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Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

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Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#191

Post by meric »

chickenbane wrote: post #178
briga wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something that worries me about moving down to Silicon Valley. It seems like everyone there is envious of how much their neighbors and co-workers make, regardless of how much they happen to be making. I want to avoid falling into that trap--it seems like a recipe for unhappiness.

Another perspective: Netflix is notoriously interested in only hiring top talent. Top talent is ambitious and always seeking to advance. I don't think it's a matter of envy, it's the unending beat of progress.

And,or: they hire the people most likely to feel unfairly paid, and it’s when we feel we are unfairly paid we are more motivated to negotiate higher salaries, and the more a company’s employees ask for higher salaries the more likely they are paid higher. And if the root cause of the feeling of being unfairly paid isn’t the absolute amount of money being received, then the higher salaries won’t reduce the feeling.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#192

Post by MystK »

romanovcode wrote: post #96
sdee21 wrote: post #38

I have no clue how netflix can survive with the price and being able to virtually download everything they have in their library.

Convenience.

Exactly. I've pirated a ton of movies in my time, but it's so much easier to sit down on the coach from a long day of work, fire up the Apple TV and scroll through and watch all the good originals that Netflix has.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#193

Post by [deleted] »

lovich wrote: post #131
nodesocket wrote: post #31

I attribute and applaud the strong leadership of Reed Hastings. Apple and Tim Cook is another example. Both companies keep their products and secrets close to their chest, and don't put-up with employees who think their political views or personal agendas are more important than the company. Leadership by committee (Google is notorious) in my view is not the answer. Large public companies should be dictatorships. The…

Why should they be dictatorships?

[deleted]

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#194

Post by shmerl »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #167
will_hughes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who's going to pirate can readily get all of that content from various sources already. I highly doubt that anyone has been persuaded to buy a Netflix subscription because of Netflix's use of DRM. As for 'shady' -- well, not a word I'd necessarily use, but there's plenty of examples where DRM has blocked access to legitimately purchased content.

Netflix isn't using DRM for the customers, its using DRM for the content providers. It isn't there job to fix the rest of the Internet

> Netflix isn't using DRM for the customers, its using DRM for the content providers.

That doesn't for their own video. Whom are they using it for in that case?

> It isn't there job to fix the rest of the Internet

Apparently it's their job to break it though, by pushing this garbage into he standard.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#195

Post by PakG1 »

sramam wrote: post #67
jlesk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Netflix employee, I wouldn't really describe our culture as cutthroat at all. My experience in 5 years has almost entirely devoid of politics. For example, from our culture page: "We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.” That would be detrimental to fostering collaboration, and is a simplistic, rules-based approach we would never support." https://jobs.netflix.com/cul…

> Our culture can feel intimidating, especially if you have any degree of imposter syndrome Could you elaborate?

I imagine that it's like playing on a professional sports team. If you can't hack it in the NBA, NHL, NFL, etc, you'll know inside of you. Guys that make it to The Show have very little doubt in themselves as to what they're capable of doing, and even the superstars are mostly working their butts off to get even better, and that goes double for the benchwarmers. See any YouTube video on Kobe Bryant's work ethic. But even the benchwarmers know that they belong if they put in the work.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#196

Post by baddox »

eitally wrote: post #47
baddox wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could certainly be wrong! That feels shockingly high as an average, but good on Netflix for valuing talent. Something to aspire to. ;)

It is shockingly high, but it's true. It's also a produce or leave environment where folks don't stick around who aren't, as the previous poster says, "top tier."

I wonder how their management (whoever has the authority to fire) measures performance. Hopefully it’s not as naive as hours in the office, as other commenters have suggested, because naive measurements must lead to perverse incentives.

I would suspect and hope that, given such high salaries, their retain-or-fire decision is more sophisticated than that.

I think that software engineering productivity is a fairly difficult thing to measure quantitatively. Any simple objective quantitative measure (like hours spent working, lines of code contributed, or tickets resolved) is bound to be too naive.

Software engineering seems like one of those things where it’s easy to subjectively identify very good and very poor performers, but difficult to draw a hard line or even compare two similarly productive programmers.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#197

Post by CaptSpify »

SapphireSun wrote: post #190
CaptSpify wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and? Just because our economic models are out of date doesn't mean we need to change the way we behave to keep shoe-horning them in. It means we need to change our models to reflect reality.

To be clear, I am totally on board with reimagining the economy. Sorry, that didn't come through in my post.

My apologies. I feel my response was a bit defensive. I guess I'm just used to people arguing that "it would hurt because of $short_term_economic_issue, so we shouldn't consider it at all!"

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#198

Post by bborud »

atulatul wrote: post #158
bborud wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it bad that Netflix fires people who are not happy working for them?

I think the parent comment meant that since unhappy people are fired, remaining people are happy ones and these happy ones participated in the survey thus resulting into the survey result... selection bias. It is not about whether it is good for netflix or not.

Fair comment.

But I wasn’t really thinking about what’s good for Netflix. I was actually thinking about the employees. If you are unhappy at an employer : is it bad if you are fired for not being happy?

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#199

Post by Aron »

briga wrote: post #155
brailsafe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is true, as someone who is unemployed and doesn't watch Netflix, I can't even wrap my head around that number. On the other hand, I'm kind of happy to see that they're making real money by charging real money (unlike others where your information is the only product) and passing that on to the people who make it good.

What's even harder to wrap my head around is that according to this survey around 15% of people at Netflix think they're not compensated fairly. What do they want? 400k? 500k? Would a salary of a million dollars a year be enough?

The competition is starting your own company and cashing in on many millions or billions from it. I think it's perfectly reasonable for the highest achievers to have that in mind as the alternative to compare against and hold some ambivalence on whether they are maximizing themselves.

Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees

#200

Post by davidjnelson »

briga wrote: post #155
brailsafe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is true, as someone who is unemployed and doesn't watch Netflix, I can't even wrap my head around that number. On the other hand, I'm kind of happy to see that they're making real money by charging real money (unlike others where your information is the only product) and passing that on to the people who make it good.

What's even harder to wrap my head around is that according to this survey around 15% of people at Netflix think they're not compensated fairly. What do they want? 400k? 500k? Would a salary of a million dollars a year be enough?

Decent 3 bedroom houses nearby cost 3 million, so going by the 3x salary to house price rule, a million dollars would be the right amount. That is completely ridiculous, but it is also reality.
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