221–230 of 335 posts
Netflix has tried to recruit me a couple of times, I interviewed on site both times (after having the recruiter send me the slide deck that they use to explain their culture so it wouldn't be a surprise). For one of the sessions I had the extraordinary opportunity to talk to the manager for the role, their manager, and two people who had previously been in the role (Netflix wasn't aware that I knew those people). Wha…
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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, yo…
At this point, is there a single FAANG company, or tech company of equivalent size or prestige, that doesn't have a toxic environment? I don't even mean contains pockets of toxicity because of the inherent size of the enterprise, but something rotten at the top or in the core, at the managerial level or in the culture.
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It's interesting to me that the discussions in this thread treat performance and ability to work with others as distinct. In a team-based work environment, one's ability to work effectively with others is a critical aspect of performance. If an employee engages in behavior that frustrates, annoys, or confuses others, performance suffers, particularly in any role above entry level, where leadership, communication, and…
> If an employee engages in behavior that frustrates, annoys, or confuses others, performance suffers, particularly in any role above entry level, where leadership, communication, and mentoring ability are part of the job description." I don't see arguments in the thread that being generally insufferable at work is not a performance problem. Most of the comments are about the fact that you can easily lose your job fo…
Have a policy that in any case of performance issues, the person with the bad ratings gets to move to a different area in the company with as clean a slate as possible without being naive. Ideally away from the management chain up to and including the director. Then have HR reevaluate after 3-6 months.
It's only moderately good because it's never (and shouldn't quite be depending on the cause of poor performance) a completely clean slate and because it is very expensive to execute.
I've seen a number of folks who has relationship problems due to their environment be salvaged as perfectly good employees this way. I've seen others who left with the realization that maybe it wasn't JUST the manager after all and hopefully growing from that experience. And of course, I've seen people think it's all a giant conspiracy against them as well.
Netflix has tried to recruit me a couple of times, I interviewed on site both times (after having the recruiter send me the slide deck that they use to explain their culture so it wouldn't be a surprise). For one of the sessions I had the extraordinary opportunity to talk to the manager for the role, their manager, and two people who had previously been in the role (Netflix wasn't aware that I knew those people). Wha…
Can share (without giving away names) what strategies you used to suss this out? One thing I am very terrible at is actually sussing out unhealthy behaviour and cultures in an interview setting and it would be great to see how you guage both the answers and the cues.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, yo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, yo…
If you give some people promotions and not others, you're ranking people. In an ideal world 'promotions' should be a) a completely separate discussion from pay rises (as in a promotion is not automatically connected with getting a pay rise and ideally you should have to prove yourself in your new position before you even get to discuss pay) and b) not based on how good you are at your current job, but how good someon…
Actual promotions in the org chart are entirely seperate from that. This can and often does lead to situations where an average engineer makes more money than his team lead.
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> Money, of course. If they are such solid performers, they can get jobs in other FAANGs who pay just as well. Netflix pays well, but does it pay so much better that I should put up with this BS? I doubt. In fact, by keeping up this abusive charade, Netflix is guaranteeing that many of the best candidates will never apply. So my guess would be that their employees aren't the best, but perhaps the best candidates will…
This is absolutely untrue. 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. Netflix goes out of its way to pay top-of-market and often by a significant margin.
true according to acquaintances from there. Pure cash.
>The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
the base at FAANG is about half of NFLX. The RSUs take the total higher than NFLX. Know cases where $100K-$200K higher total comp offer from FAANG (i.e. mostly RSU) wouldn't move the NFLX employee - $500K cash change your view of the world :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, yo…
Of course it is not bad compare people to each other, the stupid part is making decisions by blindly following rules.