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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

#91
There was an episode NPR Planet Money where they had a former hiring manager explain Netflix's work culture. I recommend giving it a listen; it's only 20 mins.

npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/13/550793717/episode-647-hard-work-is-irrelevant

There was a story where a woman who worked herself sick for the company and was on sick leave. Netflix essentially said don't worry, take as much time off as you want but really it was about making her post redundant and moving on without her.

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

#92
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…

>>We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.

This is possible in companies growing rapidly or bringing in lots of money.

In 1990s, It was very common in Indian IT services firms to openly talk about salaries and promotions, as getting the best of both was easy for every one. Enter 2000s and all of this came to an abrupt end, stack ranking emerged out of nothing as people competing for limited resources compared themselves with each other.

Its not that hard to pay and promote when things are going well. Its only when the scarcity kicks when the real issues start.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 […

> $12B/year can pay for a lot of $300K/year salaries.

Of course out of those $12bn, 7-8 will go to cost-of-goods-sold (buying or making the content they serve up). Still, 3-4bn of gross income pays for quite a few engineers.

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

#94
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…

[deleted]

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

#95
post #73
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…

You need to make sure you're comparing apples to apples here. Netflix has high salaries but doesn't (for normal employees anyway) give equity. The other big tech companies do. And equity can be a significant part of your total compensation especially given tech stock performance. I think there's no bonus either but I'm not certain of that part. Note that some will consider paying straight salary an advantage. It's ce…

Yeah, that sounds nice. Getting paid in stock is a huge hassle. You have to deal with special brokerage accounts. You have to remember to enroll for autosale if you want to get paid during "silent periods". There is an extra hour of paperwork to do every year for your taxes.

Given that stock was like half my compensation, I wasn't going to give it up to avoid the hassle. But next time, no thanks.

edit: just noticed your username, hah.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Netflix compensation packages are base salary only. So they are competitive by attempting to compute the value of Google or Facebook compensation packages which include shares and generous bonuses, and then Netflix aims to slightly beat that as well. Netflix has other perks of course. But they also have a pretty crazy layoff policy and they brag about how awesome their severance package is. Employment as Netflix is r…

>Employment as Netflix is really a mixture of the income premium and lack of stability that a contractor would have, with a compensation structure closer to a startup (base salary only, no formalized bonuses).

Note, ever since IC Engineers started getting significant bonus/stock grants (Which, I think, is something that has been a thing for less than a decade, at least for grants of publicly traded stock.) From what I've seen? Contractors have lost their income premium.

I mean, contractors still make more than what they'd make full time for base salary, but base salary is now a relatively small portion of total comp for FTEs at most places.

Just my observation; I'm also talking about the sort of contractors who go through body shops and essentially do the same jobs as the regular employees.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 […

> $12B/year can pay for a lot of $300K/year salaries. Of course out of those $12bn, 7-8 will go to cost-of-goods-sold (buying or making the content they serve up). Still, 3-4bn of gross income pays for quite a few engineers.

Their latest quarter:

$2.98 billion sales, $991m gross profit, $208m operating income

Tracking toward $11.75b - $12b in sales for fiscal 2017, with a mere ~3,400 employees or so.

They've historically had relatively slim margins (especially in the streaming business), probably explains the very thin employee base versus the sales.

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

#99

There was an episode NPR Planet Money where they had a former hiring manager explain Netflix's work culture. I recommend giving it a listen; it's only 20 mins. npr.org/sections/money/2017/09/13/550793717/episode-647-hard-work-is-irrelevant There was a story where a woman who worked herself sick for the company and was on sick leave. Netflix essentially said don't worry, take as much time off as you want but really it…

Did she get paid for her sick leave?

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

#100
post #76

Seems like selection bias. Netflix fires you if you’re not happy.

Really? See, I've actually kind of been following netflix for a while, kind of excitedly. A no bullshit company that pays a lot when you are productive, and fires you when you are not. Sounds like my sort of thing.

But... if they also require you to "be happy" and otherwise put yourself in the required company emotional state... that makes them a lot less attractive. Generally speaking, I lose a lot of respect for companies or people who value "culture fit" over productivity, and I generally have a hard time "singing the company anthem" as it were.

(Note, some people confuse 'politeness' with culture fit. Being polite, being able to avoid spilling your bad feelings inappropriately is part of working with other people. But being part of a culture is not.)

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