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

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#381

Post by leptons » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #329

leptons wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're aware Netflix also applies data insights to decide what to make? Of course I give something thumbs up or down depending on if I liked it - why would you assume I don't know what they do with that? But they've still made some barely watchable crap, too, in spite of themselves, so I do have to question if rating things even matters.

The thumbs up/down is just one signal among many. They know in aggregate what people watch, how much of a movie/episode they watched, the kinds of devices they watched on, how much binging/pausing they did, when and where they watched it... > they've still made some barely watchable crap, too To you. That crap was undoubtedly entertaining to someone. Not to mention a 100% hit rate is nearly impossible in the creative…

https://old.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/cj4rrp/was_another_l...

Netflix's "Another Life" was so bad that people wonder if it was made bad on purpose. It was absolutely awful, and anyone that thinks it was good loses any credibility about what's good or bad sci-fi.

And I've been developing webpages for many decades, and even worked quite a long time at a precursor to what Netflix is today - yes, an online movie streaming service. So please don't talk down to me like I don't know what any of this is about. You're seriously wasting your time explaining any of that to me.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#382

Post by LordFast » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

MR4D wrote: post #205

98codes wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. It always comes down to a base equation of who is willing to do what kind of work for what kind of reward under what kind of circumstances.

After a decade of software being a desirable job and everyone trying to get into it, we can bet good money that it's now a buyer's market rather than a seller's market.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#383

Post by drewg123 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #325

drewg123 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for Netflix Open Connect (CDN). We've been leaders on CPU and power efficiency with things like async sendfile, kernel TLS, and more. We've had servers doing 100Gb/s in production for 4 years, while competing CDNs are just now rolling out 100Gb/s servers. I have a prototype machine right now serving 375Gb/s of TLS encrypted customer video traffic with just 32 cores.

> serving 375Gb/s of TLS encrypted customer video traffic with just 32 cores. How does that even work? The fastest system RAM you can get that I know of is DDR4-5000, which transfers at 40 GB/s (320 Gb/s). How can you encrypt and send data faster than your memory can even transfer it to the CPU? Or is there something I'm misunderstanding?

Hardware TLS done in the NIC :)

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#384

Post by nullsense » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

csmiller wrote: post #361

hnlmorg wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to think this too, but as a filter I think it's having the desired effect. Is it though? I'm a hiring manager and don't ask such questions and yet have had no problem hiring really talented engineers. The reason I don't ask those questions is because I know that cranking up the interview pressure and asking arbitrary, revisable, common interview questions doesn't actually prove anything aside how good the ca…

I think they are saying not that it’s a filter for talent, but for people willing to “put in the work” to pass that type of interview, which sounds about right. I feel the same way about some colleges.

This is more what I meant.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#385

Post by dang » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:35 PM UTC

lwansbrough wrote: post #305

karolist wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rampup at FAANG can be brutal and you'd be doing lots of learning even after getting in. The leetcode style interviews are designed to select people capable of studying and materialising broad problems in depth and scope under time constraints. They are also objective and can't really be faked nor you can talk your way in like in most banking/finance IT jobs. I was of similar opinion at some point but these reali…

Congratulations on your indoctrination.

Please don't post unsubstantive or flamebait comments to HN, and especially please don't cross into personal attack. It only makes things even worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#386

Post by StillBored » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

737maxtw wrote: post #333

function_seven wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A lot of that stuff depends on the proctor. When I took the driving test the first time in my state (not CA), he almost failed me because I failed every single left turn. Thankfully at the end he asked a question, and realized that I had done every turn incorrectly because nobody ever bothered to tell me that left turns always should go to the LEFT lane, not right.

You and half the country. The rule is actually you match the lanes left to right. Aka if two lanes are turning left into a three lane road the second from the left goes into the middle.

I suspect that people happened to have just zoned out during this part of the class, although a friend of mine recently said he was never taught that one is suppose to stay as far right as needed to allow people to pass on the left either.

And its not just random drivers, the more esoteric parts of the law (driving on the shoulder in TX, free right turns, uturn laws, center turning lane, etc) aren't even understood by many traffic enforcement officers.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#387

Post by triceratops » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:52 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #381

triceratops wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thumbs up/down is just one signal among many. They know in aggregate what people watch, how much of a movie/episode they watched, the kinds of devices they watched on, how much binging/pausing they did, when and where they watched it... > they've still made some barely watchable crap, too To you. That crap was undoubtedly entertaining to someone. Not to mention a 100% hit rate is nearly impossible in the creative…

https://old.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/cj4rrp/was_another_l... Netflix's "Another Life" was so bad that people wonder if it was made bad on purpose. It was absolutely awful, and anyone that thinks it was good loses any credibility about what's good or bad sci-fi. And I've been developing webpages for many decades, and even worked quite a long time at a precursor to what Netflix is today - yes, an online movie stream…

I didn't intend to "talk down" to you, sorry if it came off that way. I just didn't agree with your original statement that programmers' performance has little/nothing to do with why people use Netflix. I still think you're completely wrong about that.

> I've been developing webpages for many decades

It can't have been that many decades, the WWW has only existed for 3 decades.[1] Even I've written at least one webpage in every single one of those decades. :-P

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web#History

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#388

Post by city41 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

rebelos wrote: post #369

city41 wrote: post #115

I left Netflix about 2 months ago after over 5 years working there. Overall I would say the average developer there is about on par with any other company I have worked at. But the great ones were truly, astonishingly, great.

Could you elaborate a bit on where the bulk of the technical effort is being applied at Netflix these days, aside from recommendations and improved scaling? From the point of view of the user, the product has seemed fairly static for the past several years. But obviously there must be a lot going on behind the scenes. I assume the broad buckets of continuous effort are "get the right content to the right users", "add…

I can definitely say a lot of focus and innovation is happening on the studio side of Netflix. This is where tools for casting, managing the logistics of filming, budgeting, etc are being built in order to scale up Netflix's ability to create content. I spent the last 2.5 years of my time on this side. https://jobs.netflix.com/teams/studio-technologies

My first 3 years were on the consumer side, working on the TV client. I'm a bit more out of touch here. But I'd still say interesting engineering is happening here. I agree sometimes it is "marginal gain at massive scale", but that can be really satisfying and challenging in its own right. There are many different teams focusing on a lot of different things here. The consumer side is pretty much entirely driven by A/B tests. So teams might take on a big idea, but it can be hard for those to beat out the established norm sometimes. That may be a factor in why you feel the product is "static". Also the wide range of devices and internet connections can segment engineering. Many efforts apply across the board, but other projects might only apply to say high end game consoles for example.

Regarding "get the right content to the right users", I don't have much experience with that. That's more in the domain of backend teams. I do know they also do A/B tests to guide innovation, but that's about all I can confidently say there.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#389

Post by hintymad » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #290

Netflix pays their software engineers huge salaries because stocks and bonuses are not a significant part of their compensation. Stocks are not a significant part of their compensation because the culture at Netflix - at least what they promote externally - is that they are a high-performing team, and players may get cut next year. In that kind of environment, stock which takes time to mature is not attractive. Bonus…

That's not true, and probably the biggest misunderstanding about Netflix. Netflix was really generous on stock options. It gave you stock options worth 5% of your salary for free. Then you can forfeit your salary for options, but here is the kick: Netflix gave your 5 times of discount. 5 times! For instance, if you forfeit 100 dollars for options and the strike price is $10, then you will get 50 options instead of 10. The general formula for profit is 4X - 1, where X is the percentage of increase from strike price. If the stock price is 25% higher than your strike price, you'll make even. If it is 50% higher, then you will double your forfeited salary. On top of that, you vest your stock options on a monthly basis, and your options expire in 10 years! Thank about it, you're pretty much guaranteed to make money as long as the stock has certain volatility, and Netflix stock is one of the most volatile stock in the past 10 years. That's how so many employees of Netflix became multi-millionaires.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#390

Post by nkingsy » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 12:30 AM UTC

bird_monster wrote: post #378

nkingsy wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lun…

I guess the splitting point is thinking that whiteboard interviews select candidates that are good coders - a point I have an entire career of anecdotes to disagree with. YMMV, as with everything. edit Also, to be clear, you seem very proud of your interview, your company and coworkers, and I do not mean to discredit your pride or success. I am simply pointing out that your experiences are not universal experiences a…

To the edit: more like I was deeply unsatisfied with each and every non-whiteboard interview process.

This is regardless of outcome, including many offers and years of working at companies with broken interview processes.

I don’t think whiteboarding is a great methodology, but the other methodologies are worse.

As an interviewer, I find it stressful to give whiteboard problems and my data point usually feels fairly noisy. At startups I preferred giving a tiny take home and working with the candidate on extending it in an open ended way.

As a candidate, I refuse to do take homes (known too many take homes)