Their environment seems similar to the movie In Bruges. I wonder if Reed Hastings is so dedicated that he would “Keeper Test” himself.
Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
31–40 of 106 posts
Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#32Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#33The big question, of course, is does Netflix succeed because of, or in spite of, this policy.
They’ve been pushing the same product since inception; they could do nothing except maintain current tech and catalogue, which is what they’ve more or less been doing. So it’s in spite of. They could have any culture, hire a herd of thousands of cats and pay them half a million each, and they wouldn’t lose much.
The only thing they need to do to survive is maintain rights to enough shows people are willing to pay for.
Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#34On one hand this seem crazy. On another, every place I worked at was full of free-loaders who did nothing and never got fired. I wonder if things are different at Netflix.
Are they firing "free-loaders" or people who are just worse at playing politics/self-promoting?
We have extremely quiet people at work, few know what they do, but they're actually extremely productive, rarely make waves (good or bad), and help keep longer term goals.
The "Rockstar" types join, get all excitable, make a handful of rapid (often good) changes, burn out, and leave. Likely to start again at their next workplace.
Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#35Reminds me of stories about working at Goldman Sachs. I guess that’s fair when Tech has become the 21st century go-to yuppie industry
Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#36I had a Netflix offer this year I declined (yes, people decline Netflix now and then) The salary was eye-popping...$400k. That's just to be a senior developer. There were RSUs on top of this so total comp was probably $500k. That's crazy! I knew if I joined I would be terminated but that didn't bother me...the salary was crazy and apparently the goodbye package is also generous. I suppose it's sort of nuts to know yo…
400k??? This seems insanely high. Are you one of a kind specialist of sort? I find it hard to believe that regular engineer, even in the prime of his career can expect such high salary.
Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#37CEO Reed Hastings is described as a dedicated adherent to the culture and several former employees said he is “unencumbered by emotion”—in a good way. Is this not the definition of a psychopath? This really does sound like hell to me. Then again a lot of modern corporate culture especially in tech seems to be moving toward this type of hell. Basically a form of social Darwinism. Life and more specifically happiness i…
There are many parts to being diagnosed a psychopath. I don't think Reed fits. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mindmelding/201301/w...
Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#38On one hand this seem crazy. On another, every place I worked at was full of free-loaders who did nothing and never got fired. I wonder if things are different at Netflix.
Well, we have to come to terms with the realization that society has a percentage of freeloaders. They also need to make a living; somehow. So the better option is to assume a certain percentage of freeloaders and design work with them in mind. Instead of firing them, reassign them to places they will prove more useful. Something like where in Japan they relegate these people to the periphery of the company but don’t fire them.
Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, or is there a version of this policy -- say remove very poor performers from time to time -- that is effective without having to fetishize being "tough"
The idea of removing the lowest performers, regardless of their ability, is a business idea from I believe the Jack Welch era at GE. In my management classes at business school, it's taught as a cautionary tale of unintended consequences and bad management. So this policy is a well-explored bad idea from decades ago, and it seems typical of Silicon Valley to arrogant reinvent a wheel without looking at cautionary tal…
Exactly.
Most people cannot even tell you how to measure a programmer's performance. But we're comfortable with firing the "lowest performing" developers? Lowest performing by what metric?
Honestly these "get rid of poor performance" policies are just abused to remove people who others have a personal dislike for, or similarly those who don't make enough friends to game the system.
Plus whose to say that even if we could measure performance, that it wouldn't be down to externalities outside of the individual's control (e.g. poor manager, poor team culture, bad project requirements, poorly written/documented legacy system they need to integrate with, etc).
Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell
#40I had a Netflix offer this year I declined (yes, people decline Netflix now and then) The salary was eye-popping...$400k. That's just to be a senior developer. There were RSUs on top of this so total comp was probably $500k. That's crazy! I knew if I joined I would be terminated but that didn't bother me...the salary was crazy and apparently the goodbye package is also generous. I suppose it's sort of nuts to know yo…
There are no RSUs at Netflix, just for everyone 5% each year of annual salary in free stock options at 40% of current value, vesting every month. You can also use up to 100% of your salary for buying stock options at 40% of current value. The policy made rich many people who invested heavily in the stock options program years back.
The severance package is 4 months of salary.
I doubt you got an offer from there, because it is all very clear, or you did not pay any attention.