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

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#391

Post by arwhatever » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 12:36 AM UTC

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…

Have to take the opportunity to shill https://sievejobs.com - a jobs website I've created that let's you hard-block jobs with "broken" hiring practices such as discussed here.

Create a Job Seeker profile to help the website overcome the chicken-and-egg dilemma - As with any job site, it's free for job seekers and I've tried to streamline the signup as much as possible.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#392

Post by rebelos » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 12:38 AM UTC

city41 wrote: post #388

rebelos wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cli…

This was really informative. Reflecting on it, it makes perfect sense to look for software economies of scale in content production with internal applications and platforms, especially as that becomes an increasingly key differentiator in the streaming space. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#393

Post by timwaagh » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 12:45 AM 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…

Occupied(Okkupert) is a great political serie akin to house of cards.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#394

Post by scruple » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 12:50 AM UTC

nullsense wrote: post #308

sidlls wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing: "But we do deal with this stuff at Netflix," is still only true for a tiny fraction of the engineers at Netflix. I currently work at a company that is not quite FAANG scale, but almost is: we have issues in our platform and systems that have forced us to adopt "FAANG-like" solutions to certain issues of scale. Almost none of the engineers at this company are doing anything at all with interview-styl…

But the 5% ~ 10% that do are at least guaranteed to be capable of it. And it's likely that that matters.

Capable of it or capable of learning it when it's needed? I had to brush up on linear algebra for some problems at work about 2 years ago. I solved the problem, documented everything properly, and the code has been running unchanged and without issue ever since. In the time between then and now I've definitely lost that knowledge _yet again_.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#395

Post by digianarchist » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

fyfy18 wrote: post #174

ditonal wrote: post #50

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One reason for that is way more variability in developer compensation. A company hiring a senior SWE in SF might be paying 130k or 400k. But until recently there wasn’t much transparency. My buddy is a nurse in Bay Area with a CRNA, it’s pretty much understood you make 225k plus any overtime so there’s not much more to discuss.

$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.

Nurses can pull $120,000 a year here in Toronto

https://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/2020/09/21...

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#396

Post by leptons » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 12:53 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #387

leptons wrote: post #381

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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 webpag…

"When I look for a streaming video service, I want to make sure their programmers are the best. The content isn't as important as the user interface or the algorithms that tell me what to watch."

Do you realize how absurd that sounds? Content is King. If Netflix had crap content, it wouldn't matter how good their programmers are, because the content would still be crap. I can tell you from experience that if Netflix ever folded, their contracts with studios would be worth 100x more than whatever code they developed is worth.

> I've been developing webpages for many decades

>>It can't have been that many decades,

The "WWW" was created in August 1991, and I was on it in 1992, so yeah, practically 3 decades. I was wishing for Javascript in a web browser years before it ever existed, back when I was using lynx to browse the web. And I was coding long before that. Yeah, I'm old. I've been around. I don't need you explaining anything to me.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#397

Post by oscargrouch » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

nullsense wrote: post #272

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…

>"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…

I think that is reasonable that a company do some tests on folks that don't have much baggage to show for, because in this case they are doing a wild guess and must count a little bit on luck.

But the parent was on his 30-something when he did the interview, and i bet he had a lot in his curriculum to show for, so in this case the company dont have to guess anymore.

I think it says a little bit that the HR is failing somehow. Failing to adapt to different kinds of human beings.

By the way, there are a lot of psychology into this. Sometimes the right kind of people to do some sort of task is the one that are avoiding the whiteboard tests.

In the end it will lead to an unbalanced company with people very similar and optimized for a couple of areas, but lacking in others.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by oscargrouch » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

MR4D wrote: post #373

winphone1974 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But these are the people we need to entice to leave their jobs! The best potential hires always have jobs; they rarely go to the open market. They rarely respond to open casting calls and don't need to go through the broken song and dance routine. We know this as the most reliable metric is prior work directly with someone who you trust who vouches for them. Everything else like whiteboarding data algos is weak sauce…

Maybe the best employees are the people that can best overcome broken processes? And yes, I meant that seriously. Every fortune 500 company is held together at some level with bandaids and bailing wire. Being able to deal with things like that might be important. In my firm, I know we place a much higher emphasis on being able to just roll with it than technical perfection. But my firm is but a drop in the ocean comp…

One problem with this approach is that with time people tend to optimize to gaming the game. With enough time you are just hiring people that are good in the game and not the best fit for the position.

Companies also need a lot of people that are creative and "think outside the box". With this you are optimizing for conformists and people that "think inside the box", and that optimize to fit the game.

No wonder the big companies have a hard time to create things..

Western society need badly to know how to deal well with impermanence, and this are such a case were there's not much prediction that can be done.. its just like dancing expecting the rain will come.. sometimes it will, and we will gladly think it was because we danced.

The best tip for hiring is someone that you know that knows a little bit to point a couple of good people for you. Because those things are pretty hard to know, and there are very little we can do, without the experience to show for some specific characteristics we need.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by java_script » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

devmunchies wrote: post #363

randomfitnessq wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, FAAG may not be the best acronym.

I prefer FAGMAN.

It’s unfortunate, but this is useful in that it’s easier to pronounce than any other alternative. I guess MANFAG is just as good and saves the spice for the end.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

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Post by function_seven » Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 1:56 AM UTC

StillBored wrote: post #386

737maxtw wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ei…

Yeah, these are the gotchas that vary by state.

In California, for a single left turn lane, you're allowed to complete the turn into any of the lanes you choose.

The driver handbook doesn't go into detail about double turn lanes that feed into a 3-lane cross street. My own rule is that only the inner lane (leftmost) must complete the turn in the matching innermost lane. The outer lane can end their turn in the #2 or #3 lane. I tend to choose the #3 lane just to put as much space between me and the car next to me, in case they incorrectly go for the #2 lane. Unless there's an opposing right-turning car that I trust less :)