You've got to love these startups who basically say "if you're not giving us everything beyond what we expect... go screw yourself. I'm not sure how Netflix grades things... but in school B is "Above average".
Is Netflix looking to employee and develop people or are they looking to extract life from people?
"You are a cog in our machine. We do not care for you. We only care for your work. We will pay you insofar as you can execute on our vision. Further, you will be paid according to how hard it is to replace you. If you can be replaced by someone who executes significantly better, relative to your pay, we will tell you to leave."
Needless to say, stating that would make many of their employees, especially the weak-minded and insecure (those who defend their terrible culture), unhappy. I imagine even those in charge of the culture, speaking those words, would feel bad.
And they should feel bad. While such overwhelmingly negative words should almost never be spoken with authority, these decision makers must at least be able to answer the question "What are we really saying to our people?" truthfully. And if the answer is something along the lines of "you're a cog in the machine", then something has gone very wrong[1]
In my non-expert opinion, if a company truly wishes to be a "good" place to work, it should know the distance between their words and the truth, and then focus on minimizing that distance.
Spoken more simply: the more dishonest a company is to its employees, the worse the culture.
[1] Or right, if the company requires joylessness to turn a profit.
In a way, the structure of our corporations both reflects and influences our society. A recent study has shown that the US is now more of an oligarchy than a representative democracy. Would we be happier and better off if "working for" was replaced by "working with"?
Worth noting, but the 1000x figure that gets bandied about so often when referring to CEO pay is typically limited only to the Fortune 50 or so, and is in no way the mean pay for the top guy. S&P 500 companies lower the average to less than 400x worker pay, and most businesses have a much smaller gap than that, and across all companies, average CEO pay is something like $157k.
But also, more importantly, people outside the C-level rarely get a say in how the company gets run.
To my ear, there are compelling arguments both ways. Assuming a large company, employees 1-x should probably enjoy some of that fuck you money, but clearly, at some point there's a falloff. If my company sold tomorrow, I would not have in any way been involved in its sale. Same with an IPO. Our company has been around for years, sells expensive software, has millions in revenue, and I honestly couldn't tell you whether or not we've turned a profit yet. Assuming we have, it was probably done only last year, which meant that somebody was footing the bills of a multi million dollar company for a decade or so, and that person wasn't me. If somebody was spending millions on an idea that took a decade to pay off, then absolutely they deserve more money in a liquidity event than I do, and I'd be a fool to begrudge them that.
That said, not all companies are created equally, and many get to market / revenue / profitability at different timetables with different employee counts, so YMMV. That said, the notion of 'fair' is so abstract in this scenario then I think it's safe to assume that it is universally convoluted. Hard to pin down exactly what is or isn't fair without internal knowledge I don't have.
[1]: https://infinite.ai
You might prefer a company filled with B-players doing B-work for B-pay, but don't hold it against Netflix that they're honest about what they expect.
"Why couldn't these folks go above and beyond like these other teams? It must be that they are inherently not good enough. Fire them and get a new team in."
I would even go so far to say that it's the CEO's and senior management, not the employees, who push this myth the most. In somehow all formulations I've seen, the persons's boss, who is amazing (regardless of context), and her or his bosses who are also amazing, are the judges of all performers in the company. Because the system is perfect or filled with perfect people (read: the top part is), any point of failure must be the employee, by process of elimination.
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve#Criticisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch (the
Thanks!
Isn't this the ideal of wage labor and the reality of 98% of jobs? I've never even suspected that my corporate employer cares about me as a person aside from how I produce, and have never suspected that I'm being paid by them for any other reason that it would cost them a lot more than they pay me to find somebody to replace me. I don't mean to say I haven't had great friendships and working relationships with management, but to the business, I'm a line item. When I notice a business making decisions contrary to the bottom line, I suspect corruption, not corporate affection.
They're a cog in my machine, too. I can only depend on that cog if it behaves rationally.
Looking back, I see I made my comment in the context of Silicon Valley behemoths and startups: companies that can both pretend to, and potentially change some fundamental way of doing things.
I think the difference in my mind between "creative" companies and normal ones is the "potential", achievements outside of a strictly defined expectations of contract, for both the business and the employee. Maybe a great insight, a new tool... anything that greatly benefits both the business and the employee, especially if the employee uses the product(s) and believes in the mission.
When you take away that potential (by saying employees are just cogs in a machine), you might take with it the creative spark that these hopeful companies ostensibly rely on. In my mind, that "potential" is the real joy of a job, which is my reason for the (slightly snarky) comment that "cog in the machine" is only acceptable "if the company requires joylessness to turn a profit". If I could, I would edit that post to be more clear/to take into account businesses which do not require any specialness.
At least for my central point, "the more dishonest, the worst the culture"... I believe that stands, especially in circumstances where a person is (somehow) manufacturing toilet paper and their supervisor is telling them they are (somehow) on their way to curing cancer.
That I'm creative (amongst other things) is why they pay me well. My successful experiments have a record of adding value well above my pay even if aggregated with my many unsuccessful experiments, although I try my best not to keep it that way for long. I'm not sure I've had any technical job with completely "strictly defined expectations of contract", I think that's a red herring. It sounds nice that the most creative and innovative projects/companies give less of a shit about the bottom line; I personally think that the bottom line is the fuel for creativity (didn't have much money when I was younger.) Anybody can sell your product with unlimited money to spill, but doing it with the best profit margin possible is creativity.
I like to think I'm a special snowflake...
These same people get profoundly uncomfortable if you respond to their platitudes with reality. They prefer to keep up this illusion of cooperation, because it makes them feel better.
I'd argue that a senior engineer should be highly effective while still developing in her role. Also, expectations for different "levels" of engineer vary. Typically an "exceeds expectations" performance review for "Senior SDE" would be neutral for e.g. a "Staff SDE."
[1] curl 'https://ats-api.netflix.com/postings' | jq '.postings[]|select(.organization[] | contains("Engineering"))|.text' | grep -v Senior
- B was chosen arbitrarily to drive the point home and could well mean a D on a school grade scale.
- They don't want to be too hard on fired employees or hurt their future employability (e.g. even "above average" people get fired over there).
I don't know anyone who works at Netflix and I could very well be wrong. Their "performance > effort" policy does however resonate with me.
Also, is Netflix still a startup?
Actual dollars? Sr Engineer base pay at $175k+. Mid level at 135k. There are plenty of formerly middle class engineers making over $300k a year including equity. People often discount startup equity while overlooking the very lucrative large tech company equity. (Fb, goog, etc). My source for this is both friends and hiring in this market.
To be sure not every eng in sfba is paid this amount. But they probably could be if they were willing to optimize for comp.
I'm not sure how that makes sense. Netflix can't expect employees to surpass their expectations, by definition. I don't see the problem if they're clear about their expectations and send people on their way who either can't or don't wish to fulfill them. I don't know if I have the ability to fulfill their expectations, but I know I have no desire to try and thus no desire to work for them, but I'm fine with other people having different preferences.
"We look for a SOLID B- out of everyone here."
I know a handful of people who work for Netflix, and they all love it, although some have commented it's a hire slow / fire fast environment, but once you're out of that initial trial period, it's a great place to work.
You can have the best of the best, you just have to pay for it. Netflix does.
are?
Although, I see there is at least one person out there who has a concept of a "B-level manager" http://smallbusiness.chron.com/blevel-manager-35848.html so I am less sure about my reading of my grandparent comment.
I can't see this requirement on the individual actually doing anything for the team.