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Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#201

Post by asdff »

iMuzz wrote: post #33
tolbish wrote: post #13

I never understood why Netflix frequently gets mentioned in the same context as Apple, Google, and Amazon. I think I hear more about it than Microsoft on here. Can anyone explain this to me? Surely they aren't the only newish company that tries to employ smart people by paying well.

It's probably because they are a 200B+ company

While high, nearly an order of magnitude lower than all the others in FAANG. Microsoft is a 1.5T+ company yet remains excluded. Imo, FAANG means 'sexy millenial tech company with a gigantic retail investment interest' moreso than anything about the size and significance of the actual companies.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#202

Post by fractionalhare »

subsubzero wrote: post #145
kilbuz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Cramer coined the FAANG acronym, Netflix was included. That group of companies was grouped together by investors due to their performance and marked dominance at the time, which has by and large continued. In addition to their stock price, these companies also pay very well. In fact, if you are lucky to get an offer from Netflix, their aim is to pay you and keep you at "top of personal market". That is, they do…

I think that is really a myth(highest pay). I know that bytedance pays more than netflix(stock + cash), also hedge funds, citadel and DE Shaw pay way more than netflix does. 500k-700k all cash, I just chatted with their recruiters the past month and this is what they saying comp packages for senior+ engineers go for.

Netflix median engineer comp is about $500k, if I recall correctly. They can go significantly higher. It's really not a myth that they'll typically beat out the rest of FAANG.

Trading firms can beat Netflix, but the variance in pay is much higher and in my experience they tend to be more selective (and there are fewer roles available). I wouldn't say the typical engineer at DE Shaw is earning "way more" than the typical engineer at Netflix.

Source: I have friends at Netflix, Citadel and DE Shaw, including a director at Netflix and a VP at DESCO.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#203

Post by mixmastamyk »

unoti wrote: post #163
jcadam wrote: post #144

I interviewed at Netflix several years ago. It was a fairly standard SV interview. That is - whiteboard questions on basic data structures and algorithms (I'm 40 and I still absolutely suck at those). Failed of course :) But they put me up in a really nice hotel, so there's that. In the years since, I've definitely lost all interest in working in SV (the fact that I've failed every single interview I've had with SV c…

> ...whiteboard questions on basic data structures and algorithms (I'm 40 and I still absolutely suck at those)... at my age it's time to accept that the window has closed on some things :) If you want to learn and are willing to put in the work you can do it. It will take some number of weeks or months, but it is totally doable with reading and practice. I read and practiced for a few months before getting my job at…

I don't think that's the point, capability vs. age.

It's only an indirect factor, in that of someone at a certain age, tends to focus on more important things, like what it takes to build large systems, avoid mistakes, work well with people. Shooing away folks with experience is a significant loss.

Also, just because you "do the work," it is no guarantee. Very likely they could pull a random question from a subject you haven't done recently.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#204

Post by EpicEng »

ativzzz wrote: post #152
s1artibartfast wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a lot of truth to this. Big Law is a great example of this, where the nearly every firm operates in lockstep on the Craveth Scale[1]. If one firm increases salary, every other firm will for for same cycle. https://www.biglawinvestor.com/biglaw-salary-scale/

Isn't this basically collusion by companies? Didn't Google/Facebook get in trouble for trying something like this at some point?

It's not collusion if every other firm raises salaries only to remain competitive, and I doubt many people are complaining about higher salaries. The companies you mention had secret no-hire agreements in place.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#205

Post by MR4D »

98codes wrote: post #184
unoti wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...whiteboard questions on basic data structures and algorithms (I'm 40 and I still absolutely suck at those)... at my age it's time to accept that the window has closed on some things :) If you want to learn and are willing to put in the work you can do it. It will take some number of weeks or months, but it is totally doable with reading and practice. I read and practiced for a few months before getting my job at…

You mean doing the work _again_. I had all the algorithm stuff down cold out of college and maybe for another 5 years after. Now after 20 years of rarely needing any of it and having it be a web search away when I did, I couldn't come up with any of it on demand. "Doing the work" meaning having to study to relearn a thing that I'll maybe use sparingly in my work means the interview process is broken, not anyone's mot…

Lots of things are broken. The question is do you want to work hard enough to overcome it? My guess is you’ve got a good enough job already, so it’s not worth the effort.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#206

Post by thelean12 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #151
jcadam wrote: post #144

I interviewed at Netflix several years ago. It was a fairly standard SV interview. That is - whiteboard questions on basic data structures and algorithms (I'm 40 and I still absolutely suck at those). Failed of course :) But they put me up in a really nice hotel, so there's that. In the years since, I've definitely lost all interest in working in SV (the fact that I've failed every single interview I've had with SV c…

I think if you don't break into major SV companies early in your career it becomes extremely hard to do so later on because people start assuming you must have already tried and failed so aren't at the right standard.

.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#207

Post by wegs »

gcheong wrote: post #158
jcadam wrote: post #144

I interviewed at Netflix several years ago. It was a fairly standard SV interview. That is - whiteboard questions on basic data structures and algorithms (I'm 40 and I still absolutely suck at those). Failed of course :) But they put me up in a really nice hotel, so there's that. In the years since, I've definitely lost all interest in working in SV (the fact that I've failed every single interview I've had with SV c…

Not to mention the sheer arrogance so many SV companies have thinking that what they are doing is so special it requires "10x" developers compared to every other company out there.

Well, the problem is in the Typical Man Month. 10x as many 1x developers will deliver a worse product on a longer schedule than 1x as many 10x developers.

Even if you assume 150% developers at 300% the cost, it's worth it. The number of communications channels grows quadratically with the number of people in the org. You'll come out ahead at larger organization sizes. Fewer, higher-productivity people is a huge win in software with compounding effects.

And the next problem is most markets in software are winner-takes-all or winner-takes-most. Being the runner-up to Netflix is not a fun spot to be.

The place where 1x developers do well is routine work, especially on smaller projects. For example, in-house IT work at a bank, manufacturer, etc. tends to not have those same economies.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#208

Post by chrisseaton »

thelean12 wrote: post #206
chrisseaton wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you don't break into major SV companies early in your career it becomes extremely hard to do so later on because people start assuming you must have already tried and failed so aren't at the right standard.

.

> You're just making this up. At no point does age come up in the decision making process for major SV companies.

But I didn’t mention age?

I said career stage. You can’t tell me they don’t look at what stage you are in your career.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#209

Post by khalilravanna »

jimbokun wrote: post #177
mettamage wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one friend and he programs at least ten times as fast as I do (in typing). I can barely keep it up with reading. And in my CS class I was in the top quarter percentile, he was in the top 1%. The difference is big. They type code as fast as I'm typing this comment, while having a sane architecture. The secret: they programmed a lot more as a kid.

I think the sane architecture is the only relevant part. Real world "10x" developers are almost always in that class because they can solve the same problem with 1/10th the code of a 1x developer. Ability to solve problems with less code will always outpace faster typing.

To be clear, you don’t mean code golf levels of code-shortening, right? E.g. they’re also not sacrificing on clarity and readability of code to shorten it. They’re just removing unnecessary work. I think this is definitely good and creates a net gain for other devs.

Because the people who shorten code at the cost of clarity are some of my least favorite people. I once saw “half = num >> 1” instead of, say, “half = floor(num / 2)”. The latter is 100% more clear to more people and doesn’t gate-keep on engineers who haven’t memorized bitwise operators. (Also, this wasn’t a context where the bitwise operator would be optimized by the compiler in case they wanted to throw that hogwash out there.)

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#210

Post by dekhn »

unoti wrote: post #163
jcadam wrote: post #144

I interviewed at Netflix several years ago. It was a fairly standard SV interview. That is - whiteboard questions on basic data structures and algorithms (I'm 40 and I still absolutely suck at those). Failed of course :) But they put me up in a really nice hotel, so there's that. In the years since, I've definitely lost all interest in working in SV (the fact that I've failed every single interview I've had with SV c…

> ...whiteboard questions on basic data structures and algorithms (I'm 40 and I still absolutely suck at those)... at my age it's time to accept that the window has closed on some things :) If you want to learn and are willing to put in the work you can do it. It will take some number of weeks or months, but it is totally doable with reading and practice. I read and practiced for a few months before getting my job at…

I think the question really is, when are these companies going to wake up to the idea that most people in their mid-40s who are successful programmers aren't writing leetcode, they're preventing junior engineers from checking in bad code, and handling large-scale outages with a few lines of analytics and config changes.
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