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Working at Netflix 2017

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Re: Working at Netflix 2017

#121

Post by drewg123 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #79
bmwe30is wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say it's easy to get a job here. I've been working here for nearly 2 years now. The interview process is as challenging as it needs to be to find the right people for the job. This varies from team to team. We don't follow a corporate set of rules to hire engineers. This company is more adamant about letting folks go whom don't get the work done or aren't able to perform. They want good engineers to solve…

> They want good engineers to solve challenging problems. Serve bits. Suggest movies based on coarse signals. Is there much left? Netflix is not SpaceX nor Tesla; its an online Blockbuster Video. Serving video in 2017 is not complicated.

I work on "serving bits". It is not quite a simple as it sounds at our scale. I've specifically worked on optimizing our FreeBSD kernel, along with several other engineers on my team. We're at point where we can serve over 90Gb/s of TLS encrypted traffic (many tens of thousands of TCP streams) from a single-socket 16 core Xeon, without any crypto offloads.

There are a lot of challenging problems in any industry once you dig deep enough. There are tons of brilliant people around me, doing super cool things that I can barely fathom (like the recommendation system). Any one of those things can be trivialized, but each is somebody's pride and joy, and a marvel of design and engineering.

Re: Working at Netflix 2017

#123

Post by xixor2 »

rbritton wrote: post #117
mimsee wrote: post #3

> We don't do anything shady, and we're proud of that. We're an honest company. Maybe not shady, but surely controversial. [0]: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ [1]: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad... [2]: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards

Blocking virtually all VPNs and VPS IP ranges is not the most pleasant practice. I realize this is likely a Hollywood demand, but absent any kind of other information from them, it sure appears that they are complicit in it. Further, they make it essentially impossible to to create a local routing rule to bypass the VPN for them alone. You're stuck whitelisting the whole of AWS.

It's also a government demand: ratings, amount of locally produced content, taxes, etc.

Re: Working at Netflix 2017

#125

Post by draw_down »

jedberg wrote: post #47
blazespin wrote: post #41

Netflix has a 3.4 rating on Glassdoor. Yikes. I wouldn't consider working at a company unless it had 4 or more.

I would never use Glassdoor for evaluating a company. It skews towards people who are upset, they don't verify that you actually worked there, and they combine hourly workers with salary workers, which could be two very different experiences.

I used to work for a company that struck a deal to include Glassdoor data on some pages we made. Then that company soon became one of Glassdoor's "best companies to work for". Which was, I'm sure, a total coincidence.

Re: Working at Netflix 2017

#126

Post by LordDragonfang »

cavanasm wrote: post #75
scarface74 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/

While I also strongly disagree that Netflix's originals are "mostly terrible", I also think that awards shows are not as objective a judge of quality as I (and I imagine many others) would like.

What would you suggest as a more objective judge of quality?

Re: Working at Netflix 2017

#127

Post by dominotw »

dasmoth wrote: post #23
dominotw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix recruiter forced me to read all 200 pages of it and asked me pop quiz on it during the subsequent call. No Joke. During the interview interviewer constantly referred to "Netflix culture" as if they were in some sort of cult. Why does a corporate company need to invent some ridiculous "culture" is beyond me. You pay me I do work, thats all the culture I need. >>Then while working here, staff cite the culture d…

I don't know how close the thing you read is to what's on slideshare, but the public version has a slide which explicitly addresses the "this is not for everyone" issue, and says they're trying to filter out the people who won't like it. I suspect questions about the culture deck are more about making sure you're coming in with open eyes than about ensuring you've memorised every last phrase.

Thats nice. Play nasty games with people trying to find a job and put food on the table.

What is wrong with these people.

Re: Working at Netflix 2017

#128

Post by matt_wulfeck »

runT1ME wrote: post #102
ryandrake wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL, you won't find one, because if true that's got to be an outlier by several standard deviations. Whenever a salary discussion comes up on HN, someone always comes out of the woodwork to let us all know that his brother's niece's room-mate's boyfriend makes $300K+ at BIG_TECH_CO, so therefore that must be what tech companies pay.

Netflix has an employee stock purchase program that let's them purchase stock at a discount. Netflix's stock went from 80 to 160 in the last year, so I think it's not too far fetched to assume some of the less risk averse Netflix employees did fantastic in the last couple years.

He's referring to base salary, not including the automatic 5% stock grant.

Re: Working at Netflix 2017

#129

Post by steven777400 »

fooey wrote: post #11

Netflix's culture deck is one of the most horrific things in the tech industry I've ever seen. It's so ruthlessly mercenary, I have a hard time understanding how why people put up with them.

As someone who works in the totally opposite situation (government job, permanent, no one gets fired for performance), I respect that Netflix publishes this deck. I would much much much rather have a company publish a clear set of expectations, pre-interview, than have those expectations be "read between the lines" or find out the hard way.

I try to be equally clear when I'm hiring. I make it clear to the candidates that this is not a place for individualism, not a place for innovation, not a place for cutting edge tech. We are heavily team oriented, process oriented, CRUD application maintaining, older stable tech platforms with interchangable teams. I want to make that clear, not because I want to "horrify" candidates (though no doubt many on HN are horrified) but so that people who want the exciting startup lifestyle aren't bamboozled by some swarmy HR position description that tries to sell something that isn't.

I respect that Netflix is willing to step up and make their expectations clear as well!

Re: Working at Netflix 2017

#130

Post by pfarnsworth »

conanbatt wrote: post #103
pfarnsworth wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glassdoor would be completely wrong.

H1b visa for next flix doesnt show almost* anything above 200k either. Biased sample, but still. Im sure some make that amount, but i gotta wonder about how many.

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=NETFLIX&job=SENIOR+SOFTWARE...
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