Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's free to distribute. So instead of charging customers for distribution, they should be charging customers the up-front cost of production.
How do you suggest that they do that?
Crowd fund production
Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
71–80 of 202 posts
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, they reliably make ~$100M per quarter in net income and have a few billion in cash reserves. They're on very stable financial footing.
Their content production is amortized over 5 years. In reality, they're in the red.
Cash flow might be negative but that's not the same as being in the red. And I'm not even sure cash flow is negative.
Content should be amortized as it will generate revenue for years. It's essentially being treated as a capital expense, which isn't unreasonable.
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#73That Glassdoor reference on Netflix software engineer salaries is wrong/outdated from my understanding - I don’t know a single Netflixer making less than $300k. Netflix seems to have an unusually open culture in general, including topics such as salary - they put their money where their mouth is and basically egg everyone on to beat them. Gotta respect that a company is willing to do that (I don’t work for them, but…
You need to make sure you're comparing apples to apples here.
Netflix has high salaries but doesn't (for normal employees anyway) give equity. The other big tech companies do. And equity can be a significant part of your total compensation especially given tech stock performance. I think there's no bonus either but I'm not certain of that part.
Note that some will consider paying straight salary an advantage. It's certainly more straightforward.
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't they also an extremely cutthroat culture? Being open about that doesn't make it any more appealing to me.
As a Netflix employee, I wouldn't really describe our culture as cutthroat at all. My experience in 5 years has almost entirely devoid of politics. For example, from our culture page: "We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.” That would be detrimental to fostering collaboration, and is a simplistic, rules-based approach we would never support." https://jobs.netflix.com/cul…
Interesting. I have a few friends who have interviewed and talked with people there and it's always been described to me as a place that does cut the bottom performers every year. When you hiring only "rock stars" those bottom 10% may still be great.
I'm glad to hear that may not be true as it's always put me off from attempting to work there.
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's free to distribute. So instead of charging customers for distribution, they should be charging customers the up-front cost of production.
How do you suggest that they do that?
That is a good question, and I'm not sure I have a good answer. Kickstarter and Patreon seem to be doing pretty well, but AFAIK they haven't been used to such a scale so they may not work for this.
This is a big issue and our economy is largely suffering for it, but old-world thinking about treating digital goods like physical goods is a poor response.
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#76Seems like selection bias. Netflix fires you if you’re not happy.
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#77That Glassdoor reference on Netflix software engineer salaries is wrong/outdated from my understanding - I don’t know a single Netflixer making less than $300k. Netflix seems to have an unusually open culture in general, including topics such as salary - they put their money where their mouth is and basically egg everyone on to beat them. Gotta respect that a company is willing to do that (I don’t work for them, but…
You need to make sure you're comparing apples to apples here. Netflix has high salaries but doesn't (for normal employees anyway) give equity. The other big tech companies do. And equity can be a significant part of your total compensation especially given tech stock performance. I think there's no bonus either but I'm not certain of that part. Note that some will consider paying straight salary an advantage. It's ce…
Aren’t bonuses are taxed at a much higher rate compared to salary?
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#78That Glassdoor reference on Netflix software engineer salaries is wrong/outdated from my understanding - I don’t know a single Netflixer making less than $300k. Netflix seems to have an unusually open culture in general, including topics such as salary - they put their money where their mouth is and basically egg everyone on to beat them. Gotta respect that a company is willing to do that (I don’t work for them, but…
If this is true, as someone who is unemployed and doesn't watch Netflix, I can't even wrap my head around that number. On the other hand, I'm kind of happy to see that they're making real money by charging real money (unlike others where your information is the only product) and passing that on to the people who make it good.
Netflix compensation packages are base salary only. So they are competitive by attempting to compute the value of Google or Facebook compensation packages which include shares and generous bonuses, and then Netflix aims to slightly beat that as well.
Netflix has other perks of course. But they also have a pretty crazy layoff policy and they brag about how awesome their severance package is.
Employment as Netflix is really a mixture of the income premium and lack of stability that a contractor would have, with a compensation structure closer to a startup (base salary only, no formalized bonuses).
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
By "top tier", do you also mean people who are willing to put in longer than normal hours and deal with a super-competitive culture and the office politics and drama that come with it? Or am I reading too much into the quotations? I'm honestly just interested in hearing more about what the culture at Netflix is like.
Netflix employee here. You can find out a lot about our culture from our culture page: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture It's not just marketing fluff. It really does a good job of reflecting what it's like to work there, and is taken seriously by everyone from the top down. As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's not a competitive environment, and I've experience very little politics and drama. Those things are…
> the office is usually empty by 5-6pm.
(because the bus to San Francisco leaves at 4:30pm)
At what point do you tell your employees that they live in the wrong city? Sacramento?
Re: Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
#80That Glassdoor reference on Netflix software engineer salaries is wrong/outdated from my understanding - I don’t know a single Netflixer making less than $300k. Netflix seems to have an unusually open culture in general, including topics such as salary - they put their money where their mouth is and basically egg everyone on to beat them. Gotta respect that a company is willing to do that (I don’t work for them, but…
Surely you have some selection bias in your Netflix-employed acquaintances. I would imagine their average/median salary is lower than that.
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