81–90 of 107 posts
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Not true. I have health benefits from Netflix.
The post seemed to indicate "no health benefits for family members" which is a benefit that many tech companies offer. Can you comment on that?
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Didn't they have some public contest to see who could come up with the best movie recommendation algorithm? That seemed pretty bold and innovative.
That's also a potentially cheap way to solve a vexing problem when you have a limited resource pool (ie your employees).
Cynic in me wonders if this post is tied to the recent frenzy around traders shorting Netflix? Even a few of the supporting comments feel scripted. Say this because Netflix seems to have great luck attracting people that I respect personally and their culture building and HR practices are fairly lauded elsewhere . . .
I think some people have different "career goals" than other people. Some people want to show up and keep their chair warm from 9-5 every day for 4 years, to get their small pay increase and title bump. Others want to come into the company with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer", work on something cool, and leave the company after they've done something interesting with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer".…
Meh, people have different experience. Yours might be like that because you _are_ in that position.
In my experience, most of these people tend to write quick hacky solutions numerous times. Get a pat in the back. And quickly run away when the said hacky solutions start to smell really bad.
These people do get away with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer" and tend to continue leaving bad code trails. Unfortunately nobody bad mouth companies for having bad code because it's internal.
re: pay I make far more than I've made at any of the 4 FT jobs I've had in 15 years. I'm paid a bit less on an hourly basis than my highest rate charged when I did consulting. I'm good. I was expensive.
re: benefits. Netflix matches 401k, they have an ESOP, they have a unique option plan, free (decent) lunches, snacks & drinks, etc.
re: health care. I'm single, my very good insurance program came out to less than $30 per paycheck since I've worked there. Next year they're changing the way insurance is done - every employee got $10k extra pay. This is intended to be used to cover the full cost of insurance, using my current benefits as a baseline it's a bit less that $8000 per year. People with dependents will almost certainly pay more. Many might be unhappy, I personally think it's fair.
re: fear. I have failed many times. I have succeeded more. Perhaps I'm just an smug asshole, but I've never once felt fear for my job.
re: innovation. I've personally spent more time innovating than at any other job I've had, including my last in a corporate research "lab".
The glassdoor review that I wrote after 6 months - http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Netflix-RVW...
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I've been a Netflix customer since 2005. Last time I tried to use their "streaming service," it demanded that I use IE instead of Firefox to watch a movie. I never tried it ever since. Yet I'm still renting DVDs from them.
You can watch instantly using a variety of browsers including Firefox and Chrome on Windows and OS X.
I've worked at netflix for about three years. I'm a software engineer and work on personalization. In the time I've been there, not one of the 40 or so people that I know well or work with have been fired. One person I was acquainted with was fired - no one found it surprising. Note that IT was a hellhole with firing about a year ago. Two really good people got dropped. I know more people that have quit - 3, but 1 ha…
Does this glassdoor post apply to engineering/creative roles too? I don't think that destroying morale is productive, but I could at least understand what they were trying to do if this only applies to their warehouse/fulfillment/etc operations: if you don't stuff enough envelopes fast enough, or encode and annotate movies fast enough, or deal with customer service calls efficiently enough, it can make sense to repla…
From this post, it sounds like they only took the stick from the Jack Welch approach (firing the bottom 10%) and not the carrot (rewarding the top 20% for doing well and coaching the middle 70% to improve).
I've worked at netflix for about three years. I'm a software engineer and work on personalization. In the time I've been there, not one of the 40 or so people that I know well or work with have been fired. One person I was acquainted with was fired - no one found it surprising. Note that IT was a hellhole with firing about a year ago. Two really good people got dropped. I know more people that have quit - 3, but 1 ha…
However, you noted that the IT department (assuming IT and engineering are separate at Netflix) was overboard with firing. If the manager on Glassdoor worked there, do you think his review is more justified?
Netflix's pronounced strategy is great if you have judicious and fair managers all the way up the ranks in your department, but it seems that it only takes one bad manager to spoil a large bunch of good apples; overall performance is a pretty subjective metric after all, and if you get a particularly closed-minded or prejudiced manager (and such people are plentiful in the IT and engineering sectors; those of us who work with absolutist machines all the time seem to inherit a bit more of their habits than might be desirable) and he gets annoyed at something about you or your work, I doubt it's a very long walk from "awesome excellent performer" to "adequate performer" and a severance package for your average employee.
Does Netflix have guards in place to protect against that? Do you think that the situation the reviewer described could have occurred in the same company because his department had a more difficult manager on the loop? Do you think that you've stuck around because you share the views or preferred styles of the other managers, which thereby makes you "super great performer"? Do you think that the Netflix policies have a tendency to create a useless feedback loop of yes-men and groupthink?
The problem with running a programming team like a sports team is the difference in transparent metrics. There's a few simple measurements for the value of an athlete, depending on perspective: if he has good name recognition, he is a valuable business asset, even if he's not really a high-scorer; if he scores a lot of points and puts your team over the top often, he's a good asset because he increases the value of your franchise by making it win more often, and so on.
The metrics in engineering, especially the day-to-day engineering of going into work, working on programs, and then coming home, are much less clear.
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Are you comparing to full time or contractor roles? Contractor roles frequently pay more, but have less job security. NetFlix should be compared to the contractor scale if they offer low job security.
These are all full time roles. If we wanted to compare with a contractor, we'd have to fold in Netflix Actuals for Bonuses + Equity + PTO and Benefits. But, you make a good point - the less and less security you have as an employee, the more closely that position resembles that of a contractor in which case you should be targeting about a 30-50% hourly increase (Taking into account the Benefits package). Hint: To get…
As a Tech recruiter, I gained him a new job (at lower pay), and his complaint with Netflix were two fold.
Work-balance (family) and, he couldn't move up into a formal Lead role (though was acting as such, this could be a variable of the candidate itself). The new job handled both of these concerns. Otherwise, as a Tech recruiter, it was very hard to "head hunt" Sr/ Mgr / VP anything at Netflix...interesting article and discussion.