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Which is part of why it's not that uncommon to see people who bounce from job to job every year or two in the Bay Area. It rapidly boosts salary. I've also see

• decafninja 6y ago
  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.
  • blahbhthrow3748 6y ago
    The Netflix philosophy is basically that the job sucks and they will drain the life out of you but they pay above market. YMMV
    • exdsq 6y ago
      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.
    • yibg 6y ago
      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.
      • ForHackernews 6y ago
        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.
        • trevyn 6y ago
          In practice, the difference is completely irrelevant.
        • wan23 6y ago
          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.
          • eloisant 6y ago
            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...
            • gkop 6y ago
              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.
              • BeetleB 6y ago
                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.
    • decafninja 6y ago
      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.
• jonahhorowitz 6y ago
  The guidance given to managers at Netflix is to calibrate each employee's compensation to "what they (the manager) thinks they could make if they went elsewhere." It's an extremely time-consuming exercise that every manager goes through every year. They even encourage engineers to interview elsewhere and see what the offer is if they feel they are miscalibrated, and they will adjust appropriately. Finally, a question they encourage engineers to ask their managers is: "if I had a job offer elsewhere, would you fight to keep me?" It's a scary question to ask, but a great way of getting feedback. Source - worked there for 3 years.
  • Reedx 6y ago
    Interesting, that's quite a bit more bold than I thought. Thanks for the insight!