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Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

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Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#71

Post by huffmsa »

tluyben2 wrote: post #26
huffmsa wrote: post #8

Sounds like being on a sports team at a high level. It's not for you, then it's not for you. It's business, not personal.

> Sounds like being on a sports team at a high level. In the sports that doesn't pay too much (for most people working at Netflix) even though you are in the top of the world. With the high level sports you get some kind of satisfaction that you got further than anyone (or some other reason beyond money) and not for the money; most people at Netflix probably work there for the money.

But if you make it at Netflix for more that 6 months you're probably a stud and can take your skills anywhere. You are at the top of your game.

Working with video at large scale is tough man.

Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#72

Post by beatgammit »

strangerlands wrote: post #49
austenallred wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a Stoic?

Stoic maybe if the same rules applied to him, but it is not the case, they apply to everyone except himself. Maybe it is just me, but I don't like when people apply harsh rules for everyone except themselves. Cult or dictatorship come to mind.

When you're the owner/manager of something, you get to decide how people use the things under your control. It's the same way if you let someone borrow your car or other valuable possession: you'll see rules for how that item can be used (e.g. don't take the Lamborghini off-roading).

If that behavior extends outside of things you _should_ control (e.g. you try to control your friends and acquaintances), then it can be considered psychopathic or sociopathic. If you're just trying to minimize harm to things you control, then I'd argue that it's normal.

The CEO of a company is very much interested in running things efficiently. Without more information, there's really nothing to suggest this CEO has a mental disorder.

Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#74

Post by pixelperfect »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #41
shroom wrote: post #17

Stories I’ve hear from friends to my family who worked at Netflix made me cringe. Regular meetings where everyone at the meeting have to do presentations about their own recent work at the company and basically have to present why they should stay instead of the ”other guy” who will be fired. No rest with constant fear of being fired or the alternative if you ”make it” is constant preasure of performaning better than…

it's interesting to put this into the larger context of "the US needs more programmers and STEM grads." if that is true, how does Netflix find additional people to hire? how does it survive in a competitive labor market when it treats employees in this way?

"the US needs more programmers and STEM grads" can always mean "we wish we could hire programmers for $45,000 a year, but due to supply and demand we have to pay them more than that"

Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#75

Post by kamaal »

>>CEO Reed Hastings is described as a dedicated adherent to the culture

It really isn't culture unless it applies to yourself. Does Mr Hastings hold himself to the same standards himself as does to everybody else?

>>Kill or be killed seems to be accepted as a mode of operation.

A pathetic excuse for a toxic work environment than anything else. This will lead to non-existent to negligible co-operation inside and across teams. Stealth political projects and alliances to sabotage internal projects. Cartel style power structures, purges and internal power dynamics. You usual ala carte toxic political power play.

Of course this happens in all companies. But the speed is low. Here it feels like the CEO derives please pouring a catalyst into a run away chemical reaction.

>>It’s also led to culture shock as the company rapidly expands, takes on bigger loads of debt, and faces stiff competition.

Based on everything I've read so far. I wouldn't be surprised if Jeff Bezos eats these people for lunch in a few years.

Bezos isn't known to be employee friendly either, but he is also not a fool.

There is a always a fine line between working hard towards a purpose, and pointless busyness just for the heck of it.

>>One executive said he was fired because he did not inform others about another employee’s medical condition out of respect for their privacy. Netflix saw this as not being “forthright with us around a major employee issue.” But Jonathan Friedland, former chief communications officer was a little too forthright and open when transparently talking out issues. He was fired this summer

Damned if you do, damned if you don't situations happen in processes where people want to screw you regardless, and not exactly because of the merit of your case.

Here the cartel boss seems to maintain early communism-esque purge lists.

Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#76

Post by HillaryBriss »

pixelperfect wrote: post #74
HillaryBriss wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's interesting to put this into the larger context of "the US needs more programmers and STEM grads." if that is true, how does Netflix find additional people to hire? how does it survive in a competitive labor market when it treats employees in this way?

"the US needs more programmers and STEM grads" can always mean "we wish we could hire programmers for $45,000 a year, but due to supply and demand we have to pay them more than that"

yes. i agree.

and, just as paying well attracts workers, supportive/interesting/personal-growth-oriented/comfortable working conditions attract workers. but I gather Netflix doesn't want to take advantage of that strategy.

OTOH, could it be that Netflix's management approach actually squeezes more performance out of the very same talent pool every other company has to draw from? is Netflix on to something?

Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#77

Post by smt88 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #39
smt88 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of removing the lowest performers, regardless of their ability, is a business idea from I believe the Jack Welch era at GE. In my management classes at business school, it's taught as a cautionary tale of unintended consequences and bad management. So this policy is a well-explored bad idea from decades ago, and it seems typical of Silicon Valley to arrogant reinvent a wheel without looking at cautionary tal…

Exactly. Most people cannot even tell you how to measure a programmer's performance. But we're comfortable with firing the "lowest performing" developers? Lowest performing by what metric? Honestly these "get rid of poor performance" policies are just abused to remove people who others have a personal dislike for, or similarly those who don't make enough friends to game the system. Plus whose to say that even if we c…

To put this idea another way: good managers are humans, and exceptional humans aren't scalable. To solve that problem, companies try to deploy algorithms (via spreadsheets or software) that do scale, but end up being terrible managers.

Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#78

Post by kamaal »

pixelperfect wrote: post #74
HillaryBriss wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's interesting to put this into the larger context of "the US needs more programmers and STEM grads." if that is true, how does Netflix find additional people to hire? how does it survive in a competitive labor market when it treats employees in this way?

"the US needs more programmers and STEM grads" can always mean "we wish we could hire programmers for $45,000 a year, but due to supply and demand we have to pay them more than that"

I guess in this case they are more than willing to $500K/yr compensation packages. That's far away from $45K/yr packages.

So the question is how many people can suffer through this kind of hell grinder at $500K/yr.

Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#79

Post by kamaal »

huffmsa wrote: post #71
tluyben2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like being on a sports team at a high level. In the sports that doesn't pay too much (for most people working at Netflix) even though you are in the top of the world. With the high level sports you get some kind of satisfaction that you got further than anyone (or some other reason beyond money) and not for the money; most people at Netflix probably work there for the money.

But if you make it at Netflix for more that 6 months you're probably a stud and can take your skills anywhere. You are at the top of your game. Working with video at large scale is tough man.

>>Working with video at large scale is tough man.

The question of course is how much staff works on video tech. Even at a company like Google, most people are not working on Google search. There are teams that do all kinds of work behind the scenes to make this happen. Like Build teams, SRE, QR DevOps etc.

The tech part is hard, but is largely solved. AWS has today made it easy to play the scale game. The unsolved riddle there is affordability not tech. That's the whole point behind Amazon Prime anyway. If Netflix was using their infrastructure to be successful, they might as well have done it themselves and they have.

Another big part about these companies is they oversell the role of technology, and the role of tech people in their success. Content is way important a thing for these companies than tech will ever be. Interesting content to consume is what keeps these people in the game.

There is a reason why some thing like New York Times is still around. And they are not even a tech company.

Re: Working at Netflix Sounds Like Hell

#80

Post by majewsky »

Someone1234 wrote: post #34
akras14 wrote: post #22

On one hand this seem crazy. On another, every place I worked at was full of free-loaders who did nothing and never got fired. I wonder if things are different at Netflix.

Are they firing "free-loaders" or people who are just worse at playing politics/self-promoting? We have extremely quiet people at work, few know what they do, but they're actually extremely productive, rarely make waves (good or bad), and help keep longer term goals. The "Rockstar" types join, get all excitable, make a handful of rapid (often good) changes, burn out, and leave. Likely to start again at their next wor…

> The "Rockstar" types join, get all excitable, make a handful of rapid (often good) changes, burn out, and leave. Likely to start again at their next workplace.

The most helpful advice I've ever been given by my manager is to come to terms with my, so to say, "rockstarness". There are people who come in to work everyday and deliver a constant stream of output. Others (like me) have huge bursts of productivity at seemingly random times. And that's fine when you know that this is what's going on. When I'm in a phase of low productivity, I don't panic anymore about not getting anything done. I'm deliberately spending the time mentoring juniors, learning new things, or working on getting tickets unblocked so that when the next productivity streak hits me, I'm ready to make the most of it.

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