Netflix: Culture of Fear
glassdoor.com
glassdoor.com
re: pay I make far more than I've made at any of the 4 FT jobs I've had in 15 years. I'm paid a bit less on an hourly basis than my highest rate charged when I did consulting. I'm good. I was expensive.
re: benefits. Netflix matches 401k, they have an ESOP, they have a unique option plan, free (decent) lunches, snacks & drinks, etc.
re: health care. I'm single, my very good insurance program came out to less than $30 per paycheck since I've worked there. Next year they're changing the way insurance is done - every employee got $10k extra pay. This is intended to be used to cover the full cost of insurance, using my current benefits as a baseline it's a bit less that $8000 per year. People with dependents will almost certainly pay more. Many might be unhappy, I personally think it's fair.
re: fear. I have failed many times. I have succeeded more. Perhaps I'm just an smug asshole, but I've never once felt fear for my job.
re: innovation. I've personally spent more time innovating than at any other job I've had, including my last in a corporate research "lab".
The glassdoor review that I wrote after 6 months - http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Netflix-RVW...
However, you noted that the IT department (assuming IT and engineering are separate at Netflix) was overboard with firing. If the manager on Glassdoor worked there, do you think his review is more justified?
Netflix's pronounced strategy is great if you have judicious and fair managers all the way up the ranks in your department, but it seems that it only takes one bad manager to spoil a large bunch of good apples; overall performance is a pretty subjective metric after all, and if you get a particularly closed-minded or prejudiced manager (and such people are plentiful in the IT and engineering sectors; those of us who work with absolutist machines all the time seem to inherit a bit more of their habits than might be desirable) and he gets annoyed at something about you or your work, I doubt it's a very long walk from "awesome excellent performer" to "adequate performer" and a severance package for your average employee.
Does Netflix have guards in place to protect against that? Do you think that the situation the reviewer described could have occurred in the same company because his department had a more difficult manager on the loop? Do you think that you've stuck around because you share the views or preferred styles of the other managers, which thereby makes you "super great performer"? Do you think that the Netflix policies have a tendency to create a useless feedback loop of yes-men and groupthink?
The problem with running a programming team like a sports team is the difference in transparent metrics. There's a few simple measurements for the value of an athlete, depending on perspective: if he has good name recognition, he is a valuable business asset, even if he's not really a high-scorer; if he scores a lot of points and puts your team over the top often, he's a good asset because he increases the value of your franchise by making it win more often, and so on.
The metrics in engineering, especially the day-to-day engineering of going into work, working on programs, and then coming home, are much less clear.
"Note that IT was a hellhole with firing about a year ago. Two really good people got dropped."
The 2 people who got dropped were clearly from Netflix.
Assuming the reviewer came from IT or another operations group, some of what was written is more understandable, but much of it is not.
Our number one guard against a capricious manager causing trouble is the culture of openness - we're encouraged/expected to say what we think (even if it's controversial). We also have a 360 review process that is unique in that anyone can review anyone else. I could write a review for Reed if I so chose.
I've stuck around because:
- I love working with the people I work with - they're smart, call out bullshit, write good code, value quality, and share knowledge freely.
- I think the management is very competent - as a whole (from exec's down to engineering managers) are at least as smart as any I've interacted with, but they are they are more ethical than any. Every last manager I've interacted with has earned my respect, I don't give it easily.
- The environment is as a-political as I've seen. The meritocracy I expected to find in academia.
I absolutely love working at netflix, they've spoiled me for any other job.
Who has final authority to determine that someone is adequate or extraordinary? Again, the idea is subjective, and can be biased toward not performance but individual compatibility, socially or professionally.
Corporate America has become so risk-adverse that they would rather keep poor performers around indefinitely, drawing a paycheck, than risk a single wrongful termination lawsuit. Also, those poor performers are masterful at avoiding work. For example, they keep printouts of every email "just in case," and play games like "you didn't ask me to do that in writing, so that's why I didn't do it."
If the glassdoor review in the article was really correct, don't you think Netflix would have been sued into oblivion already? That's why I don't think the reviewer is being honest about the reasons why he was terminated.
If this is really how things are there, I want to understand why it works.
See: http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco
I challenge anyone to walk through Adrian's DevOps slides of what they are up to at Netflix and suggest that they aren't getting shit done this year: http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco/netflix-on-cloud-combined...
With that said - yes, Netflix does chew up people and spit them out pretty quickly. I know a number of people who are moderately successful other places that didn't do so well in Netflix's rather meritocratic environment.
It's almost cliche now, but it bears repeating, at "Netflix they reward adequate performance with a generous severance."
The pay is actually pretty good over there. Network Engineers (the ones that can manage to hang onto their jobs) make about $30K more than Radford 50th percentile for the Bay Area.
Can you give us the value rather than the symbol name, please?
A better way of looking at it, is if you have two job opportunities, one at Netflix, and one at a bog-standard Radord 50th percentile silicon valley company, my anecdotes (four) indicate that that you would be looking at about $30K/year more at Netflix.
With that said - Netflix isn't so much interested in 9-5 employees, as it is in entrepreneurs who can navigate the company, show leadership, and get results. It's a challenging environment for an employee that looks for hands-on management.
NetFlix should be compared to the contractor scale if they offer low job security.
As a Tech recruiter, I gained him a new job (at lower pay), and his complaint with Netflix were two fold.
Work-balance (family) and, he couldn't move up into a formal Lead role (though was acting as such, this could be a variable of the candidate itself). The new job handled both of these concerns. Otherwise, as a Tech recruiter, it was very hard to "head hunt" Sr/ Mgr / VP anything at Netflix...interesting article and discussion.
See the slideshows at http://www.netflix.com/Jobs.
As for the validity of this review, I find it hard to believe that even all the way back in May 2010 someone could think that Netflix's streaming business wasn't already a success:
So you guys did one thing well, a long time ago, and you've been marginally improving that business (DVD rental) ever since. Your astoundingly high turnover rate worked in that world, because all the processes were in place. But now you are trying to get into the streaming business, and that business only runs with knowledge workers at the helm.
edit: I think it's certainly possible to mistake "a culture of high demand for high performance" for "a culture of fear" if your only experience at the company is one in which you were deemed to not be a performer. But as an outsider, I can see why Netflix values and wants to create this culture and I admire them for striving and sticking to it.
I'd also like to point out that of the majority of reviews posted with the word "software" in the title, the majority seem to rate working at Netflix a 4 or a 5, although with a few 1's and 2's in there.
Personally I wouldn't expect "a culture of fear" going in but I'd at least have a pretty good idea that I need to perform, and produce high quality stuff, to survive there.
I mean, company culture is never really the problem for jobs I've signed up for as long as the company is honest about the situation. If I'm told it's a 9-5 and I find myself pulling 60-70 hour weeks (or the reverse scenario where I'm it's inferred that my Type A personality is going to fit in and I can make a big impact and it turns out to be a boring 9-5) that's when I get upset and start looking for new opportunities.
If that was actually true, then they wouldn't fire people automatically based on two mistakes -- because high performers make mistakes. And then they learn a lot from those mistakes and become even higher performers. Apparently not at Netflix, however.
What one aggrieved person considers "just two mistakes" might seem to his or her team like a pattern of clueless-ness and incompetence.
That said, I can't completely discount other people's experience since I only have my own experience to go on. It would seem that folks are let go because their skills are no longer relevant or they don't perform to par. This does not necessarily indicate that the person is a poor employee, but that he/she was not able to deliver given a particular context.
Say this because Netflix seems to have great luck attracting people that I respect personally and their culture building and HR practices are fairly lauded elsewhere . . .
The original "Netflix culture slide" were just an attempt to rationalize (and romanticize) their behavior, instead of "we will use you and throw you out if you are not to the exact fit", to "we want only the best people to work with us".
A lot of people in the start up community thought that those slides (and Netflix's culture) was really cool, but the reality seems very un-rosy. I think it is good too look beyond the PR.
As somebody mentioned on one of the comments, looks like their culture came from "Logan's Run".
As an engineer I have been contacted many times by Netflix recruiters, and that's why I started digging down a bit more into it. If you are an employer of Netflix, just consider yourself as a glorified contractor.
I found this link from this question on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Does-the-Netflix-work-culture-create-a-...
Are you sure you aren't basing your judgment on just a small handful of opinions?
Interesting is the personal differences we have with people that work there. Without naming names I know folks on customer acquisition side and analytics that boast about their jobs and have enough autonomy to kick ass - I actually bought stock when one of them was hired based on my previous interactions with the guy.
I will be curious if the mainstream tech press picks up on this thread - again with Netflix contrarians being the dish du jour.
If I could short a company and then collapse its stock price by posting "wah this company sucks to work for" rants on glassdoor.com, I'd be very rich by now.
I wouldn't make it my sole data point if I were trying to understand what it's like to work at Netflix, either way.
Others want to come into the company with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer", work on something cool, and leave the company after they've done something interesting with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer". These people do not get upset when they are not promoted for doing nothing, and do not tend to write bad reviews. They also tend to be the better programmers.
(I realized this recently. To get a bump up in my title and salary at my current job, I basically have to "serve my time". The fact that I'm much better at programming than other people does not accelerate the process; promoting me now would make the "time" that others have put in less meaningful. If I was promoted, then they would all quit and write bitter reviews like the one linked in this thread. "This company sucks, all they do is hire long-haired hippies that tell me to write tests! I have 20 years of experience, why would they let this nobody have a minimally meaningful title!?", it would read. Now, if it was my company, I would want highly-paid people that can't program to leave. But I am not a highly-paid person that can't program, and they make the rules. Oh well, at least I get a good laugh.)
They have a lot of process tied to seniority. You can only get a title increase every few years and no more than one title at a time without a review all the way up to the VP. You can't ask for more vacation as it is formulaic and HR isn't interested in making exceptions.
This is definitely a company for those who like to keep their seat warm and then go home to their families in the evenings, all the while enjoying the job security and lack of autonomy.
Since my interview at Google didn't pan out, I'm working on a startup on the side to keep myself sane. In the mean time I reason it will be a good experience of what not to do.
It's OK, though, because I can write solid software faster than other people can write shitty software :)
For instance, think about hundreds of companies that need to manage financial data. They create solutions to take data from database A and put it into database B. People who maintain this code are usually 100% more critical to the company than an average "awesome programmer". And these people get promoted based on the years of service.
It really sucks, but for some reason, the most talented developers who are usually in their early 20s are seen as "less reliable" and more likely to jump ship taking a lot of product specific knowledge with them, so they are usually not trusted with positions of seniority.
Then, by the time we're in our 30s and have more important obligations like family, etc, we are promoted to positions where our 22 year old self would be more suited to the work load. Hopefully in the 15 years between these two phases we have gained some wisdom.
Meh, people have different experience. Yours might be like that because you _are_ in that position.
In my experience, most of these people tend to write quick hacky solutions numerous times. Get a pat in the back. And quickly run away when the said hacky solutions start to smell really bad.
These people do get away with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer" and tend to continue leaving bad code trails. Unfortunately nobody bad mouth companies for having bad code because it's internal.
I think I'd do the opposite - if employee churn was high I'd want to be damn sure that well documented processes were in place so replacements could get up to speed quickly.
Some process is needed, sure, but large companies are far more likely to be held back by overly rigid processes and lack of agility than lack of process. If anything, this makes me more impressed with Netflix, that they've managed to maintain a more startup-like culture despite being a huge company.
It's not for all employees, sure, and it's absolutely within this guy's rights to find a position more comfortable for him. But after reading this I'm even more inclined to invest in Netflix. Once a company solidifies its processes and acquires parasitic employees, it's well past middle age and is unlikely to do anything remarkable.
Processes and lack of agility come into place in a mature company as risk-aversion. If the company is scared to fuck up, they introduce processes to prevent fuckups, even though those processes also dampen remarkable innovations.
Judging from the Glassdoor review, Netflix's firing strategy has the same effect--individual employees don't want to fuck up, so individual employees adopt a risk-averse cover-your-ass strategy, which also happens to dampen remarkable innovations. A culture like that has the same lack of agility and infestation from parasitic lifers, they just happen to add heaps of politics, stress, and unhappiness on top of it.
And yeah, I may be reading into it, since I have some frustration with large, process ridden organizations right now. I'm just saying, this is only one guy's take.
There are many other negative reviews of Netflix on Glassdoor. I am sure that some people are happy to work there, but I don't think someone would take the time to write such a lengthy and well-worded review if there was no truth to it.
Of course they would. There are an infinite number of scenarios that could lead to somebody posting an entirely fabricated review, regardless of its length or well-wordedness.
However, I agree that there is probably at least some truth to this.
Of course, for Netflix's business model, they don't actually need risk-taking and innovation at the lower levels, just the ability to fill a defined role as well as possible. Netflix mails and streams video content to people, and if they want to do something else, it'll only be because the executives decide to do it. They seem to hire specialists rather than generalists, fire people when their specialties aren't needed anymore, and so forth. It's categorically different from something like Microsoft or Google, where they hire generalists and have ways (although, to be fair, often politicized ones) to generate multiple product lines in parallel and where creative initiative and risk-taking at the lower levels is a part of that process. Netflix is way more top-down than that.
They don't appear to be afraid to innovate at all. Hell, they even started making their own hardware (Roku).
A bunch seem to agree on the high turnover thing, but some don't seem terribly bothered by that, citing it as a great experience nonetheless (and I haven't seen any others claiming the same stressful don't-screw-up-a-single-time-or-you're-fired attitude).
Interestingly, the main thing I'd known before about Netflix's employees was their famous vacation policy, and I haven't seen any reviews there mentioning it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...
I read the Netflix slide deck and didn't see anything I didn't immediately agree with. I would not hold their culture against them when looking for a job there.
The one thing I thought was a bit off was "you should ask your manager if they would fight for you to stay". IMO - if the employee is having a performance issue, the manager should bring it up not the employee.
If you disagree with my comment (which in and of itself is not really a good reason to down vote), then please reply with words. I am happy to have a discussion and talk about it. We both might learn something.
http://blog.netflix.com/2009/06/closed-captions-and-subtitle...
Essentially them complaining it will take a year to implement closed-captioning because silverlight can't process SAMI files automatically (basically glorified text bolding/syncing)
After I read that I guessed there was something wholly wrong with their corporate culture and management.
Are you suggesting they should migrate away from Silverlight? That they should choose a different data format? That they are probably lying about implementation time, and just don't want to do it?
http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
You might discover why there might be a "culture of fear" among the average performing employees, and why they might throw off a good bit of negativity in their hiring/firing cycle.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Topgrading-Leading-Companies-Coaching-...
Maybe it's more or less the unit that you're with at Netflix?
Not cool for any company --- especially a supposedly cool tech co --- to fire people as their employees say they do. When you read the details of these Glassdoor posts, you'll see just how rough some Netflix employees have it.