Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created? | Hacker News Reader

Can Netflix Survive in the New World It Created?

nytimes.com

194 pointsyarapavan155 comments

One of the best professional pieces of advice I've ever read said something like "Think you're indispensable? Do they know that?". It made me aware that often the people making the hiring/firing decisions aren't actually aware of my day-to-day. Rather, they know only the summary info. Those kudos to fellow employees and in-house "awards" that I'd been ignoring? Those are documentation that someone is worthwhile, and I had none. If I were fired that day, I'd have had precious little "proof" that it was a mistake. (and of course, the point isn't to "prove" it's a mistake, it's to make sure they know not to in the first place).

Now, when I learned that advice I was working for virginia state govt, where I didn't have technically competent and aware management like I do now in Seattle tech companies, but there is still an important kernel in the message: We tend to judge our performance relative to the difficulty of the tasks in front of us. Often, our performance will be judged my management using different criteria. It's a good idea to be aware of how you look from the outside.

...which is why I'd not want to work in the Netflix system. It's not whether I'm a good performer, it's whether THEY THINK I'm a good performer. Ideally these are related, and outside of a Netflix-like environment I might have confidence that my manager would let me know in advance of action if there was a discrepancy. While I'm sure Netflix would claim the same, I doubt McCord was expecting the axe to fall...

> Think you're indispensable? Do they know that?

Indispensable employees are a sign of organizational failure. They indicate a weak point in the organization -- if that person gets hit by a bus, or walks off the job, or is on vacation during a crisis, we're all in trouble. And if an employee becomes indispensable on purpose, that person is a problem and should be let go before the situation gets worse. Where I used to work, people who thought they were indispensable were the first to go when we had layoffs.

All this is to say that if you ever find yourself thinking, "this place would fall apart without me," you have a big problem.

1) I think you're underestimating the number of shops that ARE "in trouble". There's a lot more tech-need in the world than tech-capable people right now, and with the places that have resources and organization gobbling up people, a lot of smaller shops (small startups, govt shops, small non-startup businesses) DO have indispensable people. And often those people will want to stay there. As for becoming indispensable on purpose...I'm sure some people do this, but most don't. This leads me to #2 below.

2) ...All of which is irrelevant since "indispensable" was mild hyperbole for "important/beneficial/worth keeping" in this discussion. I suppose I'll take the hit in the name of accuracy.

Good points, both of them. My experience with indispensable people comes from a big manufacturing organization. When I talk about people trying to become indispensable, I mean the engineer who had her hand in everything her department did and supported the line 24/7, and the technician who told me, "they'll never get rid of me, this place would fall apart without me." Among others. They really do exist, but perhaps it's less of a thing in software? I haven't worked with enough programmers to judge.

Software is by no means immune to what you list. Indeed, as Hubris is one of the Three Virtues of a Programmer, you definitely find it. That said, I think (my opinion) that you'll find more devs/admins that are PROUD to be indispensable than you will devs/admins that SEEK to become indispensable.

Both cases are ignoring what you point out: having a indispensable person is a bad thing for the long term health of your business. But one case (pride) is just mistaking doing a lot of essential work as not also creating a problem, while the other (seeking it) is less forgivable. And of course, there's a third, much worse option ("spaghetti code is job security") that doesn't rely on good work at all.

I've known a lot of devs that were close to indispensible and trying to fix it, fewer devs that were indispensable and proud of it, and only one or two that did crappy work so that they became more vital. A fair number of all of these devs were "responsible" for becoming indispensable simply by improving things to the point that their improvements became essential...and no one else had the skills/knowledge to easily replace them.

But of course, my experiences are subjective.

I think that these devs writing spaghetti code to stay indispensable should never get their code into the codebase through code reviews. Then that person would fail to contribute anything.

You become indispensable by doing things that nobody wants to do. For example, I remember an Engineer I used to work loves writing Perl/awk scripts to go through tera bytes of data to create reports. The data has anamolies and you need to custom create regular expressions to filter data that you don't need. The last I know he is still there.

Software is by no means immune to what you list. Indeed, as Hubris is one of the Three Virtues of a Programmer, you definitely find it.

Hubris isn't necessarily the wrong word in this larger context of indispensability, but I've always viewed Hubris in the context of the Three Virtues to be of "I can do this, against all odds", and being on the negative/low end of the Impostor Syndrome spectrum. Three Virtues Hubris is internal confidence; Indispensability Hubris is (perhaps unfounded) confidence in the perception of how others view you.

IMO, people often become "indispensable" in software when their responsibilities have grown over time to the point where they're actually doing something that should be two (or more) roles. But they've been doing it so long and are comfortable enough in the role that no one realizes it until they have to hire a replacement.

> Indispensable employees are a sign of organizational failure. They indicate a weak point in the organization

> All this is to say that if you ever find yourself thinking, "this place would fall apart without me," you have a big problem.

Just to be clear. _You_ don't have the problem, the organization does. If you're the head of software development at Netflix, you can easily find another job tomorrow if you leave. But if you're indispensable and Netflix falls over after you leave, then you don't have a problem, Netflix does.

No, I'll stand by my point. If you're indispensable, you're partly responsible for an organizational failure. If management recognize the problem and have time and space to address it, they may work with you to fix it. But in a time of crisis, when headcount needs adjusting, smart management will see you as a liability and act accordingly. Bureaucracies have a lot of momentum and are more resilient to the loss of an individual than they may appear. Obviously this is big-company thinking, and it applies in proportion to how bureaucratic your organization is.

Being indispensable can also severely impact any chance you have at progression within an organisation.

If they know they can't promote you or everything will fall over you're always going to get looked over compared to someone with a similar skill set but no 'baggage'.

By this logic Apple should have fired Steve Jobs right after his return when he started negotiating with Microsoft for the investment that would save the company from going bankrupt in weeks. Only he was in a position to do that negotiation and the negotiation was necessary, so he was indispensable and "should be let go" before things got worse?

This rule of thumb sounds like madness to put it bluntly.

Good point -- I'm looking at this from the individual-contributor side. I'm not sure it's possible to apply the same logic to executives.

> Indispensable employees are a sign of organizational failure. They indicate a weak point in the organization

Contention for fun: "Hands are indispensable, thus, they indicate a weak point in the organization."

I think that's a bit of a nonsequitur, to be honest. People who brought up executives as a counterexample made a much better case, as well as those who pointed out that small organizations often do have individual contributors whose absence would wreck the business.

Easy to say in theory, but in reality, you can't build a great organization that's exclusively composed of average performers. There will always be people who contribute far more than the rest, whether management appreciates them or not. (And in my experience, management is usually very well aware of who those people are.)

Indispensable != better at their job. Indispensable != Contributes more.

If someone you work with gets hit by a bus tomorrow, can you still ssh into the server? Can you continue working with the code they wrote?

Or is that all knowledge lost? If they're not indispensable that means that's all well documented.

Not true of small businesses, where the loss of a single key individual, especially on the revenue-generation side, can be a setback from which they cannot recover.

I don't want to be indispensable. The last guy at my company that was indispensable, quit because he was indispensable. His manager relied on him too much. His manager was contemplating going to his house at 2AM when neither him nor is wife (he got her phone number from the emergency contact) could not be reached. The team survived just fine without, BTW.

Although I'm a team lead, I make sure 1 other person knows what someone else has done, even my own work. I can go on vacation without worry. I can have someone else take up other people's task if someone is too much allocated.

>I make sure 1 other person knows what someone else has done, even my own work

I try to do the same. I've often viewed my job as trying to eliminate my job by slowly delegating and having others able to fulfill my current responsibilities. Then I take on the next "level" of responsibilities and/or provide either more slack in my schedule or others. Slack is what allows organizations to operate smoothly and deal with change(s).

If you aren't familiar with the concept of slack, I highly recommend reading "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency" by Tom DeMarco

http://amzn.to/1sGWsWe (affiliate link)

I do the exact same thing. I figure my job is to automate my job.

If another person cannot do your current job you cannot be promoted into another job. People who make themselves required at the current position are really hurting themselves long term.

> It's not whether I'm a good performer, it's whether THEY THINK I'm a good performer.

To play the devil's advocate, isn't that true of any employer (that wants good performers)? Do you believe Netflix's system is too subjective?

Not any more subjective than elsewhere (which is why this was good advice in the first place).

No, the difference is in the speed of action. Other workplaces have some realization that hiring is hard, and thus if they have a problem with me they'll first try to see if we can work it out. If I'm actually performing well, it should be doable to make that obvious. Seems like Netflix would be faster on the "fire" button.

Plus, knowing this (or thinking it, if it was untrue), means I'd work with the knowledge that I need to constantly ensure they understand my value, surrounded by others doing the same. Not exactly stack ranking, but it sounds unappealing.

The important thing to gather from 'They think I'm a good performer' is to first try and understand your management. For example, in a coding shop where most employees are Software engineers (and also yours bosses) you have a higher probability that your yardstick and your bosses will be fairly close. However, having non-technical bosses is a bigger challenge, thus the need for you to demonstrate your 'worth' be means other than 'Yeah I just refactored FOO kernel code in BAR module and have 80% test coverage'.

The perils of operational work: the mark of success is that no-one knows what you do, or that you are even there.

The corollary to that is to always go out of your way to treat ops/it with a bit of respect. They'll usually pay in back in spades when you need it since they get so little recognition in the first place(and they deserve it most of the time).

Ehh, at least in todays world where teams that focus on operations in a DevOps environment, there are a lot more metrics that operations teams can be measured by other than just uptime.

For example, lets say a decision is made that you want to spin up a new environment, deploy a new service, scale up or scale down a piece of infrastructure. A good operations team in this more modern space will have automated the vast majority of the work needed to do such things, and in turn, vastly improve developer productivity since they do not need to wait a month on operations to do such work.

But how do we know what good automation is? It's easy to see terrible ops work, but it's hard to see amazing ops work. This leads many organizations to end up thinking that ops skill is about outage response. Guess what: The person that is best at fixing at outage is typically the one that caused it!

Imagine I have two people in an ops team: One writes a lot of new code, and ships a lot of buggy features, and quickly reacts to the problems. People get the impression that they are working on something hard, and they are grateful for all the hard work. Another one takes longer to ship, but the automation just works. Therefore, whatever he was doing was easy, and they are just slow at doing it.

So sadly, in most environments it pays off to actually have problems in your ops automation, for the visibility that you get by saving the day.

"It's easy - I just click a button! What the hell are we paying all these guys/gals for?"

I always compare this with a mailbox and people get it. When you deposit a letter it just doesn't arrive magically to its destination. People, cars, trucks, trains, boats, and planes are part of the process tve gets your letter delivered. Their eyes usually open wide once understood.

> While I'm sure Netflix would claim the same, I doubt McCord was expecting the axe to fall...

Exactly. How likely is Hastings to adopt that standard if he knew that it would apply to him too?

Since Reed owns a very small share of Netflix (less than 5%), the Board could very well do that if they felt he wasn't performing. He doesn't have the same level of control that a Zuckerberg does.

> How likely is Hastings to adopt that standard if he knew that it would apply to him too?

He probably knows it applies to him whether or not he adopts it for people below him: CEOs usually have contracts that not only state that a "if you decide you don't want me, you write me a big check to go away" policy applies to them, but actually spell out in fairly precise terms how big of a check that is.

Which implies that really, Netflix extends the same courtesy to all employees. Which is pretty awesome. Not being a good fit is a fact of life; having a cushion to find your next position is pretty nice.

The amount the employee gets may be generous but seems to be arbitrary while the CEO's contract specifies clearly how much he or she will be owed. It certainly beats just getting the boot with no money.

Spoiler: It's a long read!

> Does this still holds? Is there any other organization in dissimilar industry where this works?

McCord also convinced Hastings that he should ask himself a few times a year whether he would hire the same person in the same job if it opened up that day. If the answer was no, Netflix would write a larger check and let the employee go. “If you are going to insist on high performance,” McCord says, “then you have to get rid of the notion of retention. You’ll have to fire some really nice, hard-working people. But you have to do it with dignity.

“I held the hands of people weeping, saying, ‘I want to be here forever,’ ” McCord says. “I would tell them, ‘Nothing lasts forever.’ I would say to Reed, ‘I love them, too, but it is our job to be sure that we always have the right people.’ ”

> Ironically, in 2011

Hastings decided to re-evaluate everyone in the executive ranks, using the litmus test McCord taught him: Would he hire them again today? One of the people this led him to push out was McCord.

And this precisely is why we Millenials have no qualms about leaving a job. They have no problem divorcing us because of some vapid "performance" metric.

How do they quantify understanding how to get things done in that org? I know with my job, I'm learning how the institution hinders growth, except through certain channels. That meta-knowledge is absolutely essential... yet seemingly ignored.

Instinctively and ideologically I mostly oppose the idea of this lack of loyalty toward employees. At the same time, for some reason it bothers me less the way it is presented to work within Netflix. I'm not sure why, though.

Maybe it's to do with the fact that there are plenty of jobs in tech right now and Netflix apparently pays very well, enough for a future employee to accept that disadvantage. Partly it's also because of the transparency of it all. Another thing is that it can benefit the employee too, long term. I've worked in many different companies and there were always a bunch of 'holders-on' who held everyone back and didn't even seem happy themselves. I often thought they and the team would be much better off if they found work somewhere else where either they'd feel challenged to develop themselves further, or where their current skills were good enough.

I still would not choose to run a company that way myself, but provided that 'performance' is measured in a somewhat accurate way, provided that the compensation offsets this risk, provided that there is honesty about it all, and provided that there are alternative jobs one can find afterwards, well, then I'd at least be curious to see if it works in practice.

(and decreasing 'institutional knowledge' is one very big advantage, in my opinion.)

> Partly it's also because of the transparency of it all.

What's transparent about it? The process is totally opaque -- some executive evaluates whether they feel you're meeting their standards, which may or may not be obvious, and then decides to let you go if they feel you aren't. I don't think it could be any less transparent.

That they fire people rather arbitrarily is being written about in a national publication. So someone applying for a job has a good chance of understanding it going into the process. That's a pretty high degree of transparency about how they do things.

That's not really what we're talking about when we're talking about 'transparency' her. Just because it's known that something happens doesn't mean it happens in a transparent fashion. Transparency of process is important, too, and required before you can really call something 'transparent'.

As it stands, the person making the decision could be doing so for totally arbitrary reasons. It doesn't appear that there's an established process or criteria in place beyond "I don't feel like I'd hire X now" -- the rationale "Because Executive Y says so" is not transparent in the slightest.

I think the part that is transparent is that you're not going to build your career and retire at Netflix, you know it's a stint. It may be arbitrary and capricious otherwise, but you know that in advance and can decide if it's worth it. I would not mind being in such an environment for a stint, myself.

I think the part that is transparent is that you're not going to build your career and retire at Netflix, you know it's a stint.

But anybody who has been paying attention has known that any job is "just a stint" since at least the 90's, if not the 80's. A big part of the Re-engineering[1] push of the 90's involved reducing costs, at least in part by reducing head-count. And before that, you had the 80's LBO[2] craze, which resulted in dramatic layoffs at many companies.

As a Gen-X'er who grew up in the 80's, I have never expected to have a life-long career at a single company, and I can't imagine many - if any - of my peers imagining that either. In this regard, there's nothing unique at Netflix. All jobs are essentially "temp" jobs in this day and age.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveraged_buyout

There are varying levels of job security, and the loyalty part in technology especially just means that you have to voluntarily leave to another company to get treated better. I'd rather work somewhere that had little to no job security but where everyone was on the ball. Otherwise, the detritus starts to pile up when they aren't mobile within the market.

"I often thought they and the team would be much better off if they found work somewhere else where either they'd feel challenged to develop themselves further, or where their current skills were good enough."

This echoes one of the chapters in Fire Someone Today, a book with a seemingly heartless title, written by the CEO of a Bible software company. They had an underperforming employee that everyone liked & no-one wanted to fire, so they moved him through different roles to find something that suited him. After moving him through the entire company with negative results, they finally conceded they had to fire him. The punch line: the employee flourished as soon as he was fired - his dream had been to join the ministry, but he'd worried about quitting a stable job to do so.

The rest of the book is pretty good, about 20 anecdotes from running a software business.

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Someone-Today-Surprising-Busines...

> "The punch line: the employee flourished as soon as he was fired - his dream had been to join the ministry, but he'd worried about quitting a stable job to do so."

I'm generally in favor of firing underperforming employees, but this punchline feels uncomfortably close to ex post facto justification.

Lots and lots and lots of people get fired and don't flourish, in fact they drop like a brick and hit rock bottom. While everything turned out for the best this time, I worry about the lesson being imparted here.

...Really? Hitting rock bottom to me implies they lose everything. I don't think the majority of people that are fired lose everything; there's a reason they were hired in the first place and other companies can see that value. They will get hired by another company and have a chance to apply their experience in new ways. My father was fired after 26 years and it was the best thing that could have happened to his career. He wasn't happy with the management changes at his job and ultimately he was forced to look for work where he fit with the culture better.

>>Lots and lots and lots of people get fired and don't flourish, in fact they drop like a brick and hit rock bottom.

Sure, but speaking from the perspective of the company and everyone else in it, it's better if those low-performers hit rock bottom outside the company, rather than hit rock bottom while employed and bring the rest of the company down.

Usually, unless the company is really small, they won't drag it down. Unless they are CEOs, which are seldom fired. And get golden parachutes even when they do get fired.

I've kept people on because they were going through a rough patch and I felt squeemish about kicking them when everything else was going wrong. Bad stuff happens to good people and I didn't want to make it worse.

But it hurt group morale on every team they were shuffled to. Hard working teams quietly build up resentment against dead weight.

In retrospect, I would have been better off getting the board's permission to institute 6~12 month severances for company initiated terminations instead of the 3 month one that we had. Or done an extended paid leave - or something.

I think the reason I didn't (I don't even remember at this point) was one of my early employees - a star performer by every measure - said something like: "Hey! Why would you be paying them 12 months salary for being a loser?" (Not that he was incompassionate - he wasn't - but making the point the way that anyone from the Bronx might make that point.)

I don't think I ever figured out what to do with that other than deciding that being the boss sucked and I never wanted to do it again.

The reason being a boss sucked is because you are an empathetic person. Typical sociopathic management types have a "kill or be killed" mentality, and would not think twice about getting rid of people going through a "rough patch".

Not saying that keeping dead wood on is good for anyone either, just that most management wouldn't put the feelings of an employee even in the same ballpark as the interests of the company.

If it makes you feel any better, I'd rather work for you!

> just that most management wouldn't

I don't know if this is true. (It might be). Most manager types that I've have talked with struggle with how to do it it well.

The "path to wisdom" in technical skills (which are more my forte) seem to be lots of practice around things that start out being practiced ... mechanically. And each and every Ubuntu 14.04 server in my cluster is pretty much like the others.

I think that people are harder. Even with just two, who believe they love each other - there wouldn't be a career in marriage counseling if it was easy.

Ignoring the traditional heirarchy looking bits that show up on org charts: coordinating and synchronizing the members of a team and teams with one another is certainly not anything that most coders want to spend their day doing. They don't even want to write documentation! So, it's an important function: conducting a group exercise, like a dance, made up of a bunch of talented and self-directed humans. Especially when something new is being created and no one brain has the whole picture. (Thinking about it now, it boggles me that we even try.)

We (society) are going through a strange transitional time right now. Like the 1850s~1930s in the US when we were transitioning from Ag to Industrial and it had the civil war on one end, a bunch of crazy elections from 1890 or so in the middle, and the New Deal at the end.

I think that managers aren't trained to be coordinators in this new world: who would train them? And beyond that, we take our best tech leads and promote them: losing a great technical contributor and gaining a badly skilled coordinator.

Anyway: thanks for the kind words. Since I left BigCo as an engineer back in the day to start my NewCo, and got big (and crashed), I've been unemployable by BigCos and very hesitant to start anything again. I kind of "fell off the rails".

But some things have gotten worse since then: employers are scared employees will sue them if managers have an empathetic conversation with an employee, and co-evol employees thinking that typical managers don't give a shit. (Mutual arising) It isn't healthy and I don't like the direction.

But, not my problem any more! I just fix up people's patent portfolios for them. And sometimes make a widget prototype for them ("Here, have an invention") and they can make it, produce it, support it, sell it, etc...

I disagree. Low-performers can make mistakes and cause a lot of damage, which then has to be cleaned up by someone. They are also bad for morale all around, especially if you have a team of high-performers.

The idea that there is an ideal place for everyone in capitalism and be able to pay for all the costs of day to day life is some kind of libertarian hacker news delusion.

For me it seems like hacker news loves universal basic income, because they understand this might not be true today and even less likely to be true in the future.

For me, it seems like there are both ultra-capitalist libertarian (of the flavor that opposes any social support, including UBI) and pro-UBI constituencies active in hacker news, as well as others, but that neither viewpoint dominates HN. (Though opponents of those viewpoints, and others, will often describe the view they oppose as dominating HN, perhaps because they are more sensitized to what they oppose.)

Really? I think HN loves UBI because it presents the opportunity to try to build a company without the worry of having to figure out how to pay rent and put food on the table. It's a lot easier to take risks when you've got money, however small, coming in.

When they called for research on UBI, everyone focused on what you're focusing on...the hubris that SV thinks it can automate everyone else's jobs. But the point I mention above is, to me, the more powerful one. Freeing people to follow their passions will enable people to give up their 9-5s without first having to save up. Creating a startup is a giant leap into the unknown with only the hope that you'll land safely. UBI is a parachute in case you miss your landing.

I just think ubi is a panacea when we are really headed towards a cyberpunk dystopia were powerful corporations hold all the cards and the workers are reduced to a form of neo feudalism

I've never seen that idea around here, where did you?

It works for Netflix because they appear to pay above average. So the marketplace can accomodate companies that pay less and tolerate more, as well as ones that are super demanding but pay more.

But if the labor market were compressed more like in Europe, all companies could afford that behavior, without having to spend abnomally higher in salaries, and that would be a problem.

my experience has been that when employers "pay above average", what they really mean is they pay 1 employee for the work of 1.5 employees. Do you really think the engineering team goes home at 5pm?

The later shuttles leave at 5:10, and then we do some emailing and such on the way home...

Netflix total compensation seems to match places like google, apple and facebook, but with a sword damoceles waiting to fire you. That feels like a net negative.

There's a tradeoff of general human capital ("best athlete") versus specific human capital ("best specialist"). I used to be more in the latter camp. Over time I've moved to the former.

The system works because the severance is very generous, and it's not considered a career risk to leave Netflix.

> You’ll have to fire some really nice, hard-working people. But you have to do it with dignity.

I wonder if this is part of the reason why there are not too many Netflix-like high achieving companies in Europe -- firing people is not possible. Even totally sucking at your job isn't acceptable reason for employment contract termination, that'd be just a reason for further training. You'll have to go through different hoops, usually concerning the company's financial needs -- and which high achiever would want to join a company that announces dire economical times?

This (easier to get rid of people) is also a reason behind a recent trend of people-for-hire companies and freelancers-only requirements.

Disclaimer: probably does not apply to all of Europe.

I was working in an office that had to follow French laws and norms, and I had a _contractor_* that refused to do her job. She wouldn't show up for work, when she did she'd play Farmville or be on Facebook. It was a data entry job with an objective way to measure performance, and she was accomplishing about 1/3rd of the other employees.

I couldn't just not renew her contract. I had to document her shortcomings, have her sign letters, take her to meetings with HR, etc. IIRC, it took two months to get rid of her after the end of her final contract (we had to keep her on a provisional contract until we finally satisfied all the requirements).

*We were paying salaries based on annual grants from other organizations, so all the positions were advertised (and accepted) as one year contracts.

>I wonder if this is part of the reason why there are not too many Netflix-like high achieving companies in Europe -- firing people is not possible.

This probably explains why I've never seen my German counterparts ever being fired. The lowest performers are endlessly shuffled between projects, maybe hoping they would leave voluntarily ?

That's perhaps one way. Or assigning the employee no tasks at all, just an empty room with a desk and chair, and a requirement to be there during normal working hours. No sane person takes that for a longer time.

Companies do have longish probation periods (say, 6-9 months) before the contract is final. Within this period either party can cancel the employment at will, with no notice period. This is meant to be the testing time during which both parties can confirm that they are happy with the deal.

In New York City, for example, unionized teachers sometimes end up in "Rubber Rooms" that are basically this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_centers

> Or assigning the employee no tasks at all, just an empty room with a desk and chair, and a requirement to be there during normal working hours.

Note that this is legally Constructive Dismissal and is likely to wind you up in front of a tribunal.

How? They are still getting paid.

Removing an employee's duties with negative effect to the employee with the intention of causing them to quit is constructive dismissal in at least the UK, and likely the rest of Europe as much of it has better labour laws than us.

Demoting someone is generally OK provided that you have good reason and can provide reasonable evidence that the intention wasn't to cause the employee to leave. It's unlikely that you'd have any good evidence that sticking someone in a room with no duties is something your company actually wants to continue paying the person for.

I saw an article a year back or so about an administrative office in Germany that was dismantled. But because they couldn't fire the officers, they put them in a building with nothing to do until everyone quit voluntarily. The toughest made it about over a year. (Can't find the original article, sadly.)

I reckon this is correct in France: As an employer, if you attempt to fire someone, you will almost automtically end up in a trial and be condemned, whatever indemnities you gave upfront. My father fired someone at age 55 (before it was forbidden to fire people >50yo) and paid cash for the difference between his unemployment benefits and his former salary until retirement. He landed at Prod'hommes (ombudsman) and lost.

Even when your company is underweather (Bouygues telecom fired 900 people if I remember, Renault Trucks a few hundreds too), it's a long agony for employees who stay: If you quit, you lose all allowances for unemployment benefits and all severance package; If you stay it's 1-3 years until they sign your severance package, under a shitty ambiance where they'll search for proof that you're abandoning your job.

France is the contry which consumes the most anti-depressant per inhabitant, by the way.

Reminds me of this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2853251/US-tycoon-re...

Isn't it only difficult to let go employees who've been in the job for more than 2 years? I'm pretty sure that how it is in the UK at least.

Even then, there's the option of a PIP, which allows you to quantify their ineffectiveness and give you good cause for letting them go.

I can imagine UK being a bit different from the continental Europe. In the two countries I've worked in this is handled with a probation period of 6-9 months, but after this it gets much much harder.

Yes, it's like that in Germany. The probation period is typically 3-6 months (although you can be hired without one). After that, the company may only fire you because of financial problems (and that is basically prohibited in larger companies by the worker's council), or if you misbehave (show up late for work repeatedly, steal intellectual property, etc.).

These are not firings technically - you are being paid a bonus on the condition that you resign, as I understand it. Has anyone ever said no or are the payouts that much?

It is probably the case that in the US, choosing not to leave gracefully means you will get the boot. In countries that make it hard to fire, someone could say "No thanks" to the resignation package and keep working for a significant amount of time.

The payouts are good and if you said no they would just fire you instead.

In Norway it is typical to start a new company to develope a business idea and transfer employees there through various insensitives like stocks or options. That do allow to "fire" people by closing down an unsuccessful business. The big upside is that one looses the job not alone which feels much better. Also one does not need to explain why one was fired on previous position when looking for new one.

So someone can get hired, stop showing up and still get paid?

No they can't, they have a requirement to be at work and to perform their assigned duties. If they suck at their duties, well, employer should provide training I suppose. But they have to work of course, no question about that -- this was just about firing not being possible "at will" as it is often the case in the US.

Also, stuff like coming to work drunk is a valid reason for immediate firing.

Is it legal to negotiate terms for them to leave voluntarily?

Yes, of course. For example in Finland it's ~common in big companies to offer "packages" for employees that leave voluntarily if the company needs to downsize. The problem with this approach, of course, is that the best people take the package and get a job elsewhere. This could perhaps be tailored just for the lower achievers too, but I don't think the big companies have such ranking systems in place because they aren't part of the work culture.

Yes, that is a common way of firing people under permanent contracts in Europe. You give them a crappy position for a few months until they get bored to death and then offer them to leave for X months/years of salary.

You used an employment concept here that isn't typical or well-understood by American workers: permanent contract. Americans are well-versed in short term contracts, mostly because of sports, but I doubt more than a few percent of them ever consider that, absent any specification otherwise, all employment contracts are presented as permanent.

> but I doubt more than a few percent of them ever consider that, absent any specification otherwise, all employment contracts are presented as permanent.

While much social expectation and institutions are based around that kind of essentially feudal lord/tenant relationship, that's not actually the case with at-will employment in law: employment contracts without specificity of term are indefinite but not permanent (were they permanent, it would be illegal for an employer to terminate them without a breach of a nature that made the contract voidable.)

>all employment contracts are presented as permanent

On the contrary, the vast majority of employees in the US are under "at will" conditions, where their employment can be terminated at any time. There is nothing permanent about any employment contract in the US.

That's what he meant -- that in Europe almost all employment contracts are permanent, which may not be obvious to an American reader without explicit mention.

You're right, it wasn't obvious. I had hit submit too early, I had meant to ask how long the contracts typically last for and if maybe it was better for a company to just use shorter contracts. Are they required to be permanent for the most part? Sorry for getting way OT here.

We're getting so detailed that I'll mention the following applying specifically to Finland.

It's possible to have temporary/fixed-time contracts too, and lots of people do. It's however illegal for the employer to chain temporary contracts one after another instead of offering a permanent contract if there's a continuous need.

If this happens, the employee may sue on grounds of it being de facto permanent employment. If successful, they will get all the associated benefits, including things such as compensation for wrongful contract termination and withheld bonus payments only available for permanent employees. Suing is pretty easy/risk-free if the wronged person is in an union, and the unionization of workforce is around 60%-70%.

I'll explain how it typically works in the Netherlands, for non-self-employed people at least (that I'm not familiar with; note also that there has recently been some controversy where companies will classify employees as contractors to get around the stricter permanent contract laws, e.g. PostNL delivery people being contracters instead of full employees).

Typically two temporary one-year contracts will be offered (or some variation of this; four six-month contracts, etc.) Once this temporary contract duration is up an employer can either not renew the contract, or if they do renew it is by law an indefinite contract. If, for instance, you were hired at a company through a recruitment agency and your employment contract was through said recruitment agency, your clock would be reset at the company if you were to negotiate a direct contract with the company after leaving the recruitment agency contract.

It's also typical for a probationary period at the start of the first contract; in my case it was only one month, though I'm not sure if this is usual or if it could be longer for others.

NB: Previously, the law allowed three years of temporary contracts before the indefinite one, but this was changed several years ago.

Probably not, because that'd be a breach of contract (assuming you're contractually obligated to show up). But being good at what you've been hired to do is usually not a contractual obligation.

I hope there's more to it than that. Firing "really nice, hard-working people" is stupid. There are far better things to do with such people than firing them. All that teaches people is to have no loyalty whatsoever to their company since the company's leader directly gives them a reason not to. All that leads to is "really nice, hard-working people" you would not fire jumping ship at the first sign of a slightly better deal, because why not?

> All that leads to is "really nice, hard-working people" you would not fire jumping ship at the first sign of a slightly better deal, because why not?

If you combine this behavior with really high compensation for those you keep, you'll likely be the best deal. Most companies' compensation does not match their rhetoric about 'hiring the best' and will balk at the cost to poach from you.

That and the fact that high-performers want to work with other high-performers so they wouldn't risk a crappier work environment without a big raise.

A positive work environment and satisfaction is not just about compensation. Working with other high-performers is good, I agree, except the company policy is that high-performers can be shown the door at any moment due to various changes outside the control of that high-performer.

That's not a good work environment.

That's a critique that may or may not apply to a given implementation of this idea.

However, if the people being fired are treated with respect, severance, good references and if there's a general consensus amongst those remaining that the individuals were, in fact, low performers, I imagine there would be high morale.

If the definition of low performer is "really nice, hard-working people", then I suppose you have a point. But it would still suck to be hard-working and be let go because the company failed to provide you proper tasks to be considered a high performer. If you give a high performer nothing to do, or something outside their expertise, are they still a high performer?

From experience: high performers tend to want to work alone. Most wise up and open their own company.

I agree. While it's nice that they're honest about it, and I'm glad they also have a policy against hiring "brilliant jerks", it's still not a company I would ever work for.

i'd rather get paid less and work at a place where I don't constantly have a sword hanging over my neck. I'd take job security over more pay in a heartbeat, and I'd rather work at a company where being "nice" and "hard-working" is more valuable than performance. It's a problem with the whole Silicon Valley culture; like, I'm not interested in doing something world-changing at my job, so I don't care about working at a big household name like "Netflix", and this whole culture is something that can only exist in SV -- your company wouldn't get far firing so many people in any other place -- and it's one of the reasons why I have no desire to ever set foot in NorCal.

Honestly, the next time I end up looking for a job, I'm thinking about getting out of the private sector and doing government work, just to avoid this kind of scenario.

One thing that pops up is that it does not include the context of the other people in the organization and how they work as a whole.

That's to say you may have it where the most efficient organization is made up of non individually optimum components rather than it being comprised of the most optimum individual components.

Netflix gets a lot of flack for their approach here, but at least they are honest about it and try to compensate by paying employees very well.

The truth is there are many companies that are just as ruthless about firing employees they view as underperforming but try to hide it with layoffs and don't compensate employees nearly as well.

If you take a job with Netflix at least you know what you are getting into.

Yeah, but the one problem is other companies you're going to afterwards don't know what you were getting into. So you are interviewing and they interviewer is impressed you led X big project at Netflix, recieved a promotion, etc.. and were fired for non performance. How do you explain that without saying "I was no longer good enough, but I'm way good enough for this job"

There's plenty of places like that. We couldn't hire the former CTO from Netflix, but maybe we could hire some VP/director that couldn't go any higher as our CTO.

Should you not expect to have a good work-life balance while at Netflix?

The type of person who will thrive at Netflix doesn't see an issue here. Either they have no issues whatsoever about having work always on their mind, or they are just simply so good at their jobs that they can still be one of the best engineers around only working 40 hours a week.

The problem with this whole thing is that people view working at a company of this caliber as some type of competition, they want to be the one working at the company with the best and brightest so others see them as the best and brightest.

The truth is that if you aren't really up there, you won't thrive in such an environment, and the vast majority of people will both advance the most, and be happiest working at a place where they are able to be the big fish.

It's this: 'The key concept is summed up in the 23rd slide. “We’re a team, not a family,” it reads. “Netflix leaders hire, develop and cut smartly, so we have stars in every position.” '

I see it like a professional sports team. Players have to deliver performance game after game. If they can't keep it up, they are traded or released, or their contract is not renewed. When they age-out, they either go into coaching, buy or start their own team, or move on to do something different entirely. They are taken off the field.

Applying this approach to a corporate workplace is controversial and I'd be interested in knowing what policies the legal department has put in place regarding employee agreements and termination processes to specifically accommodate Netflix' approach.

The minimum salary in the NFL is currently $450,000. The "job" is unionised and you have lifetime benefits (negotiated after some players with chronic concussion related illnesses were found broke and homeless).

While the careers are short the compensation is fair. And you are legally allowed to work a side job, i.e. sponsorships.

I don't imagine corporate USA saying yes to high salaries, unionisation, pensions, nor side projects willingly.

They also have "job security" for the duration of the contract and if they are "fired" as we traditionally understand it usually they have to be compensated in some form (although it depends on the contract).

Sadly that is not that case. The contract is per game. If they are cut midseason they forfeit the contract. NFL contracts are really nasty things. Most of the big valuations you see will probably never pay out. They can backload them so that a player with a 5 year $10mm contract will probably never see that amount. They'll get $1mm the first year, and the same for each year, with the remaining $5mm paid out at the end. If they don't make it that far they don't get it. It's not unheard of for a player to make it 50% of their time on contract and only see 20% of their pay.

I only know this because I have a family member who plays professionally. The NFL likes to present an image that they take care of their players. It's a business to make money (and a not-for-profit) and exists only to enrich themselves. If they can short a player out of his money they will do it.

When you combine it with top-of-market compensation and generous severance, as Netflix does, one can reasonably believe that this practice is actually done for the reason they claim (keeping the best talent).

When you don't combine it with good compensation, it's simply a rationalization for firing people whenever you want.

Did Reed hold McCord's hands and say 'Nothing lasts forever.'

We can only hope that he did.

I sort of agree that if I wouldn't re-hire a person for a role then they should be let go: after all once someone has been trained in and is gelled with the team, they should be better at the job than anyone coming in from outside. In that sense this is just a dramatic reframing of standard performance evaluation wisdom.

But I also find it a very strange thing to say, because the biggest challenge of hiring new people is that you really never know how they'll perform until you actually start working with them. In my case I've always hired for smaller organizations with a smaller pool of applicants, so I prefer to just roughly gauge for Spolsky's test of "smart and gets things done" as well as I can and then turn them loose to see what they can do. In large, well-known companies with huge hiring funnels false negatives matter much less and they are incentivized to screen very aggressively on whatever axes they can. However in either case, the existing employee has a known performance profile, and the new hire is unknown regardless of how good they look on paper. So I just find it an obtuse apples-to-oranges comparison to frame performance reviews this way.

The thing is Sports is the key! Cable and Network television exists almost entirely due to revenue generated from Sports Viewers. Seriously, like the majority of your cable bill is used to pay for licensing to air live games. Cable is the only way for people to legally watch the majority of NBA and NFL games (in HD). We are making stride with stuff like NFL Sunday Ticket, but honestly those services still aren't great. When current license agreements end Netflix (and by extension Amazon, Hulu and whoever else) should back up a dump truck full of money to league offices and offer whatever terms they want. In the game of Internet TV you get sports and you win. It's as simple as that.

I don't believe that any of these networks competing services will ever take off because fragmentation is bad for consumers and they know it. Bundling is hugely important in this market. No one is going to be willing to pay $10 a month for a streaming service for every Network that decides it needs it's own. Sure a lot of people will be willing to pay for more than one but certainly not enough for all or even a lot of networks to go this route. HBO can survive that way but does NBC for instance have any show compelling enough to spend $10 for it separate from other networks shows.

The problem with NFL Sunday Ticket and NBA League Pass is that they both feel extremely nerfed as to not get in the way of TV. I have trouble believing the NFL and even the NBA actually have problems putting out a decent streaming service, they just don't want to because they're getting all their money from TV. I would have absolutely no problem paying like $5 a game for the amount of entertainment I get from it, but they don't even let me do that! I have to pay for an entire season in which some games won't even be shown on the service. They basically force you to watch illegal streams. It's ridiculous.

In many countries outside the US NBA league pass is much better than a subscription to the cable service. It's the same for NHL, Baseball & the NFL.

BeIn Sports have excellent streaming of (world) football.

ESPN in many countries has loads of not very popular ESPN constructed events like the X-Z games or whatever.

Hi, Netflix employee here, been here 7 months. In my 18 year career I've never liked working at a large organization as much as I like it here. The people I work with are uniformly excellent at their jobs, I'm learning from all of them, and I enjoy the time I spend with them.

Enjoy it while it lasts! As soon as they find someone new and better, you're fired!

I don't understand why that's a problem. My work experience has been one where its much more likely that under-performers drag down the top performers, not that top performers are let go prematurely. If they let me go before I'm ready to leave I will be disappointed, but there are other jobs.

> “If it is a flop, we will have overpaid for one series,” he told Hastings. “But if it succeeds, we will have changed the brand.”

Traditional big companies are structurally unable to think this way.

It also said they set up an indie film distribution company which was shut down because "We would have been better off spending the money on DVDs." Which sounds more like a traditional bigco.

Is it? Sounds like an example of what I was praising: they tried it, and found that the economics wouldn't work -- surprisingly they needed to control more of the value chain (at least it's a surprise to me).

The most interesting thing (to me) in this piece, is how many pivots Netflix made/is still making. Many of those moves were very much unsafe/risky (which is why the networks didn't make em themselves)...brave for what was already an established company then.

That's a good point. They're desperately trying to outmaneuver the cable companies. So far, they're doing OK, but not great. While Netflix is big, Netflix is not very profitable.

Netflix is becoming more like a cable company, with a limited menu. Total access to a huge back catalog has been cut back. Netflix, though, doesn't own the pipe.

Owning the pipe for TV is so profitable that AT&T more or less gives away voice and data if you get their TV service. Internet without TV costs more than Internet with TV.

True. It's going to be interesting to watch things play out. The portion of the article about consumers not wanting to subscribe to too many streaming services rings true to me. I think a lot of the newer (cable) network streaming services might die off in the next few years if they don't become one of the dominant few. If Netflix is on top of this (dominant) heap it should give them a lot of leverage when it comes to content costs which might lead to higher profits etc etc.

  At another point, Netflix created a dedicated device through 
  which to access its content, only to decide that adapting its 
  service to everything from mobile phones to TV sets made more 
  sense. (The Netflix device was spun out into its own company, 
  Roku.)

Pretty sure this is a factual error in the article. As far as I know, Roku existed as a consumer electronics company independent of Netflix for years before it produced any Netflix streaming devices - anyone remember the Roku SoundBridge series of home audio devices?

I’m not clear on the actual relationship between Roku and Netflix (they are both based in Los Gatos) but saying the Netflix hardware was “spun out” into Roku cannot be accurate.

This is somewhat accurate. The Netflix Player was an internal Netflix project. Close to launch, Hastings realized that other device makers would balk at Netflix making their own hardware, so it became a Roku product. [1] Most articles I've seen about this say Netflix spun off Roku, but like you I remember they definitely existed as a company before that. Did they simply just transfer that whole department to Roku? Did they have any kind of relationship before that? It's a little murky.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3004709/inside-netflixs-project-...

If I recall correctly, the 'Netflix Player' was a partnership between Roku and Netflix. I suspect that the remark about Roku being 'spun out' is likely due to an misunderstanding about that partnership.

You're right.

We sold SoundBridges at my old job in the mid 2000s - I'm pretty sure Netflix was still postage only at that time

Stepping away from hiring/firing practices, I had a very visceral reaction to this:

>“Five years ago,” says Richard Greenfield, a media and technology analyst at BTIG who happens to be Netflix’s most vocal proponent on Wall Street, “we wrote a piece saying that the networks shouldn’t license to Netflix because they were going to unleash a monster that would undermine their business.”

This exposes to me how capitalism, for all it's very real benefits, also has big flaws. "Don't do this thing because people will want it but you won't be the one to profit" is a bad attitude for society in general. Sure, it means there's a profit motive for someone else to fill that niche, but the point of creative works is that they are unique. If Shakespeare is too expensive you go to Marlowe...but then you never get Shakespeare. That's a survivable choice, but not the most beneficial result.

I don't have a solution, and I'm not saying to tear down the system. I'm just saying quotes like this make me cringe.

But Netflix was just a distributor then and not a creator. The biggest problem in this is middle men. People want to pay the creators for their work, but there are layers upon layers of middle men that end up getting a far larger slice of the overall pie than the people who actually create the stuff. With the technology we have and systems similar to (but more open than) Netflix, we should be able to have a proper compensation mechanism.

Perhaps, but I can also see the middleman as a value add.

When I paid Netflix and could see most anything, it was great, though a few things I couldn't see. Now I pay Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, pay for devices (e.g. Roku) to access them, have to hop accounts, and STILL can't see everything. Heck, Netflix's library has gotten less reliable. ("Want to see Groundhog day? let's see if it's currently in or out of catalog").

Middlemen aren't evil. Middlemen that want to gouge money WITHOUT providing value coughcoughRIAAcough* aren't evil either, but they're a lot less "good".

Frankly, I'm a fan of competition, and in general when competition revolves around trying to offer more value to consumers, it's a bunch of winning (except for the companies that fall behind). Too often we see a competition to AVOID that scenario (Coke/pepsi & exclusive deals, everything about Comcast, HFT, the examples are numerous).

My point is middle men should make a cut in line with typical commissions (like 15%) so that the financial transaction is largely between the creator and the consumer. Netflix may be close to this model while virtually nobody else in the industry is.

Aren't DVDs still a major profit-winner for Netflix? Last I checked 5 million people were still subscribed to receive DVDs, and their subscriptions were more profitable than streaming-only ones. DVD subscriptions, however, are declining.

Something people forget about the Qwikster debacle: video game rentals were teased. The fact that Netflix never explored this again really bugged me. Imagine if Netflix bundled video games into their DVD rental plans -- I think they'd be able to start boosting DVD rental numbers again, and thus boost profits.

Does anyone experience the Netflix recommendation system being useful? If you use their web browser experience then you can tell it to never show items again. But if you use mobile apps, Chromecast, Roku etc you do not get that option. My experience is that they keep recommending the same content over and over again, despite me already having watched some of it, and not wanting to watch the rest. It is also an incredibly user hostile experience: "here are the same items we showed you last time that you didn't want to watch, so you must look at them again".

Heck they even go so far as recommending items where they accurately predict I'll give it low ratings, while ignoring the items where they accurately predict I'll give it higher ratings.

I really don't understand why they do this. Is my experience unique?

TL;DR: Netflix changed everything when it switched from mail-order DVDs to streaming-video. Now, people find themselves (a) not watching commercials and (b) watching shows back-to-back. This has been lucrative for the company in terms of raw revenue, but not in terms of profits after costs: though the article is pretty murky on this (one part says that they made millions in profits; another says that they have a consistent cash-flow problem involving borrowing and more borrowing).

Netflix has several concerns up ahead which might make it difficult to survive operating at a constant loss. One is that Hulu and Amazon are encroaching on its markets, and competition tends to drive down profits. Another is that they don't own the vast majority of their content, which puts them at the mercy of the pricing of their suppliers -- and being downstream from a monopoly can also drive down profits. Even worse, their suppliers still have a revenue model based on this old advertising-and-cable-packages system, which Netflix is destroying by transforming the landscape: which is a disincentive to working with them; a channel which can broadcast a breakout-popular new TV show might keep that in-house to try to keep the channel alive, rather than licensing the show to Netflix for an alternative revenue stream. At the very least this will probably keep Netflix content about a season behind whatever's on TV.

Finally, Netflix is finding itself raising its own prices, which may lead to a flurry of cancellations from people who maintain inactive subscriptions precisely because they're pretty cheap. On the flip-side, it's not clear that they can sustain continued growth in their subscriber base; maybe at this point almost everybody who wants Netflix's service is already signed up. If those numbers don't keep up, then problems arise that are not too different from the problems with "borrowing from the future" in Ponzi schemes (albeit with a solid net positive revenue, which makes it morally very different -- in Ponzi schemes this is 0 and it is being advertised as a huge number, which is a huge lie -- no similar problem here). A similar "collapse" could happen, where the growth tapers, thereby skepticism spikes, thereby costs to borrow go high, and everything rapidly turns around from apparent success to apparent failure.

There may also be problems with the corporate culture, but while most of the article is devoted to the corporate culture, no clear message is given; it is apparently a somewhat ruthless place which is probably somewhat sad but is also sold as really exciting, because the ruthlessness only keeps the people who really care about what they're doing, which apparently creates good morale. There's a lot of other details like that which don't really amount to anything significant regarding what this "new world" is that Netflix has created, or whether it will survive the above growth pains.

* Another is that they don't own the vast majority of their content*

That's true now and probably will be for the foreseeable future but the content they do own is great IMO. For me it started with the obvious - Daredevil, Jessica Jones, etc. But lately I've dived into other things they've done and enjoyed just about all of it. Great example - River - a somewhat disturbing detective show with good acting, exciting action and just a deep insight into a brilliant but seemingly broken man.

Even if Netflix has to evolve again to stay alive I hope the do so in a way that lets them continue making original content.

I think Netflix will face a problem of getting their customers find too well what they actually like, and not being happy with the content after this. Say, I loved River that you mentioned -- it's brilliant I think -- but can't really stand the superhero stuff now. And that's fine, but there are economic limits on how much of specific kind of content they can provide. I will obviously cancel the service if I run out of the programs that I find worthwhile.

Yeah, agreed. I think the article mentioned price hikes scaring off casual watchers and this almost happened with me but before I decided to cancel I took a deeper dive into the available content and found a lot I had ignored for a while (both NF original and licensed content).

So now I'm in this pattern where I find a few things I want to try, like enough of it to keep me happy for a month or two and then slowly run out of things to watch. I let it sit idle for a while and then lather, rinse, repeat.

But essentially every time I start to contemplate cancelling I tend to find something that makes me hang on for a little while longer.

Offtopic, but since you liked River, I'd suggest you to try Happy Valley too (if it's available at your location). It's also serious English crime drama, with some seriously good acting performances.

Thanks, I'll give it a look.

How many shows are like River where they just bought an existing show? There's a difference between buying a show that worked somewhere and investing in a concept that hasn't been made and nobody has seen.

> Another is that they don't own the vast majority of their content

Do any of the distribution channels actually own their content? The major networks? The cable channels? The other streaming services? Movie theatres? Don't the content producers typically licence to the distribution channels?

What world? Streaming was not created by Netflix. Netflix could be gone tomorrow, and we'd stream our way around them just fine, just as us cable-cutters stream our way around cable or around HBO to get Game of Thrones, top downloaded show all the way back in 2012 [1].

Netflix just carved the monster wave beautifully like any pro surfer would by building the largest subscription base for it. Good for them. But beyond that, anyone can practically stream anything now. And it's not because of Netflix.

Anecdotally, good TV has always been good TV, and has been king. So as long as Netflix can generate good original content as they have, people will be happy to pay them 10 dollars. You could say this world was created by HBO, but whatever created what, it all traces back to good television, aka content, being king. The underlying technology doesn't really matter. As we can see HBO appears to have caught up just fine.

[1] https://torrentfreak.com/game-of-thrones-most-pirated-tv-sho...

Why is it that every discussion about Netflix somehow devolves into a discussion about their hiring/firing practices?

1. Because they are open about them.

2. Because people care about having a job and earning money.

3. Because they literally make up about a third of the article.

Hiring/firing practices are a perennial subject on HN.

Netflix did not create a New World.

Funny how Netflix HR polices never extend to the boardroom or the C-suite.

It literally says in the article that Hastings fired the Chief Talent Officer that came up with the "Would you hire them again today?" litmus test that they use because she no longer passed it.

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