21–30 of 53 posts
After getting to this line - "after I left Netflix and began consulting..." - I couldn't help wondering whether or not the author was fired and whether this means there are significant portions of her advice that the current management of Netflix would disagree with.
Netflix sounds like an extremely well-managed company. Can anyone comment on the accuracy of what's in the slide deck? I'd be curious to know how it all works out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a (US) Limited Liability Partnership, partners get a share of the firm's profits--while still having their individual liability protected in a similar way to a corporation. In a large firm, you probably have multiple levels of partners. While I'm hardly an expert, I imagine that this structure would probably limit the options for raising capital.
LLCs vary by state in the USA. Some states allow almost complete freedom regarding the structure of the business entity. I lived in Virginia for several years. My friends and I launched a business in 2003. We decided to go for a custom LLC structure. We spent about $5,000 on lawyer fees, but we got a structure that allowed us to sell shares in our LLC. It was a hybrid structure, partly a C form, partly a normal LLC.
I was an engineer at Netflix from 2010-2012. There were a lot of things that I really liked about the Netflix culture. They really do live the "Freedom and Responsibility" culture. It was very empowering. There is a dark side to that culture though. At Netflix it was too easy to fire people. This had two side affects. 1) People were afraid of being fired. You could come in one day and be sent home that afternoon with…
Article say that big money make things a lot smoother anyway. Do you disagree ? Working at Netflix seems to be a very demanding experience. Will you say that Netflix balance this demand ? In which way ? Reading this article, I have the feeling that Netflix wants the perfect employees, with no bonuses, no awesome perks, an Uncle Scrooge culture (Wow, I can display my $40 SV paid-by-myself poster in the corridor withou…
Working there, IMHO, is no more demanding than any other company.
There are no bonus', the salary is just raised - the average pay for engineers at Netflix is something like $200k which is fairly competitive to the "total compensation" from other employers.
I might be wrong here, but being treated like an adult, a very liberal vacation policy, and 100% support for anything and everything I need to do my job; are more valuable than what most people consider perks...
And they're certainly not a "uncle scrooge" culture - I've never once had to justify a purchase and as far as I can tell unless you're asking for something odd or fairly expensive (>5k or so) manager approval isn't even needed.
Anyone's experience at Netflix is going to be heavily influenced by their manager, and sadly, Netflix doesn't seem to be much better than any other company at finding or growing good managers.
I was an engineer at Netflix from 2010-2012. There were a lot of things that I really liked about the Netflix culture. They really do live the "Freedom and Responsibility" culture. It was very empowering. There is a dark side to that culture though. At Netflix it was too easy to fire people. This had two side affects. 1) People were afraid of being fired. You could come in one day and be sent home that afternoon with…
It's interesting that your experience is so different from mine (I work at Netflix now). for #1, I've never heard of someone being let go without having any idea. When a manager goes to HR and says "I'd like to let this person go", they ask, "will it be a surprise?" and if the answer is yes, they send you back to have the hard conversation first. for #2, I have lots of friends from Netflix. And some of them have even…
I think some of this is bizzare. I mean, an employee is satisfactory, but only satisfactory, so they give him a generous severance package and go hiring somebody else. Really? This sounds like "stack ranking" where they fire the bottom 60% every year.
I mean, an employee is satisfactory, but only satisfactory, so they give him a generous severance package and go hiring somebody else. Really? Netflix wants a high-performance team. That means that "merely satisfactory" in a sleepy, less demanding company would make someone an outlier. You have to cut the "merely adequate" 4s and 5s if there's no way to turn them into 7+; what you should do is do it humanely. Persona…
I was an engineer at Netflix from 2010-2012. There were a lot of things that I really liked about the Netflix culture. They really do live the "Freedom and Responsibility" culture. It was very empowering. There is a dark side to that culture though. At Netflix it was too easy to fire people. This had two side affects. 1) People were afraid of being fired. You could come in one day and be sent home that afternoon with…
This sounds sort of like a culture built around having lots of temporary contractors around; or perhaps employees who are treated as temporary contractors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, an employee is satisfactory, but only satisfactory, so they give him a generous severance package and go hiring somebody else. Really? Netflix wants a high-performance team. That means that "merely satisfactory" in a sleepy, less demanding company would make someone an outlier. You have to cut the "merely adequate" 4s and 5s if there's no way to turn them into 7+; what you should do is do it humanely. Persona…
The tricky bit is successfully hiring high performance people. You have to have a pretty high success rate, and low turnover, or else you'll just be constantly churning through the "satisfactory" people and getting an occasional gem in there.
You need enough of a draw to get a competitive applicant pool, and enough people who have sufficient talent to judge it.
Most companies err by hiring based on specialty, e.g. "we need exactly 3 data scientists and that's it". If you're looking for generally good people and willing to accept the variability that comes with that, and you have a managerial environment that provides multiple avenues to success (which is the definition of a good management environment) rather than multiple ways to fail, I think it's not that hard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Article say that big money make things a lot smoother anyway. Do you disagree ? Working at Netflix seems to be a very demanding experience. Will you say that Netflix balance this demand ? In which way ? Reading this article, I have the feeling that Netflix wants the perfect employees, with no bonuses, no awesome perks, an Uncle Scrooge culture (Wow, I can display my $40 SV paid-by-myself poster in the corridor withou…
I've been at Netflix for close to 6 years. Working there, IMHO, is no more demanding than any other company. There are no bonus', the salary is just raised - the average pay for engineers at Netflix is something like $200k which is fairly competitive to the "total compensation" from other employers. I might be wrong here, but being treated like an adult, a very liberal vacation policy, and 100% support for anything a…