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

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#351

Post by nkingsy » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

bird_monster wrote: post #342

nkingsy wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the “misfortune” of getting fired for going to bat for a junior co-worker who was being taken advantage of by the company. If I hadn’t taken 2 months to do nothing but grind on leetcode problems, there’s no way I was ever going to do it in my precious free time (2 kids, lots of hobbies). I’d never make a bet like that on myself by choice, but in hindsight it would have been an excellent investment years ago. My…

I suppose I'm pointing out the nuance between "Big Tech Co", "Startup" and FAANG. There are plenty of big tech companies that pay well, offer a lot of freedom, interesting tech, but are also not FAANG companies with silly interviewing practices.

I think I’ve done maybe 30 interviews? Only three of them were the full blown whiteboard for 5 hours process. The first two I failed at the beginning of my career and in hindsight I was properly rejected. The most recent one just made me feel like I’d earned it. The leetcode grinding helped, but my years of experience helped more.

IMO if a company messes around with soft skills, take homes, techno chit chat, long lunches, brutal arcane automated domain knowledge screenings, shibboleths, “day in the life”, present your solution to the group, heuristics, or some other creative way to justify their own biases, I can be fairly confident that I’ll have at least a few co-workers that really just can’t code very well.

I have not met an engineer at my current company who didn’t impress me when I dig into their code a little. There are low performers, but even they produce excellent code when they feel like it.

Nothing is more frustrating than taking a day to interview and getting maybe 30 minutes of watery technical challenge.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#352

Post by realityking » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #297

nullsense wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 motivation I used to think this too, but as a filter I think it's having the desired effect. From the outside looking in Life at a FAANG seems competitive in nature and they are optimizing for the people willing to push themselves that far to learn something. The ad…

My favorite version of this is the driving test you take in California before you get your license. One of the rules is that you automatically fail the test if you bump a curb with your wheels. That means, when pulling into a spot, you can't inch forward until your front wheels come to rest on the curb. Fail! At first glance it seems like a trivial thing to fail someone for. I know in normal driving, I use curbs like…

I failed my driving test as a foreign exchange student in Indiana for this exact reason. I was not amused.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by unoti » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

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.

> 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.

All the companies I know of let you interview multiple times.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by ciex » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

asciident wrote: post #257

trident1000 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I respect that and prefer that as well; just tell me up front so I can move on and not waste any more time. I come from a wall street background and did break through eventually, but they just leave you hanging with no follow up. And the recruiters treat candidates like dates they are ghosting, its really not an acceptable way to treat a human being after they put days even weeks into preparing and coming in…

I think you're missing the logistics needed to do this: 1) to officially reject someone usually needs asking around to build consensus that regardless of any changes to org structure, to outstanding offers, to the current set of interviews, etc. that this person will not get an offer from the company. Information is usually not precise, and often partially missing in the interview loop. Most of the information is foc…

It would be good to be transparent about this process. You can tell me that I am not the first pick and may get an offer if a spot frees up and I will prefer that to hearing nothing back.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by lliamander » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

dastx wrote: post #234

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…

In my short career of ~10 years I've yet to use any of those the algorithms they ask about in these interviews. I've gone from full stack on php, to java backends,to devops engineering, and never have I ever had to use any of these algorithms. I got a decent score at university where we learned it, but it's ridiculous to be asked about something I'll never use. Even if I knew the theory, and was able to ace it, it wo…

Algorithms are often treated as a trivia challenge, which is the complete wrong way to use them.

What you really want to know is whether a person can translate a set of requirements into working code. Algorithms are useful because they reduce the possibility that the candidate failed in the coding test because of poorly specified requirements.

"Problem solving" ability is a different beast altogether.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by newfangle » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

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.

Amount of code doesnt matter, what matters is the design decisions that are made

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by devmunchies » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

lytedev wrote: post #188

fyfy18 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$225k for a nurse? And I thought there was a lot of desperaity of tech wages between Europe and the US... The average salary of a nurse in the UK is £25,000.

I know a dozen nurses making far less than six figures in the US. San Francisco and the Valley should be considered almost its own economy at this point.

yeah. I know of a firefighter making over 200k in SF (firefighter salaries are public).

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by andy_ppp » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

Does Netflix do anything interesting tech-wise apart from serve video a super easily parallelised problem and even different formats can be generated offline. Their recommendations are horrendous for example, what else do they do?

What are they doing with all the 100x programmers?

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by devmunchies » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:29 PM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #194

Netflix seems to have the best tech, at least from a user perspective in Mexico. On my LG tv their app is the best, by far. I wish all the other services just served their content through Netflix. All new content has 4K HDR with Dolby vision/atmos and streaming is quite fast on my 200 Mbps fiber connection. HBO Go is pure garbage. The app is clunky and has way worse UX than Netflix. The streaming quality is absolute…

Yes I have bad internet at my house and I can tell which app has better engineering (buffering, local storage optimization, video definition downgrading/upgrading based on throughput, etc.)

Netflix works great with a slow or intermittent connection, they've clearly optimized it.

My rank for engineering quality (not UX) are:

(1) Netflix, (2) Amazon Prime, (3) Disney+, (4) HBO Go (I get a stop-the-world spinning icon every minute at times)

HBO Go is so bad that I have to get out a mobile device and "save offline" and cast it to the TV just to watch something.

(I don't use Hulu.)

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by sg47 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 9:35 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…

Borgen. Way better than House of Cards since it's more realistic and gives you a close view of Danish politics.