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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

#241

Post by mustuhfa »

setr wrote: post #240
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.

That's only true if the population is static: if you fully replenish, and then discard the bottom 10%, on repeat, then your overall quality should be going up. If you only make new bad hires, the 90% good population will stay the same, and the newly hired 10% will be fired. If you make n good hires, such that that they're better than some peer in the previous 90% population, then the worst n peers will be shifted int…

Your statement would also only be true if people could genuinely identify low performers every single time without causing collateral damage, you are able to always ensure you hire people that are good and the company culture does not devolve into a empire building system and managers are not power hungry people looking out only for themselves. And this happens, it happened at many silicon valley companies (including one I worked for that is well known). Stack ranking does not work. It creates a culture that ends up embodying all of what I said above.

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

#242

Post by strangerlands »

_m96l wrote: post #181
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

They definitely pay more at Netflix for equal IC positions and very likely for Director roles. It is very rare to find ICs making 600-700 k total comp at Facebook or Google, not rare at all at Netflix.

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

#243

Post by turtlecloud »

jedberg wrote: post #203
throwaway359087 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So if 2000 eng, they are paying 300k on avg on the low end. That is like 600 mil/ year???? Omg

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

#244

Post by strangerlands »

maxxxxx wrote: post #69
strangerlands wrote: post #36

Sure, they fire for performance reasons by setting up one of those kangaroos courts where your voice is nowhere to be heard. The build-up to the inevitable firing is something akin to an Ionesco play, one absurdity after the other. The higher-up gets some sidekicks onboard, people who would sell their grandmother for a half-chewed piece of chocolate, and the smearing campaign begins. The apologist has the words ready…

I remember reading about this a while ago and I thought that it could work for a while but eventually you will attract and accumulate a bunch of cutthroat sociopaths. How do you even assess performance objectively without smart people gaming the system?

They don't, of course, people game the system. The trick is recognizing that a good fraction of people in tech at a company like Netflix could disappear tomorrow along with their work and the company would not even notice. So it is not that the fire someone and other people protest because they recognize they have lost "talent". Life goes on, paycheck comes and they are all ready to code again.

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

#245

Post by strangerlands »

type_enthusiast wrote: post #134
dunpeal wrote: post #37

> Many employees say they see the keeper test as a guise for ordinary workplace politics while some managers say they feel pressure to fire people or risk looking soft. Postmortem emails and meetings explaining why people got fired are viewed by some employees as awkward and theatrical when the audiences can be dozens or even hundreds of people. So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds…

> So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift? This isn't what happens, as far as I've seen. These e-mails/meetings don't badmouth people or imply that they weren't competent. They give context around specific ways in which the person wasn't meeting expectations (as well as outlining out the ways in which the person was positively con…

They largely badmouth people. I have seen very harsh things written after the employee was fired, with the employee having no opportunity to answer. Harsher for ICs than for Director and up – cowardice is always cheap.

You cannot write that that person is not at the level of their peers, that she was not able to communicate with the stakeholders in a company-wide email, with no opportunity for the fired person to comment.

In my book, that is all very unfair. I hope you are not used to that behavior, either actively or passively.

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

#246

Post by strangerlands »

dunpeal wrote: post #182
chrisweekly wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"not even Google pays that kind of comp in salary" -- maybe not a deliberate equovocation, but total comp ("salary" plus stock) at google is definitely at or above that range.

Netflix apologists in this thread love to use words like "salary" and "cash", then compare against the base salary of other FAANGs. Effectively what they're doing is comparing total comp at Netflix with base salary at other FAANGs, which is very misleading.

I hope you understand that there are people who worked at these companies and received offers and they know what they are talking about.

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

#247

Post by strangerlands »

taurath wrote: post #68

I'd be shocked if there weren't at least a few assault arrests a year at Netflix HQ reading this. While on one hand having it be known that your time at a company is tenuous and can change quickly is helpful, because thats true at all companies, going the opposite direction to directly play into both imposter syndrome and general workplace anxiety sounds like they're selecting for only the most self-assured people. I…

Well, we are talking about back-stabbing nerds, they typically do not get physical, they prefer "politics". And it is the opposite, it is not self-assured people who stay there, but insecure people who team up to make the self-assured fired. A very strange environment.

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

#248

Post by gaius »

dunpeal wrote: post #55
strangerlands wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netflix employees, why do you accept this? Money, of course. Plus, people working in tech and making very good money are not known for "spine-straightness".

> 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…

they can get jobs in other FAANGs who pay just as well.

There are no shortage of articles, just on this very site even, indicating that all of the FAANGs have weird, dysfunctional internal cultures. So it would be out of the frying pan into the fire.

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

#249

Post by shusson »

setr wrote: post #240
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.

That's only true if the population is static: if you fully replenish, and then discard the bottom 10%, on repeat, then your overall quality should be going up. If you only make new bad hires, the 90% good population will stay the same, and the newly hired 10% will be fired. If you make n good hires, such that that they're better than some peer in the previous 90% population, then the worst n peers will be shifted int…

Apply this to a sport team where you usually have solid metrics and replenishment occurs. A contrived comparison at a smaller scale, but I don't see this strategy working. The assumption that you get better hires is where I think it falls over. In practice you would get similar hires and It would just cause more disruption in the team. ie you would lose chemistry for little or no gain in skills.

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

#250

Post by setr »

mustuhfa wrote: post #241
setr wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if the population is static: if you fully replenish, and then discard the bottom 10%, on repeat, then your overall quality should be going up. If you only make new bad hires, the 90% good population will stay the same, and the newly hired 10% will be fired. If you make n good hires, such that that they're better than some peer in the previous 90% population, then the worst n peers will be shifted int…

Your statement would also only be true if people could genuinely identify low performers every single time without causing collateral damage, you are able to always ensure you hire people that are good and the company culture does not devolve into a empire building system and managers are not power hungry people looking out only for themselves. And this happens, it happened at many silicon valley companies (including…

>if people could genuinely identify low performers every single time without causing collateral damage,

I'm not sure about collateral damage, but that's what I meant by a solid metric.

If the metric isn't worth shit, then you're probably not doing much better than random selection, and perhaps worse, selecting on a trait you didn't mean to, or didn't want. e.g. power-hungry.

But if you believe in the metric, the strategy is sensible (and its probably safe to assume such managers do indeed believe in their metric).

Probably the bigger problem is there's no strategy in place to test the metric

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