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At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

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Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#201

Post by aminotaa »

ryall wrote: post #76
stevenjohns wrote: post #6

> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons, not because managers don’t like them Oh how I wish I could have had that. I've had an experience in the past where I was dismissed because my manager decided he just didn't like me anymore. Although I was the best performing, most senior developer on the team and was doing all the hiring and mentoring of others, it d…

You'd think that in any decent company a manager would be held accountable for firings. "They weren't performing, why not? What did you do to assist them? Show us the minutes from your meetings where they outlined why they couldn't meet performance goals and you provided ways to help them" A manager's role is to support their team, any failure to do so should be looked at very carefully as to why they are under-perfo…

The manager's role is to deliver. Managers are given head count to deliver. Managers are assessed on how demanding they are of their direct reports. The general expectation is to ruthlessly cut and replace underperformers.

Only attorneys in labor disputes will be asking to show minutes from meetings.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#202

Post by dingaling »

dsnuh wrote: post #135
maxxxxx wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was mainly in large companies where departments are quite large and the regular workers don't really see what's going on. I have seen people in one department being told to keep working on their current stuff while new people were hired for the new tech. Once the new people were up to speed the old department was laid off. There was no effort to get current employees involved.

The entire department? No one saw the writing on the wall and studied up on the new tech to stay relevant?

When do you suggest that they find time to 'study up'? Most corporate environments in which I have worked have an assignment:time ratio greater than 1:1. Often there wasn't an opportunity to take the legal statutory lunch break nevermind study.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#203

Post by jedberg »

throwaway359087 wrote: post #170
obstacle1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix had 5,700 employees in 2017, and only a 'couple hundred' of those were engineers?

Yes

I think your stats are off. When I left Netflix in 2015, we already had 1000+ engineers. By 2017 it was probably closer to 2000.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#204

Post by NeedMoreTea »

dingaling wrote: post #200
ghaff wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also means that US employees are able to leave the next day if they want and that company hiring decisions don't have to factor in that it's going to be really really hard to get rid of someone if they don't work out or circumstances change. It allows a lot for flexibility for everyone, with some costs.

Most UK tech companies have an initial six-month 'probationary' contract. If you're a good fit in that period then that is superceded by a permanent contract. So both sides benefit, the company has the initial flexibility to hire and fire and after that the employee gains some assurance that he won't be thrown off the premises arbitrarily.

That just reinforces our inexorable march down to the US level.

When I started most UK tech, and companies in all other industries had an initial one month probation. Very occasionally, usually for the most senior roles, it might be two or three. Six months weighs the balance much too heavily on the employer side I think.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#205

Post by jedberg »

svat wrote: post #183
type_enthusiast wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, "culture of fear" hasn't been my experience at all, and as far as I know it isn't the experience of the people I work with. I can't speak for other teams/orgs (I work in the ML org) but in the years I've been here I could count on one hand the number of folks (at least among those I knew) who were let go. I don't worry or think about my job security; I think about building better software (and from what I can t…

A few months ago, a good engineer who had left Netflix told someone I know that the reason was the work culture: specifically, she mentioned that there were team meetings where everyone was encouraged to say what they didn't like about others, in a public setting. More recently, this person I know brought it up when interviewing at Netflix (not wanting to work in such a culture), and was reassured by the hiring manag…

My personal experience was that the only time we went around giving feedback was when managers were meeting. It was never individual contributors, except one time when I specifically asked my team to give me feedback, but it was all one way.

However, it was highly encouraged for ICs to give each other feedback in person one-on-one, and for ICs to give managers feedback (both their own and others they had to work with).

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#206

Post by LaserToy »

gms wrote: post #188
_m96l wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation. The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases. A Principal Engineer at FB would make "half" of $350-500k in compensation? Pure nonsense. Moreover, it seems like Netflix pays more cash and less equity, so some folks on this thread love to talk about "base compensation", "salary", et…

Netflix is not on par. They do pay more than the rest can match.

They pay all in cash, other give stock.

Almost same outcome.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#207

Post by DarthMader »

rednerrus wrote: post #28

After working in organizations where terrible performance is tolerated, this seems like a breath of fresh air. We've all worked with some asshole/fuck-off who we wish someone would fire. It starts to eat away at morale. I'd rather take my chances an not have to work with the problem children.

Unless that person is your boss, then good luck. How hard could management be at Netflix? You don't need to coach up people when you can just fire them. The more you delegate, the better you look. Sounds like tenured professors who tell you to just figure it out.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#208

Post by alecbenzer »

cryptonector wrote: post #177
maxxxxx wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what you get when you have fixed quotas for firing people, e.g. bottom 10%. After a few rounds you have some very good people left and either you fire good people that are hard to replace or you hire people to fire them. I don't understand how the top guys don't see that dynamic.

Stack ranking is a very bad idea. At MSFT, as I understand it, it led to some terrible dynamics, such as people not helping each other within teams, nor across teams, and no one wanting to stick their necks out. Labor is the biggest cost at tech companies, so one can understand desperate attempts at getting a handle on that cost. As long as you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater...

I think stack ranking can work well when it's understood that the quality bar doesn't sit at a fixed place in the stack. Google promo committees afaik stack rank a batch of employees and then decide where in the stack to promote, and (in theory) it can be anywhere from the whole stack gets promoted to no one gets promoted.

Whether you explicitly stack rank or not, if you give some people promotions and not others, you're ranking people. Forcing you to see the whole ranking at once seems like a good way to be more objective and cut out bias.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#209

Post by jedberg »

scurvy wrote: post #174
jedberg wrote: post #7

> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons, not because managers don’t like them That's not true at all. The company fires people all the time because their skills just aren't necessary. I mean I guess technically it's a layoff, but a layoff and getting fired are functionally the same at Netflix as they both come with the same severance. When we moved to AWS,…

I find it hard to believe that you "let go" of people with physical infrastructure expertise after you "moved to AWS." Netflix has a massive physical hardware project with Open Connect and runs one of the largest bandwidth networks in the world. The fact that everything suddenly collapsed under one individual probably had something to do with it. I don't mind said individual, but a lot of people don't like him. He's…

Open connect didn't start until years after the move to AWS happened. All that bandwidth was served out of Akamai at the time.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#210

Post by alecbenzer »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #193
_m96l wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation. The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases. A Principal Engineer at FB would make "half" of $350-500k in compensation? Pure nonsense. Moreover, it seems like Netflix pays more cash and less equity, so some folks on this thread love to talk about "base compensation", "salary", et…

I know about them directly, and also about the other companies directly as well. :shrug: You need better data.

You're claiming total comp at non-Netflix FAANG for senior-principal is $175k-$250k?

Would love to see any specific numbers you have but that just sounds straight up wrong. IME $200k-$250k is around what L4s at Google make in total comp.

Are you sure this isn't a salary vs. equity thing?

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