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Adopting Microservices at Netflix

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Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#41

Post by matwood »

nkozyra wrote: post #29
brendangregg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G'Day, I work at Netflix, and we hire what's been called "fully formed adults". Here's a quote that can explain it better than I (also see the full article): Source https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr/ar/1 : "Hire, Reward, and Tolerate Only Fully Formed Adults Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get…

I think rather than "fully-formed adults," what's described here is mutual compatibility. Which is kind of unfortunate, as weird as that sounds. We'd all like to work with people who operate with the same understanding, ethos, sense of humor, etc. It makes the day better, right? No office drama, no awkward meetings. But I would contend doing this tends to put you at a genetic disadvantage, and that some types of conf…

But I would contend doing this tends to put you at a genetic disadvantage, and that some types of confrontation are essential for growth.

Fully formed adults have confrontations all the time. The difference is that the result of the confrontation is not threats, backstabbing or whining later. We've all worked with the engineer who thinks they are the smartest thing around and acts like a 2 year old every time they are challenged. That's the person I assume Netflix says they will not tolerate, and I agree with them.

I have heated discussions with co-workers all the time and at the end of the day we are all still respectful of each other and our ability to get the job done.

Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#42

Post by ThrustVectoring »

nkozyra wrote: post #29
brendangregg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G'Day, I work at Netflix, and we hire what's been called "fully formed adults". Here's a quote that can explain it better than I (also see the full article): Source https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr/ar/1 : "Hire, Reward, and Tolerate Only Fully Formed Adults Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get…

I think rather than "fully-formed adults," what's described here is mutual compatibility. Which is kind of unfortunate, as weird as that sounds. We'd all like to work with people who operate with the same understanding, ethos, sense of humor, etc. It makes the day better, right? No office drama, no awkward meetings. But I would contend doing this tends to put you at a genetic disadvantage, and that some types of conf…

I got something very different out of it - it reminds me of Auftragstaktik, or leading by mission. Instead of adding explicit restrictions on employees, give them freedom of action. It takes trust that they're the kind of person that would make the kind of decision you want. In other words, having a shared "adult" background.

Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#43

Post by tracker1 »

It's interesting that this is an advertorial for nginx ... I'm currently working on implementing a microservices system, but have instead opted to use ZeroMQ for the connections, and utf-8/json for the request/response interfaces... Which in my mind seems a bit more sane once you reach behind the publicly accessible API (though also means that you have to wrap anything the public/website needs.

Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#45

Post by Consultant32452 »

acaloiar wrote: post #17

"If you ask any developer whether a slower development process is better, no one ever says yes. Nor do management or customers ever complain that your development cycle is too fast for them." I've never known a developer not to speak up when the development cycle is too fast or a user who is not averse to the resultant buggy software.

I've had a customer complain that I was being too productive for their team of business/design folks to keep up. I literally got pulled aside and asked to slow down. I think it was making them look bad.

Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#46

Post by nkozyra »

matwood wrote: post #41
nkozyra wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think rather than "fully-formed adults," what's described here is mutual compatibility. Which is kind of unfortunate, as weird as that sounds. We'd all like to work with people who operate with the same understanding, ethos, sense of humor, etc. It makes the day better, right? No office drama, no awkward meetings. But I would contend doing this tends to put you at a genetic disadvantage, and that some types of conf…

But I would contend doing this tends to put you at a genetic disadvantage, and that some types of confrontation are essential for growth. Fully formed adults have confrontations all the time. The difference is that the result of the confrontation is not threats, backstabbing or whining later. We've all worked with the engineer who thinks they are the smartest thing around and acts like a 2 year old every time they ar…

> Fully formed adults have confrontations all the time.

Sure. But without some HR codifications the line between "fully-formed" and "childish jerk nymph" becomes wholly subjective, and controlled by the majority. The end result is an organic uniformity.

Nobody gets along all the time. But how you define "fully-formed adult" can vary from one person to the next. Essentially you're defining "good and bad" or "right or wrong" by a feeling. I can understand the appeal of that, but it would worry me quite a bit as even a loose policy for behavior and interaction.

Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#47

Post by mc32 »

nkozyra wrote: post #29
brendangregg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G'Day, I work at Netflix, and we hire what's been called "fully formed adults". Here's a quote that can explain it better than I (also see the full article): Source https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr/ar/1 : "Hire, Reward, and Tolerate Only Fully Formed Adults Over the years we learned that if we asked people to rely on logic and common sense instead of on formal policies, most of the time we would get…

I think rather than "fully-formed adults," what's described here is mutual compatibility. Which is kind of unfortunate, as weird as that sounds. We'd all like to work with people who operate with the same understanding, ethos, sense of humor, etc. It makes the day better, right? No office drama, no awkward meetings. But I would contend doing this tends to put you at a genetic disadvantage, and that some types of conf…

Codified rules also mean that we can figure out who is responsible, rather than this where the management can't be held accountable, as there is nothing to hold them accountable to. It's all on you.

Even when we account for HR being an organ doing the bidding for the parent org.

Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#48

Post by rodgerd »

ryandvm wrote: post #9
harrylove wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would seem to echo Hastings' Netflix culture slide deck published in 2009[1]. It's worth reading even if you disagree. The deck was the first time I had heard of a major company having a "no vacation tracking" policy. It was presented in the same context as the HR manual. The policy of having no policies is built on employee trust. Employee trust is built on the standard of only hiring top quality employees. I'v…

Kind of a tangent, but having worked at two companies that have a "unlimited" vacation policies, I can say that I detest the concept. It's basically an anti-policy. There are two major ramifications of unlimited vacation policies: 1) It changes how you feel about taking time off. Rather than paid time off being something that you have "earned", you evaluate your PTO in comparison to your teammates - specifically most…

> It's still unlimited, for whatever that's worth, but employees will be required to take a minimum amount of vacation every year.

It's worth noting that in some sectors (including the one I work in), minimum chunks of leave are considered an anti-fraud measure. A non-trivial amount of internal fraud is uncovered when someone is required to take 1-2 weeks off in a block, which is enough to require someone else to stand in for them. At that point, oddities get called out.

Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#49

Post by RandallBrown »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #2

Netflix doesn’t have an HR manual. There is a single guideline: “Act in NetFlix’s best interest.” The idea is that if an employee can’t figure out how to interpret the guideline in a given situation, he or she doesn’t have enough judgment to work there. If you don’t trust the judgment of the people on your team, you have to ask why you’re employing them. It’s true that you’ll have to fire people occasionally for viol…

I work for a company with a similar HR Manual. It simply reads "Use good judgement."

The company is Nordstrom, a retail store that has been around for more than 100 years and comes up often in "Best Places To Work" articles. It's pretty great.

Re: Adopting Microservices at Netflix

#50

Post by donpark »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #2

Netflix doesn’t have an HR manual. There is a single guideline: “Act in NetFlix’s best interest.” The idea is that if an employee can’t figure out how to interpret the guideline in a given situation, he or she doesn’t have enough judgment to work there. If you don’t trust the judgment of the people on your team, you have to ask why you’re employing them. It’s true that you’ll have to fire people occasionally for viol…

If Netflix's goal is to attract more easy-going employees and avoid paranoid engineers, it's working for them.
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