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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 abov
by brown9-2 16y ago
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 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.
- smysore 16y agoThe culture slides on Netflix's job site do make it seem like a scary place to work but at least they are transparent about what it's like to be employed there..
- brown9-2 16y agoRight, that was the point I was trying to make - how can anyone be surprised at what you find there when they advertise it so well? 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.
- okaramian 16y agoYeah, I don't really see the complaint here. Netflix is pretty transparent about how things work on some level, so if you're let go at some point you should be prepared for the possibility. 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.
- sabat 16y agoThey place employee performance above all else and strive to create a place where high performers want to work 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.
- brown9-2 16y agoBe careful you aren't automatically accepting the version of events from someone on the ugly end of the firing without having both sides of the story. What one aggrieved person considers "just two mistakes" might seem to his or her team like a pattern of clueless-ness and incompetence.
- sabat 16y agoHence the word "apparently."
- zaphar 16y agoAgreed. Purely from my experience as a heavy user of their streaming product I would not have guessed that the programmers are afraid to innovate or spend all their time watching their rear. They have in my opinion one of the best if not the best streaming product on the market. They must be doing something right.
- vital_sol 16y agoI've been a Netflix customer since 2005. Last time I tried to use their "streaming service," it demanded that I use IE instead of Firefox to watch a movie. I never tried it ever since. Yet I'm still renting DVDs from them.
- male_salmon 16y agoYou can watch instantly using a variety of browsers including Firefox and Chrome on Windows and OS X.
- krakensden 16y agoAnd even in Linux, so long as you're on an embedded device like a television or set top box. It's impressively ubiquitous.
- jimbokun 16y agoAnd Wii, XBox, PS3, iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, and various Blue Ray players, and I'm probably forgetting some.