The part about "fear", or the high pay and low benefits, shouldn't be surprising if you are familiar with Netflix's values. They place employee performance above all else and strive to create a place where high performers want to work - which means getting rid of anyone who isn't one. Their values are to give employees huge amounts of freedom and responsibility and to let the individual's decide what to do with that, for the good of the company.

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.