Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 158 posts

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

#131

Post by andrewbinstock »

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…

Not true of small businesses, where the loss of a single key individual, especially on the revenue-generation side, can be a setback from which they cannot recover.

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

#132

Post by perseusprime11 »

knicholes wrote: post #112
ergothus wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You become indispensable by doing things that nobody wants to do. For example, I remember an Engineer I used to work loves writing Perl/awk scripts to go through tera bytes of data to create reports. The data has anamolies and you need to custom create regular expressions to filter data that you don't need. The last I know he is still there.

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

#133

Post by matwood »

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…

If another person cannot do your current job you cannot be promoted into another job. People who make themselves required at the current position are really hurting themselves long term.

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

#134

Post by ci5er »

outworlder wrote: post #82
enraged_camel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Lots and lots and lots of people get fired and don't flourish, in fact they drop like a brick and hit rock bottom. Sure, but speaking from the perspective of the company and everyone else in it, it's better if those low-performers hit rock bottom outside the company, rather than hit rock bottom while employed and bring the rest of the company down.

Usually, unless the company is really small, they won't drag it down. Unless they are CEOs, which are seldom fired. And get golden parachutes even when they do get fired.

I've kept people on because they were going through a rough patch and I felt squeemish about kicking them when everything else was going wrong. Bad stuff happens to good people and I didn't want to make it worse.

But it hurt group morale on every team they were shuffled to. Hard working teams quietly build up resentment against dead weight.

In retrospect, I would have been better off getting the board's permission to institute 6~12 month severances for company initiated terminations instead of the 3 month one that we had. Or done an extended paid leave - or something.

I think the reason I didn't (I don't even remember at this point) was one of my early employees - a star performer by every measure - said something like: "Hey! Why would you be paying them 12 months salary for being a loser?" (Not that he was incompassionate - he wasn't - but making the point the way that anyone from the Bronx might make that point.)

I don't think I ever figured out what to do with that other than deciding that being the boss sucked and I never wanted to do it again.

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

#135

Post by mindcrime »

Programmatic wrote: post #44
koralatov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really what we're talking about when we're talking about 'transparency' her. Just because it's known that something happens doesn't mean it happens in a transparent fashion. Transparency of process is important, too, and required before you can really call something 'transparent'. As it stands, the person making the decision could be doing so for totally arbitrary reasons. It doesn't appear that there's an…

I think the part that is transparent is that you're not going to build your career and retire at Netflix, you know it's a stint. It may be arbitrary and capricious otherwise, but you know that in advance and can decide if it's worth it. I would not mind being in such an environment for a stint, myself.

I think the part that is transparent is that you're not going to build your career and retire at Netflix, you know it's a stint.

But anybody who has been paying attention has known that any job is "just a stint" since at least the 90's, if not the 80's. A big part of the Re-engineering[1] push of the 90's involved reducing costs, at least in part by reducing head-count. And before that, you had the 80's LBO[2] craze, which resulted in dramatic layoffs at many companies.

As a Gen-X'er who grew up in the 80's, I have never expected to have a life-long career at a single company, and I can't imagine many - if any - of my peers imagining that either. In this regard, there's nothing unique at Netflix. All jobs are essentially "temp" jobs in this day and age.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout

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

#136

Post by sevensor »

xiaoma wrote: post #128
sevensor wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Good point -- I'm looking at this from the individual-contributor side. I'm not sure it's possible to apply the same logic to executives.

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

#137

Post by sevensor »

mbesto wrote: post #119
sevensor wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

No, I'll stand by my point. If you're indispensable, you're partly responsible for an organizational failure. If management recognize the problem and have time and space to address it, they may work with you to fix it. But in a time of crisis, when headcount needs adjusting, smart management will see you as a liability and act accordingly. Bureaucracies have a lot of momentum and are more resilient to the loss of an individual than they may appear. Obviously this is big-company thinking, and it applies in proportion to how bureaucratic your organization is.

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

#138

Post by thwarted »

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…

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.

Hubris isn't necessarily the wrong word in this larger context of indispensability, but I've always viewed Hubris in the context of the Three Virtues to be of "I can do this, against all odds", and being on the negative/low end of the Impostor Syndrome spectrum. Three Virtues Hubris is internal confidence; Indispensability Hubris is (perhaps unfounded) confidence in the perception of how others view you.

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

#139

Post by bobbles »

sevensor wrote: post #137
mbesto wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

No, I'll stand by my point. If you're indispensable, you're partly responsible for an organizational failure. If management recognize the problem and have time and space to address it, they may work with you to fix it. But in a time of crisis, when headcount needs adjusting, smart management will see you as a liability and act accordingly. Bureaucracies have a lot of momentum and are more resilient to the loss of an…

Being indispensable can also severely impact any chance you have at progression within an organisation.

If they know they can't promote you or everything will fall over you're always going to get looked over compared to someone with a similar skill set but no 'baggage'.

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

#140

Post by nikdaheratik »

sevensor wrote: post #102
ergothus wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I think you're underestimating the number of shops that ARE "in trouble". There's a lot more tech-need in the world than tech-capable people right now, and with the places that have resources and organization gobbling up people, a lot of smaller shops (small startups, govt shops, small non-startup businesses) DO have indispensable people. And often those people will want to stay there. As for becoming indispensabl…

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…

IMO, people often become "indispensable" in software when their responsibilities have grown over time to the point where they're actually doing something that should be two (or more) roles. But they've been doing it so long and are comfortable enough in the role that no one realizes it until they have to hire a replacement.
Post reply on HN