Hacker News Reader

Comment by decafninja | Hacker News Reader

Not a Netflix employee, but one of my best friends is. He got in at a mid/upper 200ks range salary, and within a single year got a double digit percentage bump.

Netflix just seems to be an extreme outlier in terms of base (cash) compensation. I think the only companies that could beat it are some rare and elite financial firms (i.e. Jane Street) that are even tougher to get into than FAANG.

View on HN

The Netflix philosophy is basically that the job sucks and they will drain the life out of you but they pay above market. YMMV

I read it was like a sports team and they paid for the best but wouldn’t hesitate to fire people once their performance starting slowing down.

This is the first time I’ve seen a job at Netflix characterized this way. Total comp at Netflix also isn’t any higher than say Facebook or google.

But Netflix pays real money, right? FB and G heavily compensate with stock that has historically been valuable, but could always tank with a cooling ad market or strong privacy regulations.

In practice, the difference is completely irrelevant.

The stock has been historically more valuable than an equivalent amount of cash. For the most part, the historical trend of these stocks has been up and to the right.

Well, if you make 400k at Netflix instead of 200k of cash + 200k of FB stock at Facebook, you can just buy FB stock by yourself with the Netflix cash...

This analysis is missing the appreciation of the grant during vesting, which is material. The 200k of FB stock was granted as 800k over 4 years. So if the stock goes up just 10% a year, by the time the 1st year vests it's actually worth 220k, the 2nd year is 242k, 3rd year is 266k, and 4th 290k in stock comp due to appreciation. If it goes up more than 10%, effect is even more pronounced, plus with refreshers, you get a genuine golden handcuffs type situation.

It's not missing that analysis. The GP said if given $400K cash you could buy $200K worth of stock. Yes, FB stock will appreciate during vesting, but that's no different from me buying $200K of FB stock and simply holding on to it for a few years. The benefit of cash up front and you buying the stock is you can buy any stock and play this game, not just your own company's.

There's a difference, because you are given a number of RSUs at hire with some monetary value, so on this example you would be given RSUs worth of 800k at the time of hire, which would be 200k per year (they vest over 4 years). If we run this example just for 2 years you will start to see the difference:

Year 1: At Netflix you get 400k in cash, you buy 200k of FB stock, so you have 200k cash, 200k worth of FB stock At FB you get 200k of cash and 200K worth of stock

Year 2 - FB stock goes up by 10% so 200k of FB stock from last year is now worth 220k: At Netflix you got another 400k in cash and you will buy another 200k worth of FB stock. So now you have 400k of cash and 420k worth of FB stock At FB you get 200k of cash and 220k of FB stock, so now you have 400k of cash and 440k of FB stock.

Also RSUs vests quarterly so you can (and should) sell it and invest in other things to diversify.

There is certainly pros to having cash as pointed out. The appreciation of stock though can be a benefit in that your 200k is still going to be 200k next year, while the 200k of RSU could be worth say 300k. So second (and third and forth) year you get 300k a year worth of RSUs, while still 200k worth of cash. So while yes first year of RSUs vs stocks you buy appreciates the same, subsequent years RSUs are worth more (if it keeps going up) because the # of shares granted is locked in. Of course the inverse is also true, if the stock price falls, the # of shares granted is still locked and the value drops.

FB and G stock grants vest monthly and employees often have them setup to sell immediately on vesting. While there is some volatility in exactly how much you get paid its much closer to Netflix than to compensation at startups and not yet IPO'd companies where you can't realize the stock options until much later.

Quarterly, with no 1 year cliff. Close enough to monthly it's not that bad thought.

No, quarterly vs monthly depends on the number of units ready to vest (if there's enough, it will be monthly).

FB vests quarterly for all employees, regardless of how many shares they are scheduled to receive.

GOOG vests monthly, but if you're going to receive less than 1 share that month, then I guess they might round that down to 0 and effectively vest less frequently.

This class of characterization gets around, though usually the coverage is more directly about the "culture of fear." Please consider how terrible a job is when you're constantly afraid and working yourself to the bone to avoid being fired; it's probably in line with that.

The WSJ had a piece in 2018 which sparked a bunch of follow-on coverage:

"Mr. Hastings’ ring of top executives take the keeper test seriously. At a meeting in late spring of Netflix public-relations executives, one said every day he comes to work he fears he is going to get fired. Karen Barragan, the vice president of publicity for original series, asked how many other people felt that way. A number of hands went up. “Good, because fear drives you,” Ms. Barragan said, according to people familiar with the meeting."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-netflix-radical-transparency...

Other coverage from 2018:

https://qz.com/work/1439451/the-seven-ways-netflix-culture-s...

https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflix-culture-of-fea...

https://theweek.com/articles/805123/netflixs-culture-fear

Older coverage:

https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-culture-of-fear-2010...

>“Good, because fear drives you,”

What a fake. Fear of what? That some rich asshole doesn't like you?

If you get a Netflix job, you can trade down to a ton of other companies with better life balances.

How does anybody tolerate that kind of work environment? Maybe I'm weak but no amount of money could compensate for that kind of stress and misery IMO. I work for a well-known company that's below FAANG tier but is basically the anti-Netflix. It's just so freaking NICE that I never want to leave even though my salary is slightly below market. I never feel guilty taking time off, employees are encouraged to take sick days which are unlimited and don't count towards PTO, people are out of the office at 6 on the dot, benefits are some of the most generous I've ever seen, and almost everyone is just straight up kind and supportive to one another. Even for things like on call schedules it's understood that it's universally unpleasant but everyone handles it with a positive "we're all in this together" attitude. It sounds corny but these things really do make a great workplace. There are a few people who seem to be institutional dead weight because it's not easy to get fired, but dealing with a few underperformers is a small price to pay to feel happy and relaxed at work every day and live life without perpetual fear of the hammer. Thanks for this reminder that the money is always greener on the other side!

I imagine the money helps. Compensation at a FAANG or other top tech company seems to be on monumentally different tier than the next level down.

You could splurge it, but you could also manage it well and potentially retire early? My friend seems to be on this path.

You could use your time at a FAANG to get experience, accumulate money, and have the FAANG brand on your resume to leverage for future job prospects?

Also from everything I hear, working as a SWE at FAANG and other top tech companies are still more pleasant to work at than as a SWE in other industries - i.e. finance.

No, not good. Not good at all. "...because Fear drives you..." yes it does. It drives you to a heart attack, or to the offices of a different employer once you wise up and realize that is a terrible way to life your life, and you are borrowing time from your lifespan due to the increased stress. I despise employers who play psychological games like this. Despise it. Are these people who burned ants with magnifying glasses as children?

I think like any company of a decent size, the truth is it depends. On the team, particular individual etc. At least in the engineering side of things, I haven't seen a culture of fear. There is a bit of anxiety going in, because of the reputation, but pretty soon I realized it was pretty exaggerated.

I dunno, my friend seems to love it there, and claims it is much easier and laid back than his previous company.

Granted their culture sounds very demanding with the whole "pro sports team" mentality, but I can see that being a positive thing too. I wish my team/company was more like that.

That said, it seems it might be different for each team/department, as my friend claims there's still people there who are not very good but still around for a long time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com