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Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

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Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#61
post #3

That Glassdoor reference on Netflix software engineer salaries is wrong/outdated from my understanding - I don’t know a single Netflixer making less than $300k. Netflix seems to have an unusually open culture in general, including topics such as salary - they put their money where their mouth is and basically egg everyone on to beat them. Gotta respect that a company is willing to do that (I don’t work for them, but…

I know an engineer making less than $300k in total comp, but it's just barely under that, so your overall point is definitely reinforced.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#62
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't net income == net profit?

A person can have an income of $300k a year but spend every penny of it on debt and necessities. That's generally not considered making a profit. EDIT: Sorry, I misunderstood something. Netflix has indeed been making a profit.

Sure but if a corporation makes 300k a year that's called revenue, the revenue minus costs are profit, no?

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#63
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you have some selection bias in your Netflix-employed acquaintances. I would imagine their average/median salary is lower than that.

I also don’t know a single engineer whose total comp is below $300k at Netflix. They get paid well and the caliber of talent is top tier.

What do they do all day? Pressing play and getting video already works, and you can’t program your way out of Netflix’s existential threat of nobody renewing their streaming licenses.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sequence of 0s and 1s cost money to make.

But it's free to distribute. So instead of charging customers for distribution, they should be charging customers the up-front cost of production.

How do you suggest that they do that?

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#65
post #54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is shockingly high, but it's true. It's also a produce or leave environment where folks don't stick around who aren't, as the previous poster says, "top tier."

By "top tier", do you also mean people who are willing to put in longer than normal hours and deal with a super-competitive culture and the office politics and drama that come with it? Or am I reading too much into the quotations? I'm honestly just interested in hearing more about what the culture at Netflix is like.

Netflix employee here. You can find out a lot about our culture from our culture page:

https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

It's not just marketing fluff. It really does a good job of reflecting what it's like to work there, and is taken seriously by everyone from the top down.

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's not a competitive environment, and I've experience very little politics and drama. Those things are explicitly counter to the culture.

As for long hours, while the work day can be pretty intense, the office is usually empty by 5-6pm.

Hope that helps.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#66
post #3

That Glassdoor reference on Netflix software engineer salaries is wrong/outdated from my understanding - I don’t know a single Netflixer making less than $300k. Netflix seems to have an unusually open culture in general, including topics such as salary - they put their money where their mouth is and basically egg everyone on to beat them. Gotta respect that a company is willing to do that (I don’t work for them, but…

If this is true, as someone who is unemployed and doesn't watch Netflix, I can't even wrap my head around that number. On the other hand, I'm kind of happy to see that they're making real money by charging real money (unlike others where your information is the only product) and passing that on to the people who make it good.

They have 100M+ subscribers who each pay ~$10/month. That's a billion dollars a month, or $12B/year. $12B/year can pay for a lot of $300K/year salaries.

(Most people have trouble wrapping their heads around just how huge consumer markets are. If you have 300M users - a la Whatsapp when Facebook acquired them - and charge them just $1/year, that's $300M/year in revenue, or enough to afford 1000 $300K/year engineers [or actually more like 1000 $200K/year engineers once you figure in overhead]. Similarly, if just one person out of every 100 acquaintances you know uses a product but they spend $10/month on it, that's about $400M/year. The challenge for consumer businesses is usually that they have to spend more to reach those customers and get them to open up their wallets than they make from each one, not that there aren't enough customers.)

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#67
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't they also an extremely cutthroat culture? Being open about that doesn't make it any more appealing to me.

As a Netflix employee, I wouldn't really describe our culture as cutthroat at all. My experience in 5 years has almost entirely devoid of politics. For example, from our culture page: "We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.” That would be detrimental to fostering collaboration, and is a simplistic, rules-based approach we would never support." https://jobs.netflix.com/cul…

> Our culture can feel intimidating, especially if you have any degree of imposter syndrome

Could you elaborate?

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don’t know a single engineer whose total comp is below $300k at Netflix. They get paid well and the caliber of talent is top tier.

What do they do all day? Pressing play and getting video already works, and you can’t program your way out of Netflix’s existential threat of nobody renewing their streaming licenses.

I feel like maintaining the infrastructure for the mammoth amount of data they must serve each day would be quite a lot of work on its own. They can't really afford hiccups in service, and I don't recall the site ever being down or a video not loading recently.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also don’t know a single engineer whose total comp is below $300k at Netflix. They get paid well and the caliber of talent is top tier.

What do they do all day? Pressing play and getting video already works, and you can’t program your way out of Netflix’s existential threat of nobody renewing their streaming licenses.

Cost optimization via more efficient software, customer engagement via better predictive analytics, etc.
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