big check to go away" policy applies to them, but actually spell out in fairly precise terms how big of a check that is.

Which implies that really, Netflix extends the same courtesy to all employees. Which is pretty awesome. Not being a good fit is a fact of life; having a cushion to find your next position is pretty nice.

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

#122

Post by yardie » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

rpgmaker wrote: post #50

yardie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum salary in the NFL is currently $450,000. The "job" is unionised and you have lifetime benefits (negotiated after some players with chronic concussion related illnesses were found broke and homeless). While the careers are short the compensation is fair. And you are legally allowed to work a side job, i.e. sponsorships. I don't imagine corporate USA saying yes to high salaries, unionisation, pensions, nor…

They also have "job security" for the duration of the contract and if they are "fired" as we traditionally understand it usually they have to be compensated in some form (although it depends on the contract).

Sadly that is not that case. The contract is per game. If they are cut midseason they forfeit the contract. NFL contracts are really nasty things. Most of the big valuations you see will probably never pay out. They can backload them so that a player with a 5 year $10mm contract will probably never see that amount. They'll get $1mm the first year, and the same for each year, with the remaining $5mm paid out at the end. If they don't make it that far they don't get it. It's not unheard of for a player to make it 50% of their time on contract and only see 20% of their pay.

I only know this because I have a family member who plays professionally. The NFL likes to present an image that they take care of their players. It's a business to make money (and a not-for-profit) and exists only to enrich themselves. If they can short a player out of his money they will do it.

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

#123

Post by ergothus » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

dexterdog wrote: post #114

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 co…

Perhaps, but I can also see the middleman as a value add.

When I paid Netflix and could see most anything, it was great, though a few things I couldn't see. Now I pay Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, pay for devices (e.g. Roku) to access them, have to hop accounts, and STILL can't see everything. Heck, Netflix's library has gotten less reliable. ("Want to see Groundhog day? let's see if it's currently in or out of catalog").

Middlemen aren't evil. Middlemen that want to gouge money WITHOUT providing value coughcoughRIAAcough* aren't evil either, but they're a lot less "good".

Frankly, I'm a fan of competition, and in general when competition revolves around trying to offer more value to consumers, it's a bunch of winning (except for the companies that fall behind). Too often we see a competition to AVOID that scenario (Coke/pepsi & exclusive deals, everything about Comcast, HFT, the examples are numerous).

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

#124

Post by gumby » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:11 PM UTC

lukeschlather wrote: post #31

gumby wrote: post #20

> “If it is a flop, we will have overpaid for one series,” he told Hastings. “But if it succeeds, we will have changed the brand.” Traditional big companies are structurally unable to think this way.

It also said they set up an indie film distribution company which was shut down because "We would have been better off spending the money on DVDs." Which sounds more like a traditional bigco.

Is it? Sounds like an example of what I was praising: they tried it, and found that the economics wouldn't work -- surprisingly they needed to control more of the value chain (at least it's a surprise to me).

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

#125

Post by brightball » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:26 PM UTC

jrs235 wrote: post #120

fma wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do the exact same thing. I figure my job is to automate my job.

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

#126

Post by brightball » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:26 PM UTC

jrs235 wrote: post #120

fma wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do the exact same thing. I figure my job is to automate my job.

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

#127

Post by sien » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:48 PM UTC

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…

In many countries outside the US NBA league pass is much better than a subscription to the cable service. It's the same for NHL, Baseball & the NFL.

BeIn Sports have excellent streaming of (world) football.

ESPN in many countries has loads of not very popular ESPN constructed events like the X-Z games or whatever.

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

#128

Post by xiaoma » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

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…

By this logic Apple should have fired Steve Jobs right after his return when he started negotiating with Microsoft for the investment that would save the company from going bankrupt in weeks. Only he was in a position to do that negotiation and the negotiation was necessary, so he was indispensable and "should be let go" before things got worse?

This rule of thumb sounds like madness to put it bluntly.

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

#129

Post by unabst » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

What world? Streaming was not created by Netflix. Netflix could be gone tomorrow, and we'd stream our way around them just fine, just as us cable-cutters stream our way around cable or around HBO to get Game of Thrones, top downloaded show all the way back in 2012 [1].

Netflix just carved the monster wave beautifully like any pro surfer would by building the largest subscription base for it. Good for them. But beyond that, anyone can practically stream anything now. And it's not because of Netflix.

Anecdotally, good TV has always been good TV, and has been king. So as long as Netflix can generate good original content as they have, people will be happy to pay them 10 dollars. You could say this world was created by HBO, but whatever created what, it all traces back to good television, aka content, being king. The underlying technology doesn't really matter. As we can see HBO appears to have caught up just fine.

[1] https://torrentfreak.com/game-of-thrones-most-pirated-tv-sho...

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

#130

Post by asimuvPR » Wed, Jun 15, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #108

zjaffee wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, at least in todays world where teams that focus on operations in a DevOps environment, there are a lot more metrics that operations teams can be measured by other than just uptime. For example, lets say a decision is made that you want to spin up a new environment, deploy a new service, scale up or scale down a piece of infrastructure. A good operations team in this more modern space will have automated the vast…

"It's easy - I just click a button! What the hell are we paying all these guys/gals for?"

I always compare this with a mailbox and people get it. When you deposit a letter it just doesn't arrive magically to its destination. People, cars, trucks, trains, boats, and planes are part of the process tve gets your letter delivered. Their eyes usually open wide once understood.