11 ms·

Working at Netflix 2017

168 points by dmit 9y ago

faizshah 9y ago
Cached: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srnZUaFAExwJ:www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-05-16/working-at-netflix-2017.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srnZUa...
mimsee 9y ago
> We don't do anything shady, and we're proud of that. We're an honest company. Maybe not shady, but surely controversial. [0]: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ [1]: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad-idea/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad... [2]: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards
- EpicEng 9y ago
  Realistically, what's their option here? Take a stance on an issue not everyone agrees upon (and which most people don't care about) which could potentially shut them down in the long run?
  - mlkmlksmdf 9y ago
    This is a pretty abominable line of reasoning. Yeah, doing the right thing is not always free of cost.
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    > which could potentially shut them down in the long run Yes, if we ever possessed the technology to pirate movies, everyone would watch them and the industry couldn't survive.
    - overcast 9y ago
      Right, so we'll make it stupid simple for people to do. A giant, unencrypted library of movies, that can be saved and redistributed. Pirating exists, but if I asked most people how to do it, they still wouldn't know how to download a torrent client, find the torrent, unpack the movie, get a movie player, etc.. You know how locks on your front door keeps the honest thieves out? Same idea. I've never understood the complaints over DRM. At what point in your lives does it provide some type of hindrance? I load up Netflix, I start playing a movie until it's done. I don't give a shit if it was encrypted before I viewed it. All I care about is that I can watch it. What's the issue here?
      - sqeaky 9y ago
        The point where things break because of it. It hasn't happened with Netflix on any large scale, yet. But it has happened in the past. There are videos games that are single player and can't be played without an active connection back to the publisher. What happens when the publisher doesn't like you or mislabels you as a pirate? What if you just want to play the video game you bought and payed fro without an Internet connection? There were music stores that only played music through special software after getting decryption keys from an active connection to the Internet, and some of those stores shut down. What happened with the millions of dollars paid into those stores? What about the songs? Did you know that decrypting a song you bought and paid for is a crime? Consider: https://xkcd.com/488/ https://xkcd.com/488/ I would rather get out in front of this entirely artificial problem before I have to support my friends and family who don't understand the nature of this problem.
        overcast 9y ago
        You're comparing a subscription service to a game that you purchased a license for. The former you're not entitled to a copy of, the latter you are. With or without DRM, companies are also entitled to revoke your licenses regardless. You don't own any of it. DRM would also not exist, if it wasn't for everyone stealing the stuff. Do you really think companies want to pour all of the money and resources into this, if they didn't have to? Should games even have keys without DRM? What if I lose the key, and the company folded years ago. Now I can't play the game because they dared to require a key to play. Is your solution making everything openly available to download, and just relying on the goodness of the human heart to pay for it? Good luck.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    It's totally in Netflix's interest to keep DRM and make it harder and more complicated to implement. It creates a huge barrier to entry and keeps the labels and people thinking this is "ok" or even "needed". What could they do? They could not laud DRM on their blog. They could say they are reluctantly adding it. They could probably have pushed for 1080p in Chrome, etc. They could make their own stuff DRM free and publish piracy/subscription stats to show how much DRM helps. Their choices aren't just "fully embrace it" or "go out of business".
- owebmaster 9y ago
  House of Cards has a plot very shady to me. A lot of hidden agendas or bias if you prefer to take it easy.
- hsod 9y ago
  Shady and controversial are two very different things.
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Yeah, being limited to 720p because you run a free software operating system is not my idea of 'not shady' (Netflix is keeping their streams on Firefox and Chrome on 720p as a matter of policy, 1080p requires IE11, Edge, or Safari on a non-free operating system, or their proprietary app on an approved operating system). The only way this makes sense is if the purpose of this blockade is to push people towards devices and operating systems that are completely locked down with DRM, from the software to the hardware. I can't think of any other reason — if Netflix does serve me 1080p and 4K streams, would that cause a sudden increase in the amount of pirated releases available? I can already get everything on Netflix, in 1080p, if I really want just by visiting the usual pirate haunts! So what exactly is gained by degrading my viewing experience by only allowing me 720p as long as I choose to run a free operating system instead of a fully locked down platform? I wish Netflix would give an honest answer on their DRM strategy, because it is driving me away. I could understand if this was done because of licensing issues, but Netflix has decided on a blanket ban of 1080p and higher for their customers on free operating systems and anyone else who wants to use Chrome or Firefox.
  - snuxoll 9y ago
    If it was licensing issues, it'd at least be nice if Netflix only lowered quality where required instead of across the board. For crying out loud, why can't I get 1080p streams of Netflix originals on Linux - I've got the stupid Widevine CDM installed, what's the problem?
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      Would be nice, but at the same time it's a lot simpler to just do it once.
  - specialist 9y ago
    Have both Amazon Prime and NetFlix. Still fetch torrents, so I can control playback speed (watch faster).
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
- scarface74 9y ago
  I don't see anything controversial about encrypting media you rent. The whole canard about DRM is that you don't own the media. You're not paying for ownership of Netflix videos. You're paying for access.
  - btym 9y ago
    I've always thought that streaming services' main goal should be to be more convenient than digital piracy. That's when they win- when the service provides such a clear advantage over piracy that people are happy to pay money for it. At the moment, aside from ethical qualms, it is often more convenient for Linux, FF, and Chrome users to pirate Netflix's content. DRM, ironically, promotes piracy.
    - helthanatos 9y ago
      Also, Netflix's library is incredibly small compared to the amount of shows people actually watch. Netflix now blocks rooted Android devices. Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. So piracy vs $10/month for so much less is just painful. They don't allow anything more than 720p on chrome quite ironic considering the widevine deal. So yes, it seems Netflix is much more inconvenient than piracy.
      - scarface74 9y ago
        Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/ http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/
        cavanasm 9y ago
        While I also strongly disagree that Netflix's originals are "mostly terrible", I also think that awards shows are not as objective a judge of quality as I (and I imagine many others) would like.
        LordDragonfang 9y ago
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
  There are many shady tech company practices: * Open sexual harassment culture * Building spy software for the government * Selling censorship tools to governments * Selling your private data to advertisers * Allowing advertisers to target a person's emotional state * Profiting off of fake news and click bait * Tracking people across the web * Using monopolies to limit competition in other realms * Strong arming third parties to keep them from using your competitors' products Somehow, limiting streaming to 720p on non-supported platforms seems pretty benign. Edit: Tried to separate list from closing comment.
  - Teichopsia 9y ago
    Could you re-phrase this somehow? I'm not sure if you are talking about companies in general or Netflix. Edit: I rather ask than make an assumption. Thanks for the confirmation.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      His last sentence should make it clear that he wasnt talking about netflix, shouldnt it?
    - ethbro 9y ago
      Strongly assume parent was referring to all those things that are done at other companies... vs the 720p issue at Netflix. On the other hand, if Netflix has managed to reimplement the NSA's dragnet internally, I'm going to be really impressed by their engineers' productivity.
    - cholantesh 9y ago
      From the second to second-last line, they're referring to shady practices in general. In their last, they're arguing that delivering lower-quality streams to Linux-based user agents is comparatively benign. Not sure I agree, FWIW.
  - Antrikshy 9y ago
    You have sources for these?
- Mithaldu 9y ago
  Another example to add for "shady", for a long time Netflix used to push shows you'd watched to the end in your "continue watching" show to prompt you to watch them again, which could easily be mistaken for "the show actually has new episodes". They did fix that though, i think.
- rbritton 9y ago
  Blocking virtually all VPNs and VPS IP ranges is not the most pleasant practice. I realize this is likely a Hollywood demand, but absent any kind of other information from them, it sure appears that they are complicit in it. Further, they make it essentially impossible to to create a local routing rule to bypass the VPN for them alone. You're stuck whitelisting the whole of AWS.
  - xixor2 9y ago
    It's also a government demand: ratings, amount of locally produced content, taxes, etc.
    - jmanderley 9y ago
      Blocking VPNs is a government demand? I'm highly skeptical of this.
zerr 9y ago
Are they still proud of high turn-over rate and the "culture of fear"?
- drewg123 9y ago
  What makes you think the Netflix turnover rate is high? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that I have not personally experienced it. I've been at Netflix for a little less than 2 years. We've had zero turnover in my immediate group (the team that runs the OS used on the OpenConnect Appliance), and very little turnover in adjacent teams. I experienced far more turnover at Google.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    Thanks for replying. Those of us on the outside only have sensationalized news articles to go by, and journalists love to push the "Cutthroat Netflix Culture" narrative.
    - jedberg 9y ago
      Those stories get clicks and sell ads, but they aren't really true. Yes, it is easier to fire someone at Netflix than elsewhere, but it doesn't happen all that more often than anywhere else, and it's also easier to hire, promote and give raises to them. So it all balances out.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    Our TPM worked at Netflix for 2 years and she said that she personally saw about 20 people let go during her time.
    - zerr 9y ago
      I could understand this if interviews were broken (in a different way) at Netflix - is this the case? i.e. is it ridiculously easy to get a job there?
En_gr_Student 9y ago
link isn't working..
- H1Supreme 9y ago
  Still down. Probably zapped his monthly bandwidth in an hour.
fooey 9y ago
Netflix's culture deck is one of the most horrific things in the tech industry I've ever seen. It's so ruthlessly mercenary, I have a hard time understanding how why people put up with them.
- dominotw 9y ago
  Netflix recruiter forced me to read all 200 pages of it and asked me pop quiz on it during the subsequent call. No Joke. During the interview interviewer constantly referred to "Netflix culture" as if they were in some sort of cult. Why does a corporate company need to invent some ridiculous "culture" is beyond me. You pay me I do work, thats all the culture I need. >>Then while working here, staff cite the culture deck in meetings for decision making advice. These meetings sound like fun.
  - dasmoth 9y ago
    I don't know how close the thing you read is to what's on slideshare, but the public version has a slide which explicitly addresses the "this is not for everyone" issue, and says they're trying to filter out the people who won't like it. I suspect questions about the culture deck are more about making sure you're coming in with open eyes than about ensuring you've memorised every last phrase.
    - dominotw 9y ago
      Thats nice. Play nasty games with people trying to find a job and put food on the table. What is wrong with these people.
      - dasmoth 9y ago
        I don't get this at all. Wouldn't the "nasty game" be to hire them then fire them after a few weeks because they don't bring the level of intrinsic motivation that the environment requires? Or are you saying that no employer should be able to demand this level of motivation, even if they're totally up-front about it?
  - 9y ago
bronlund 9y ago
Answer me this: Why does the interface suck so bad? How are pissing off 100 million subscribers good business? I apologize for not expanding my view with a detailed analysis, but damn. The update you guys promoted like half a year in advance made it even worse.
- jedberg 9y ago
  The interface is the result of tens of thousands of A/B tests. Every change is tested and produces greater general happiness. There is a probably a bimodal distribution on happiness, but they only optimize for the bigger curve instead of both, to reduce complexity. So while you, and an advanced user, might want a lot of advanced features, those same features scare away the majority of casual users. So it's a business decision to cater to the majority at the expense of the minority to reduce overall development cost.
  - bronlund 9y ago
    I'm not talking about advanced features here, but stuff like that annoying zoom on hover and not remembering my sort preference and such. Just bad design! The most annoying thing maybe is that I can't hide stuff from the lists. Like when I watch 2 minutes of something and decides that I will never ever watch that crap again - that piece of crap will forever haunt my interface.
- YCode 9y ago
  Hulu did the same thing (with their Xbox app at least) recently and it really got me thinking. After a while I started to think maybe they aren't optimizing for what we might expect. By providing a UI that makes it slightly harder to find shows, displays as few shows at a time as possible and one that lures you into watching whatever is on the screen at the moment (even if just for a minute) they are effectively increasing the value of each piece of content and increasing the odds that you will watch whatever is on the screen while at the same time decreasing the odds that you will fall into choice paralysis. This also might make it seem like they have more new/relevant content than they really do. I'm not really well versed in this area, but I'd love to see an analysis of this hypothesis by someone who is more competent in this kind of design.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
Question to OP: How many people were fired or let go during your 3 years? And did they let go of people that you felt was a mistake?
tpae 9y ago
I'm pretty sure I've had few recruiters tell me, poaching from Netflix is almost impossible because of their ridiculously high salaries.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  450k/yr cash for senior software engineers. No bonus, no RSUs, I think maybe 5% of that is in stock. Nothing else though, which would be fine by me.
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    Source? Glassdoor shows 200k https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Netflix-Senior-Software-Engineer-Salaries-E11891_D_KO8,32.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Netflix-Senior-Software-Eng...
    - pfarnsworth 9y ago
      Glassdoor would be completely wrong.
      - kzisme 9y ago
        Source?
        ryandrake 9y ago
        LOL, you won't find one, because if true that's got to be an outlier by several standard deviations. Whenever a salary discussion comes up on HN, someone always comes out of the woodwork to let us all know that his brother's niece's room-mate's boyfriend makes $300K+ at BIG_TECH_CO, so therefore that must be what tech companies pay.
        phamilton 9y ago
        I don't know why people are so adamant about this being an outlier. Yes, not all tech companies pay $300k+ for senior engineers. But Netflix/Google/Facebook do. I don't know why that should be a problem for people. Denying it, and mocking anyone who brings it up, just depresses wages for engineers across the board.
deleted 9y ago
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blazespin 9y ago
Netflix has a 3.4 rating on Glassdoor. Yikes. I wouldn't consider working at a company unless it had 4 or more.
- jedberg 9y ago
  I would never use Glassdoor for evaluating a company. It skews towards people who are upset, they don't verify that you actually worked there, and they combine hourly workers with salary workers, which could be two very different experiences.
  - openmosix 9y ago
    Not to mention that most of the experiences are team-based. In any medium/large size company, you can end up in a terrible team and your view of the company is very negative. You can end up with a brilliant manager and great team, and you love the company.
  - draw_down 9y ago
    I used to work for a company that struck a deal to include Glassdoor data on some pages we made. Then that company soon became one of Glassdoor's "best companies to work for". Which was, I'm sure, a total coincidence.
- brendangregg 9y ago
  I actually brought this up in my interview, and asked extra questions because of it to be thorough. It's a really great company to work for, so I would say that Glassdoor's rating doesn't reflect what I've seen.
- svachalek 9y ago
  There's a lot of customer service reps in that rating. I have no idea what it's actually like over there in customer service, but over in engineering a lot of us are loving our jobs and can't imagine wanting to leave.
- Antrikshy 9y ago
  If you filter for "Software Engineers", it goes up to a 4.1, FYI.
Erwin 9y ago
Is that a C64 boot screen mousemat? Cool.
foepys 9y ago
This might be a bit off-topic but I heard that Netflix pays pretty well, even compared to other SV tech firms. Why does the author only have a pretty small desk directly at a (what I assume) small recreational area? Is this considered a normal desk at a top SV tech firm? I'd probably go nuts after a few days because people are constantly passing by and are talking while I want to concentrate on work. I'm from Germany where more and more companies try to implement the same open-office plans. Everybody I know that works in such an environment considers them as hostile to productivity. Somebody is constantly talking about useless stuff and disturbs others by that and using headphones is deemed as rude and anti-social.
- bmoyles 9y ago
  It's not a high-traffic area at all (I'm at the other end of his row, and I've got a high-traffic seat w/ high walls to block visual "noise"). While I would prefer an office (solo or shared with a few), we're given enough options that in general, it's not bad at all.
- brendangregg 9y ago
  The norm in SV (from visits to other companies) seems to be open office layout -- desks everywhere without walls or dividers. Ours is more private, I think it's called "semi-open", and out of shot behind me is a carpet-wall-thing that's about 5.5 feet high. So I'd say Netflix is a bit more private than the norm. I don't know what happened to private offices in SV. Sun Microsystems had a private office for every engineer, but Facebook tore them down when they took over. (I gave a talk at Facebook and included a floor plan from the Sun days: https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/linux-bpf-superpowers/2 https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/linux-bpf-superpower... )
Cieplak 9y ago
@brendangregg You mentioned FreeBSD; what are your thoughts on the state of DTrace on Linux vs FreeBSD? ps: I love your DTrace book! It's sitting on my desk now.
- brendangregg 9y ago
  Linux caught up last year: http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux-2016.html http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux... Thanks for getting the book! DTrace is invaluable for solving a set of needs, and we're using it on our FreeBSD CDN. Over time, Linux has been adding capabilities that can solve the same set of needs, although using different technologies. Right now, the Linux kernel (4.9+) can do the same things as DTrace, but the interface we're using (bcc/BPF) is currently 10+ times more verbose and much more difficult to use. Who does that hurt the most? At Netflix, me, as it's my job to add advanced observability to our analysis GUIs, and actually write the bcc/BPF. So far I've given conference talks on bcc/BPF at Performance@Scale, USENIX LISA, linux.conf.au, BSidesSF, and SCALE. Next is Velocity Conf.
  - srcmap 9y ago
    Brendan Love your work on DTrace. Have you seen / configured a system that keep the FTRACE/DTRACE log data in memory during a crash/ reboot cycle for postmortem kernel crash type analysis? If so, love the see any reference to how to setup something like that for typical x86 Linux. Did that long time (10+years) ago on MIPS+vxwork/Linux with someother trace log type system. Miss that capability..... Thanks
fancy_pantser 9y ago
I've always wondered why they don't hire remote.
xster 9y ago
Am I crazy or does it look like you're not sitting in a open-plan office/farm? And you have your own lounge chair by the window?
- ralmeida 9y ago
  That called my attention as well, but I figured they would be in semi-open-space: some privacy provided by the shell to the left of the chair and maybe one behind the chair, but open to the front and to the right of the chair. As in, maybe there's another workstation to the right of the chair positioned in symmetry (open to the left and shelf to the right). The chair by the window looks like belonging to the hallway in front of the pictured workstation. Just speculating though.
deleted 9y ago
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dirtylowprofile 9y ago
The Netflix iOS app is terrible though. Multiple crashes a day. What's up with that?
nrki 9y ago
I somehow picked up "Australian vibes" from this article, without any proof in the article that Brendan is Aussie. The cricket ball on the desk then helped, with the "G'day" on the front page of his site proving it. :)

168 points by dmit 9y ago

Cached: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srnZUaFAExwJ:www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-05-16/working-at-netflix-2017.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srnZUa...

mimsee 9y ago

> We don't do anything shady, and we're proud of that. We're an honest company. Maybe not shady, but surely controversial. [0]: https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/ [1]: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad-idea/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad... [2]: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards

EpicEng 9y ago
Realistically, what's their option here? Take a stance on an issue not everyone agrees upon (and which most people don't care about) which could potentially shut them down in the long run?
- mlkmlksmdf 9y ago
  This is a pretty abominable line of reasoning. Yeah, doing the right thing is not always free of cost.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  > which could potentially shut them down in the long run Yes, if we ever possessed the technology to pirate movies, everyone would watch them and the industry couldn't survive.
  - overcast 9y ago
    Right, so we'll make it stupid simple for people to do. A giant, unencrypted library of movies, that can be saved and redistributed. Pirating exists, but if I asked most people how to do it, they still wouldn't know how to download a torrent client, find the torrent, unpack the movie, get a movie player, etc.. You know how locks on your front door keeps the honest thieves out? Same idea. I've never understood the complaints over DRM. At what point in your lives does it provide some type of hindrance? I load up Netflix, I start playing a movie until it's done. I don't give a shit if it was encrypted before I viewed it. All I care about is that I can watch it. What's the issue here?
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      The point where things break because of it. It hasn't happened with Netflix on any large scale, yet. But it has happened in the past. There are videos games that are single player and can't be played without an active connection back to the publisher. What happens when the publisher doesn't like you or mislabels you as a pirate? What if you just want to play the video game you bought and payed fro without an Internet connection? There were music stores that only played music through special software after getting decryption keys from an active connection to the Internet, and some of those stores shut down. What happened with the millions of dollars paid into those stores? What about the songs? Did you know that decrypting a song you bought and paid for is a crime? Consider: https://xkcd.com/488/ https://xkcd.com/488/ I would rather get out in front of this entirely artificial problem before I have to support my friends and family who don't understand the nature of this problem.
      - overcast 9y ago
        You're comparing a subscription service to a game that you purchased a license for. The former you're not entitled to a copy of, the latter you are. With or without DRM, companies are also entitled to revoke your licenses regardless. You don't own any of it. DRM would also not exist, if it wasn't for everyone stealing the stuff. Do you really think companies want to pour all of the money and resources into this, if they didn't have to? Should games even have keys without DRM? What if I lose the key, and the company folded years ago. Now I can't play the game because they dared to require a key to play. Is your solution making everything openly available to download, and just relying on the goodness of the human heart to pay for it? Good luck.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  It's totally in Netflix's interest to keep DRM and make it harder and more complicated to implement. It creates a huge barrier to entry and keeps the labels and people thinking this is "ok" or even "needed". What could they do? They could not laud DRM on their blog. They could say they are reluctantly adding it. They could probably have pushed for 1080p in Chrome, etc. They could make their own stuff DRM free and publish piracy/subscription stats to show how much DRM helps. Their choices aren't just "fully embrace it" or "go out of business".
owebmaster 9y ago
House of Cards has a plot very shady to me. A lot of hidden agendas or bias if you prefer to take it easy.
hsod 9y ago
Shady and controversial are two very different things.
Freak_NL 9y ago
Yeah, being limited to 720p because you run a free software operating system is not my idea of 'not shady' (Netflix is keeping their streams on Firefox and Chrome on 720p as a matter of policy, 1080p requires IE11, Edge, or Safari on a non-free operating system, or their proprietary app on an approved operating system). The only way this makes sense is if the purpose of this blockade is to push people towards devices and operating systems that are completely locked down with DRM, from the software to the hardware. I can't think of any other reason — if Netflix does serve me 1080p and 4K streams, would that cause a sudden increase in the amount of pirated releases available? I can already get everything on Netflix, in 1080p, if I really want just by visiting the usual pirate haunts! So what exactly is gained by degrading my viewing experience by only allowing me 720p as long as I choose to run a free operating system instead of a fully locked down platform? I wish Netflix would give an honest answer on their DRM strategy, because it is driving me away. I could understand if this was done because of licensing issues, but Netflix has decided on a blanket ban of 1080p and higher for their customers on free operating systems and anyone else who wants to use Chrome or Firefox.
- snuxoll 9y ago
  If it was licensing issues, it'd at least be nice if Netflix only lowered quality where required instead of across the board. For crying out loud, why can't I get 1080p streams of Netflix originals on Linux - I've got the stupid Widevine CDM installed, what's the problem?
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    Would be nice, but at the same time it's a lot simpler to just do it once.
- specialist 9y ago
  Have both Amazon Prime and NetFlix. Still fetch torrents, so I can control playback speed (watch faster).
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
scarface74 9y ago
I don't see anything controversial about encrypting media you rent. The whole canard about DRM is that you don't own the media. You're not paying for ownership of Netflix videos. You're paying for access.
- btym 9y ago
  I've always thought that streaming services' main goal should be to be more convenient than digital piracy. That's when they win- when the service provides such a clear advantage over piracy that people are happy to pay money for it. At the moment, aside from ethical qualms, it is often more convenient for Linux, FF, and Chrome users to pirate Netflix's content. DRM, ironically, promotes piracy.
  - helthanatos 9y ago
    Also, Netflix's library is incredibly small compared to the amount of shows people actually watch. Netflix now blocks rooted Android devices. Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. So piracy vs $10/month for so much less is just painful. They don't allow anything more than 720p on chrome quite ironic considering the widevine deal. So yes, it seems Netflix is much more inconvenient than piracy.
    - scarface74 9y ago
      Netflix's originals are mostly terrible. http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/ http://fortune.com/2016/09/16/emmys-preview-netflix/
      - cavanasm 9y ago
        While I also strongly disagree that Netflix's originals are "mostly terrible", I also think that awards shows are not as objective a judge of quality as I (and I imagine many others) would like.
        LordDragonfang 9y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
There are many shady tech company practices: * Open sexual harassment culture * Building spy software for the government * Selling censorship tools to governments * Selling your private data to advertisers * Allowing advertisers to target a person's emotional state * Profiting off of fake news and click bait * Tracking people across the web * Using monopolies to limit competition in other realms * Strong arming third parties to keep them from using your competitors' products Somehow, limiting streaming to 720p on non-supported platforms seems pretty benign. Edit: Tried to separate list from closing comment.
- Teichopsia 9y ago
  Could you re-phrase this somehow? I'm not sure if you are talking about companies in general or Netflix. Edit: I rather ask than make an assumption. Thanks for the confirmation.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    His last sentence should make it clear that he wasnt talking about netflix, shouldnt it?
  - ethbro 9y ago
    Strongly assume parent was referring to all those things that are done at other companies... vs the 720p issue at Netflix. On the other hand, if Netflix has managed to reimplement the NSA's dragnet internally, I'm going to be really impressed by their engineers' productivity.
  - cholantesh 9y ago
    From the second to second-last line, they're referring to shady practices in general. In their last, they're arguing that delivering lower-quality streams to Linux-based user agents is comparatively benign. Not sure I agree, FWIW.
- Antrikshy 9y ago
  You have sources for these?
Mithaldu 9y ago
Another example to add for "shady", for a long time Netflix used to push shows you'd watched to the end in your "continue watching" show to prompt you to watch them again, which could easily be mistaken for "the show actually has new episodes". They did fix that though, i think.
rbritton 9y ago
Blocking virtually all VPNs and VPS IP ranges is not the most pleasant practice. I realize this is likely a Hollywood demand, but absent any kind of other information from them, it sure appears that they are complicit in it. Further, they make it essentially impossible to to create a local routing rule to bypass the VPN for them alone. You're stuck whitelisting the whole of AWS.
- xixor2 9y ago
  It's also a government demand: ratings, amount of locally produced content, taxes, etc.
  - jmanderley 9y ago
    Blocking VPNs is a government demand? I'm highly skeptical of this.

zerr 9y ago

Are they still proud of high turn-over rate and the "culture of fear"?

drewg123 9y ago
What makes you think the Netflix turnover rate is high? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that I have not personally experienced it. I've been at Netflix for a little less than 2 years. We've had zero turnover in my immediate group (the team that runs the OS used on the OpenConnect Appliance), and very little turnover in adjacent teams. I experienced far more turnover at Google.
- linkregister 9y ago
  Thanks for replying. Those of us on the outside only have sensationalized news articles to go by, and journalists love to push the "Cutthroat Netflix Culture" narrative.
  - jedberg 9y ago
    Those stories get clicks and sell ads, but they aren't really true. Yes, it is easier to fire someone at Netflix than elsewhere, but it doesn't happen all that more often than anywhere else, and it's also easier to hire, promote and give raises to them. So it all balances out.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  Our TPM worked at Netflix for 2 years and she said that she personally saw about 20 people let go during her time.
  - zerr 9y ago
    I could understand this if interviews were broken (in a different way) at Netflix - is this the case? i.e. is it ridiculously easy to get a job there?

En_gr_Student 9y ago

link isn't working..

H1Supreme 9y ago
Still down. Probably zapped his monthly bandwidth in an hour.

fooey 9y ago

Netflix's culture deck is one of the most horrific things in the tech industry I've ever seen. It's so ruthlessly mercenary, I have a hard time understanding how why people put up with them.

dominotw 9y ago
Netflix recruiter forced me to read all 200 pages of it and asked me pop quiz on it during the subsequent call. No Joke. During the interview interviewer constantly referred to "Netflix culture" as if they were in some sort of cult. Why does a corporate company need to invent some ridiculous "culture" is beyond me. You pay me I do work, thats all the culture I need. >>Then while working here, staff cite the culture deck in meetings for decision making advice. These meetings sound like fun.
- dasmoth 9y ago
  I don't know how close the thing you read is to what's on slideshare, but the public version has a slide which explicitly addresses the "this is not for everyone" issue, and says they're trying to filter out the people who won't like it. I suspect questions about the culture deck are more about making sure you're coming in with open eyes than about ensuring you've memorised every last phrase.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    Thats nice. Play nasty games with people trying to find a job and put food on the table. What is wrong with these people.
    - dasmoth 9y ago
      I don't get this at all. Wouldn't the "nasty game" be to hire them then fire them after a few weeks because they don't bring the level of intrinsic motivation that the environment requires? Or are you saying that no employer should be able to demand this level of motivation, even if they're totally up-front about it?
- 9y ago

bronlund 9y ago

Answer me this: Why does the interface suck so bad? How are pissing off 100 million subscribers good business? I apologize for not expanding my view with a detailed analysis, but damn. The update you guys promoted like half a year in advance made it even worse.

jedberg 9y ago
The interface is the result of tens of thousands of A/B tests. Every change is tested and produces greater general happiness. There is a probably a bimodal distribution on happiness, but they only optimize for the bigger curve instead of both, to reduce complexity. So while you, and an advanced user, might want a lot of advanced features, those same features scare away the majority of casual users. So it's a business decision to cater to the majority at the expense of the minority to reduce overall development cost.
- bronlund 9y ago
  I'm not talking about advanced features here, but stuff like that annoying zoom on hover and not remembering my sort preference and such. Just bad design! The most annoying thing maybe is that I can't hide stuff from the lists. Like when I watch 2 minutes of something and decides that I will never ever watch that crap again - that piece of crap will forever haunt my interface.
YCode 9y ago
Hulu did the same thing (with their Xbox app at least) recently and it really got me thinking. After a while I started to think maybe they aren't optimizing for what we might expect. By providing a UI that makes it slightly harder to find shows, displays as few shows at a time as possible and one that lures you into watching whatever is on the screen at the moment (even if just for a minute) they are effectively increasing the value of each piece of content and increasing the odds that you will watch whatever is on the screen while at the same time decreasing the odds that you will fall into choice paralysis. This also might make it seem like they have more new/relevant content than they really do. I'm not really well versed in this area, but I'd love to see an analysis of this hypothesis by someone who is more competent in this kind of design.

pfarnsworth 9y ago

Question to OP: How many people were fired or let go during your 3 years? And did they let go of people that you felt was a mistake?

tpae 9y ago

I'm pretty sure I've had few recruiters tell me, poaching from Netflix is almost impossible because of their ridiculously high salaries.

pfarnsworth 9y ago
450k/yr cash for senior software engineers. No bonus, no RSUs, I think maybe 5% of that is in stock. Nothing else though, which would be fine by me.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  Source? Glassdoor shows 200k https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Netflix-Senior-Software-Engineer-Salaries-E11891_D_KO8,32.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Netflix-Senior-Software-Eng...
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    Glassdoor would be completely wrong.
    - kzisme 9y ago
      Source?
      - ryandrake 9y ago
        LOL, you won't find one, because if true that's got to be an outlier by several standard deviations. Whenever a salary discussion comes up on HN, someone always comes out of the woodwork to let us all know that his brother's niece's room-mate's boyfriend makes $300K+ at BIG_TECH_CO, so therefore that must be what tech companies pay.
        phamilton 9y ago
        I don't know why people are so adamant about this being an outlier. Yes, not all tech companies pay $300k+ for senior engineers. But Netflix/Google/Facebook do. I don't know why that should be a problem for people. Denying it, and mocking anyone who brings it up, just depresses wages for engineers across the board.

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blazespin 9y ago

Netflix has a 3.4 rating on Glassdoor. Yikes. I wouldn't consider working at a company unless it had 4 or more.

jedberg 9y ago
I would never use Glassdoor for evaluating a company. It skews towards people who are upset, they don't verify that you actually worked there, and they combine hourly workers with salary workers, which could be two very different experiences.
- openmosix 9y ago
  Not to mention that most of the experiences are team-based. In any medium/large size company, you can end up in a terrible team and your view of the company is very negative. You can end up with a brilliant manager and great team, and you love the company.
- draw_down 9y ago
  I used to work for a company that struck a deal to include Glassdoor data on some pages we made. Then that company soon became one of Glassdoor's "best companies to work for". Which was, I'm sure, a total coincidence.
brendangregg 9y ago
I actually brought this up in my interview, and asked extra questions because of it to be thorough. It's a really great company to work for, so I would say that Glassdoor's rating doesn't reflect what I've seen.
svachalek 9y ago
There's a lot of customer service reps in that rating. I have no idea what it's actually like over there in customer service, but over in engineering a lot of us are loving our jobs and can't imagine wanting to leave.
Antrikshy 9y ago
If you filter for "Software Engineers", it goes up to a 4.1, FYI.

Erwin 9y ago

Is that a C64 boot screen mousemat? Cool.

foepys 9y ago

This might be a bit off-topic but I heard that Netflix pays pretty well, even compared to other SV tech firms. Why does the author only have a pretty small desk directly at a (what I assume) small recreational area? Is this considered a normal desk at a top SV tech firm? I'd probably go nuts after a few days because people are constantly passing by and are talking while I want to concentrate on work. I'm from Germany where more and more companies try to implement the same open-office plans. Everybody I know that works in such an environment considers them as hostile to productivity. Somebody is constantly talking about useless stuff and disturbs others by that and using headphones is deemed as rude and anti-social.

bmoyles 9y ago
It's not a high-traffic area at all (I'm at the other end of his row, and I've got a high-traffic seat w/ high walls to block visual "noise"). While I would prefer an office (solo or shared with a few), we're given enough options that in general, it's not bad at all.
brendangregg 9y ago
The norm in SV (from visits to other companies) seems to be open office layout -- desks everywhere without walls or dividers. Ours is more private, I think it's called "semi-open", and out of shot behind me is a carpet-wall-thing that's about 5.5 feet high. So I'd say Netflix is a bit more private than the norm. I don't know what happened to private offices in SV. Sun Microsystems had a private office for every engineer, but Facebook tore them down when they took over. (I gave a talk at Facebook and included a floor plan from the Sun days: https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/linux-bpf-superpowers/2 https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/linux-bpf-superpower... )

Cieplak 9y ago

@brendangregg You mentioned FreeBSD; what are your thoughts on the state of DTrace on Linux vs FreeBSD? ps: I love your DTrace book! It's sitting on my desk now.

brendangregg 9y ago
Linux caught up last year: http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux-2016.html http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux... Thanks for getting the book! DTrace is invaluable for solving a set of needs, and we're using it on our FreeBSD CDN. Over time, Linux has been adding capabilities that can solve the same set of needs, although using different technologies. Right now, the Linux kernel (4.9+) can do the same things as DTrace, but the interface we're using (bcc/BPF) is currently 10+ times more verbose and much more difficult to use. Who does that hurt the most? At Netflix, me, as it's my job to add advanced observability to our analysis GUIs, and actually write the bcc/BPF. So far I've given conference talks on bcc/BPF at Performance@Scale, USENIX LISA, linux.conf.au, BSidesSF, and SCALE. Next is Velocity Conf.
- srcmap 9y ago
  Brendan Love your work on DTrace. Have you seen / configured a system that keep the FTRACE/DTRACE log data in memory during a crash/ reboot cycle for postmortem kernel crash type analysis? If so, love the see any reference to how to setup something like that for typical x86 Linux. Did that long time (10+years) ago on MIPS+vxwork/Linux with someother trace log type system. Miss that capability..... Thanks

fancy_pantser 9y ago

I've always wondered why they don't hire remote.

xster 9y ago

Am I crazy or does it look like you're not sitting in a open-plan office/farm? And you have your own lounge chair by the window?

ralmeida 9y ago
That called my attention as well, but I figured they would be in semi-open-space: some privacy provided by the shell to the left of the chair and maybe one behind the chair, but open to the front and to the right of the chair. As in, maybe there's another workstation to the right of the chair positioned in symmetry (open to the left and shelf to the right). The chair by the window looks like belonging to the hallway in front of the pictured workstation. Just speculating though.

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dirtylowprofile 9y ago

The Netflix iOS app is terrible though. Multiple crashes a day. What's up with that?

nrki 9y ago

I somehow picked up "Australian vibes" from this article, without any proof in the article that Brendan is Aussie. The cricket ball on the desk then helped, with the "G'day" on the front page of his site proving it. :)