Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#261

Post by puranjay » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #215

bob33212 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reed is taking that into account. Reed and Netflix have been creating software for many years. They certainly have had "Rockstars" who could bust out functional but unmaintainable code. Those people are not valuable to Netflix because Netflix is looking for long term success. A 100x engineer exists in the context of a global company like Netflix. Because if a developer makes something just 1% better that translates i…

Netflix doesn't win or lose customers based on programmer performance, they win by having content that people actually want to watch. I don't care if the UI is 10% less slick, as long as they have stuff I want to watch. The only reason I've ever considered dropping Netflix is "why am I paying for this when there is nothing I want to watch". Fortunately, they have come through with some interesting content recently, a…

Ditto. I do wonder what 100x developers get them. I don't know if Amazon Prime or Disney+ have 100x developers, but their streaming experience is similar to Netflix. Maybe Netflix is 5-10% faster. I can't say.

The point is, with a service like Netflix, it's absolutely the content that matters. People happily watch pirated cam copies of movies because they want the content so much.

Then again, the salaries of 10x developers are a lot lower than 10x creators (directors, showrunners, actors, etc)

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#262

Post by jariel » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

purple_ferret wrote: post #78

It's interesting that Netflix's strategy with content is almost the complete opposite. Pump out junk reality TV and test lots of shows for a season only to drop them once they don't put up acceptable numbers (i.e. get past the Initial Probationary Period)

Quality content is highly opinionated. Generic 'kind of watchable' TV is not.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#263

Post by Slartie » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

lolsal wrote: post #125

commandlinefan wrote: post #27

> We didn’t have any mad geniuses building everything from scratch. But our productivity was never higher. Of course, since "productivity" in software is completely subjective, every claim of higher productivity attributable to whatever cause is by definition correct.

Is it totally subjective? Can't you measure feature delivery velocity? I can look at delivered velocity for engineers and see trends over 10+ sprints.

Only if you assume features are equal in terms of necessary effort and value (they aren't) and never leave technical debt behind for later cleanup (they do) or at least leave behind the exact same amounts of debt regardless of the implementation path chosen (they don't).

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#264

Post by jariel » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #30

Why does the article use the term "technologists" when Hastings' quotes are all specifically about software engineers ?

Netflix probably has huge DevOps, who's roles may not really meet the definition of 'Software Eng', also, they might have tons of related technology people. Also - technical product managers, directors etc.. A lot of people not writing code.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#265

Post by orta » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #12

I have no opinion on Disney, as it's not available in my country, but generally for me Netflix's latency from the play button is much better than youtube's or HBO Go's. HBO's app / web page is full of bugs that would be probably easy to fix (it gets stuck even after I turn my new Samsung TV off and on again, I need to force quit the app). At the same time while youtube offline video watching always works for me on my…

Dark

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#266

Post by baq » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

bird_monster wrote: post #233

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…

The first time I interviewed at Amazon, the interviewer either pretended that a fire alarm was going off, or was actually going off, so they had to cut the phone interview short. When I asked if they wanted to call me back, they said they didn't think so, and that I'd be hearing from the recruiter. I did not ever hear from that recruiter again. It was a pretty gutting way to interview with, at the time, the company o…

Fire alarm tests happen at office campuses at regular intervals and aren’t announced beforehand.

That said, the thing to remember at all times is that the dude doing the interview is just doing his job and you’re little more than a row in a spreadsheet before and after the interview, perhaps even during, too. I wish this was taught instead of having to be hard won experience, especially since this is obvious as soon as you start interviewing people yourself.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#267

Post by asciident » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #193

asciident wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was involved in an accidental situation where two teams at different companies worked on the exact same project from the same starting point, each led by different developers. This was not the company's core product, but a necessary part of it (for anonymity, let's say this was the device driver for a fancy piece of hardware). The lead developers on each selected different frameworks, used different data architectu…

Yes - excellent developers are a productivity multiplier. It’s not about the 12’o clock shoot-from-the hip duel - the one who shoots more codepoints in the general direction leaves winner. A piece of code - if it ends up in production - has so many potential ways to waste work hours that avoiding just a fraction of them is a huge win.

Yes, and not just hours of work, but reputation damage. Think of all the products out there where people say "but it sucks because it crashes for no reason sometimes." These are not reproducible crashes generally (as most developers can fix those), but rather bad developer decisions that led to a system that is hard to make bug-free due to the way it's structured. Even the decision to use a programming language without pointers can lead to fewer unexplained crashes, security vulnerabilities, etc.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#268

Post by jkaptur » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #81

jkaptur wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, politics ruins stories, but you like House of Cards?

Not OP but I agree with them and your question is great. Had I written what OP said, I would be clarifying that I mean "pushing personal politics via messaging in the show." HoC is remarkably a-political in that respect. They portray the power struggles and corruption fairly equally across the board regardless of party affiliation. More so than party though is simply they show how hollow the beliefs really are. It's…

"All parties are fairly equally corrupt" is a personal political view. Anyway, it's not a series, but I bet you and OP would enjoy The Irishman.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#269

Post by seattletech » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#270

Post by smt88 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

eden_hazard wrote: post #195

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.

I'm entering my late 20s. I'm wondering if I still have a chance

You do have a chance. You should wonder if you want it. Ignoring the ethics of each company, the lifestyle is not for everyone. You should try to figure out if it's a good fit for you or not.