What's even harder to wrap my head around is that according to this survey around 15% of people at Netflix think they're not compensated fairly. What do they want? 400k? 500k? Would a salary of a million dollars a year be enough?
If you worked at Netflix and everyone around you made a million whilst you made half a million, you might give such an answer on a survey, and it probably wouldn't change with the absolute amounts.
That's something that worries me about moving down to Silicon Valley. It seems like everyone there is envious of how much their neighbors and co-workers make, regardless of how much they happen to be making. I want to avoid falling into that trap--it seems like a recipe for unhappiness.
Another perspective: Netflix is notoriously interested in only hiring top talent. Top talent is ambitious and always seeking to advance. I don't think it's a matter of envy, it's the unending beat of progress.
And,or: they hire the people most likely to feel unfairly paid, and it’s when we feel we are unfairly paid we are more motivated to negotiate higher salaries, and the more a company’s employees ask for higher salaries the more likely they are paid higher. And if the root cause of the feeling of being unfairly paid isn’t the absolute amount of money being received, then the higher salaries won’t reduce the feeling.
The competition is starting your own company and cashing in on many millions or billions from it. I think it's perfectly reasonable for the highest achievers to have that in mind as the alternative to compare against and hold some ambivalence on whether they are maximizing themselves.
Think about it, if you have even the remotest capability in reading DL research and simultaneously a decently impressive ability to gab, you can sell a startup idea to GM/Ford/etc. for billions on no real insight. Of course some of these people are gonna stew angrily about whether their 500k compensation is the limit. I bet anyone making that 300k+ at Netflix thinks they could easily do some basic spinoff utilizing their main job objective and further they could use the Netflix background as a credential. It gets ludicrous, but you'll never have much better than what Netflix right now is achieving in employee satisfaction. In fact it's a wonder it's so good.
Decent 3 bedroom houses nearby cost 3 million, so going by the 3x salary to house price rule, a million dollars would be the right amount. That is completely ridiculous, but it is also reality.