Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries • Hacker News Board

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#281

Post by user5994461 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #229

anm89 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interested to hear more about this. Technically great? Great leaders? Great thinkers/architects/high level people? All of the above?

All of the above, the great qualities came in many different ways. But I think a common theme was the ability to increase leverage and have a multiplicative effect. Sometimes this meant being an expert on a certain technology to better leverage it (especially important on teams that need to go deep such as video encoding, CDNs, television hardware, etc). Or looking at needs and pain points across teams and building h…

The question would be what other companies did you work for? If it's all top tech companies in the valley, it should be pretty good across the board.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#282

Post by vsareto » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #92

dktoao wrote: post #77

I think 100x is hyperbol however you slice it, run away from anyone who tells you they are a 100x developer. 10x may be achievable... but I argue that it is at least partly due to the prevailing code-base. Every competent developer is a 10x developer on a green field project just like every competent developer is a 0.1x developer on a messy legacy spaghetti-code disaster of a project (Making the differential 100x I g…

Reed is taking that into account. Reed and Netflix have been creating software for many years. They certainly have had "Rockstars" who could bust out functional but unmaintainable code. Those people are not valuable to Netflix because Netflix is looking for long term success. A 100x engineer exists in the context of a global company like Netflix. Because if a developer makes something just 1% better that translates i…

>A 100x engineer exists in the context of a global company like Netflix. Because if a developer makes something just 1% better that translates into millions of dollars of savings or increased revenue because on the margins just 0.001% increase of new subscribers is thousands of customers.

This dumb developer multiplier has really taken on a whole bunch of different convenient meanings.

The original idea had absolutely nothing to do with company success. It's not even useful now and it was questionable before.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#283

Post by C1sc0cat » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #235

C1sc0cat wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One rule for lawyers one for the little people

SWEs making 300k+ are not the little people

Relatively speaking of course and also I was kind'a alluding to the cross over between politicians and lawyers.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#284

Post by toast0 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

asciident wrote: post #257

trident1000 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I respect that and prefer that as well; just tell me up front so I can move on and not waste any more time. I come from a wall street background and did break through eventually, but they just leave you hanging with no follow up. And the recruiters treat candidates like dates they are ghosting, its really not an acceptable way to treat a human being after they put days even weeks into preparing and coming in…

I think you're missing the logistics needed to do this: 1) to officially reject someone usually needs asking around to build consensus that regardless of any changes to org structure, to outstanding offers, to the current set of interviews, etc. that this person will not get an offer from the company. Information is usually not precise, and often partially missing in the interview loop. Most of the information is foc…

> you usually make offers to the best candidate, and if they decline, move down the list.

When I've been involved in hiring, we almost always have more than one opening, so this one doesn't resonate with me. We could always make a decision on 'would we like this person or not'. I've decided to hire an iffy candidate because of a corporate imposed time crunch (position went away if we didn't hire by X, so we went with someone), and it was worse than being understaffed, so I lean heavily towards only hiring good enough people.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#285

Post by YokoZar » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

leptons wrote: post #215

bob33212 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reed is taking that into account. Reed and Netflix have been creating software for many years. They certainly have had "Rockstars" who could bust out functional but unmaintainable code. Those people are not valuable to Netflix because Netflix is looking for long term success. A 100x engineer exists in the context of a global company like Netflix. Because if a developer makes something just 1% better that translates i…

Netflix doesn't win or lose customers based on programmer performance, they win by having content that people actually want to watch. I don't care if the UI is 10% less slick, as long as they have stuff I want to watch. The only reason I've ever considered dropping Netflix is "why am I paying for this when there is nothing I want to watch". Fortunately, they have come through with some interesting content recently, a…

Netflix programmers can help you find what you want to watch. All the content in the world won't help them if you spend your time staring at the home screen while bad algorithms recommend the wrong things.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#286

Post by a13n » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

> Managing mediocre-performing employees is harder and more time consuming. By keeping our organization small and our teams lean, each manager has fewer people to manage and can therefore do a better job at it.

If managing great employees is easier / less work, then shouldn't each manager be able to manage more people?

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#287

Post by nullsense » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

dastx wrote: post #234

unoti wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...whiteboard questions on basic data structures and algorithms (I'm 40 and I still absolutely suck at those)... at my age it's time to accept that the window has closed on some things :) If you want to learn and are willing to put in the work you can do it. It will take some number of weeks or months, but it is totally doable with reading and practice. I read and practiced for a few months before getting my job at…

In my short career of ~10 years I've yet to use any of those the algorithms they ask about in these interviews. I've gone from full stack on php, to java backends,to devops engineering, and never have I ever had to use any of these algorithms. I got a decent score at university where we learned it, but it's ridiculous to be asked about something I'll never use. Even if I knew the theory, and was able to ace it, it wo…

They're not optimizing for knowing the theory or problem solving ability.

They're optimizing for how far are you willing to go to jump through this here hoop of ours?

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#288

Post by jgilias » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

There's an important detail omitted in the article though. Netflix also has a 'no brilliant jerk' policy. So, they effectively filter for brilliant people who can also serve as multipliers to their respective teams. And then they play the Henry Ford salary trick on them, ensuring that they are not really incentivized to move on to pipe-dream offering startups or potential competition. Seems to be working out well for them.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#289

Post by minhazm » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

LordAtlas wrote: post #161

minhazm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because of FANG association. FANG = Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google

Isn't there another "A" in there for "Apple"?

FANG was just a term coined by Jim Cramer for high growth tech stocks. Apple wasn't included at that point. People have re-purposed it to mean big tech companies that pay a lot and modified the acronym.

Re: Netflix CEO explains why he pays technologists huge salaries

#290

Post by scott_s » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

Netflix pays their software engineers huge salaries because stocks and bonuses are not a significant part of their compensation. Stocks are not a significant part of their compensation because the culture at Netflix - at least what they promote externally - is that they are a high-performing team, and players may get cut next year. In that kind of environment, stock which takes time to mature is not attractive. Bonuses imply doing more, but again, their culture is that everyone is a higher-performing player.

Base salaries at the other FAANG companies is lower because stocks and bonuses are a significant fraction of the total compensation. But total compensation is similar for all of them.

I thought this was common knowledge? Reference: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Apple,Netflix,Google,...