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I left Netflix about 2 months ago after over 5 years working there. Overall I would say the average developer there is about on par with any other company I hav

by city41 6y ago

I left Netflix about 2 months ago after over 5 years working there. Overall I would say the average developer there is about on par with any other company I have worked at. But the great ones were truly, astonishingly, great.

anm89 6y ago
Interested to hear more about this. Technically great? Great leaders? Great thinkers/architects/high level people? All of the above?
- city41 6y ago
  All of the above, the great qualities came in many different ways. But I think a common theme was the ability to increase leverage and have a multiplicative effect. Sometimes this meant being an expert on a certain technology to better leverage it (especially important on teams that need to go deep such as video encoding, CDNs, television hardware, etc). Or looking at needs and pain points across teams and building high level solutions that raised productivity across the board. A willingness to question things and push for better ideas and really seeing them through. This could be at a technical or human level. Some people were really good at improving team cohesion and empathy, causing teammates to work more effectively. Others pushed hard for internal education and sharing learnings to help raise everyone's game. The culture of the company helped enable all of this. Some people excelled at improving culture, which has a leveraging effect as well. I have seen the above at just about every company I've worked at. But I would say that at Netflix people took it further and were more successful than I've seen elsewhere. That's just my experience, I've only worked at a handful of companies. I have no doubt many companies have employees that do all of this.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    The question would be what other companies did you work for? If it's all top tech companies in the valley, it should be pretty good across the board.
    - city41 6y ago
      You're right. I've not worked at all top companies, but I would still say the lesser known ones had good employees for the most part.
langitbiru 6y ago
> But the great ones were truly, astonishingly, great. Like Jeff Dean or Sanjay Ghemawat?
- city41 6y ago
  I don't think I can effectively answer this one. I fall right into the "average developer" bucket and have never worked at Google. So I don't think I have the proper exposure on this.
Xavdidtheshadow 6y ago
If you don't mind me asking, what prompted you to leave? Also, did you find the culture as cutthroat as it's rumored to be?
- city41 6y ago
  There are many reasons I left, but mostly I'm interested in trying new things. I want to either pursue freelancing or find a role at a small company. Two things I've never really done before. As for the culture. It's not nearly as cutthroat as people assume it is. But it's true that Netflix wants you to perform well. This gets balanced out with good communication from management and your peers. Netflix emphasizes candid feedback, so you pretty much always know where you stand. At least, in my experience. It's a big company, so mileage may vary.
  - tasuki 6y ago
    Kudos. Small companies can be great fun!
rebelos 6y ago
Could you elaborate a bit on where the bulk of the technical effort is being applied at Netflix these days, aside from recommendations and improved scaling? From the point of view of the user, the product has seemed fairly static for the past several years. But obviously there must be a lot going on behind the scenes. I assume the broad buckets of continuous effort are "get the right content to the right users", "add more content" (which may involve some engineering support via e.g. analytics), and "scale it up to effectively reach more users". It seems like Netflix has fully shifted from a chaotic "zero-to-one" innovation state to a more mature "continuously aggregate marginal gains on top of a solid foundation". Is that a fair characterization? The only conceivable "problem" with the above from the engineer's POV is that (1) individual contributions might feel less exciting and (2) it becomes progressively harder to find ways to move the needle. Though I would assume this is a problem at virtually any mature technology company. On the bright side, a marginal gain applied at a massive scale probably feels pretty rewarding.
- city41 6y ago
  I can definitely say a lot of focus and innovation is happening on the studio side of Netflix. This is where tools for casting, managing the logistics of filming, budgeting, etc are being built in order to scale up Netflix's ability to create content. I spent the last 2.5 years of my time on this side. https://jobs.netflix.com/teams/studio-technologies https://jobs.netflix.com/teams/studio-technologies My first 3 years were on the consumer side, working on the TV client. I'm a bit more out of touch here. But I'd still say interesting engineering is happening here. I agree sometimes it is "marginal gain at massive scale", but that can be really satisfying and challenging in its own right. There are many different teams focusing on a lot of different things here. The consumer side is pretty much entirely driven by A/B tests. So teams might take on a big idea, but it can be hard for those to beat out the established norm sometimes. That may be a factor in why you feel the product is "static". Also the wide range of devices and internet connections can segment engineering. Many efforts apply across the board, but other projects might only apply to say high end game consoles for example. Regarding "get the right content to the right users", I don't have much experience with that. That's more in the domain of backend teams. I do know they also do A/B tests to guide innovation, but that's about all I can confidently say there.

by city41 6y ago

anm89 6y ago

Interested to hear more about this. Technically great? Great leaders? Great thinkers/architects/high level people? All of the above?

city41 6y ago
All of the above, the great qualities came in many different ways. But I think a common theme was the ability to increase leverage and have a multiplicative effect. Sometimes this meant being an expert on a certain technology to better leverage it (especially important on teams that need to go deep such as video encoding, CDNs, television hardware, etc). Or looking at needs and pain points across teams and building high level solutions that raised productivity across the board. A willingness to question things and push for better ideas and really seeing them through. This could be at a technical or human level. Some people were really good at improving team cohesion and empathy, causing teammates to work more effectively. Others pushed hard for internal education and sharing learnings to help raise everyone's game. The culture of the company helped enable all of this. Some people excelled at improving culture, which has a leveraging effect as well. I have seen the above at just about every company I've worked at. But I would say that at Netflix people took it further and were more successful than I've seen elsewhere. That's just my experience, I've only worked at a handful of companies. I have no doubt many companies have employees that do all of this.
- user5994461 6y ago
  The question would be what other companies did you work for? If it's all top tech companies in the valley, it should be pretty good across the board.
  - city41 6y ago
    You're right. I've not worked at all top companies, but I would still say the lesser known ones had good employees for the most part.

langitbiru 6y ago

> But the great ones were truly, astonishingly, great. Like Jeff Dean or Sanjay Ghemawat?

city41 6y ago
I don't think I can effectively answer this one. I fall right into the "average developer" bucket and have never worked at Google. So I don't think I have the proper exposure on this.

Xavdidtheshadow 6y ago

If you don't mind me asking, what prompted you to leave? Also, did you find the culture as cutthroat as it's rumored to be?

city41 6y ago
There are many reasons I left, but mostly I'm interested in trying new things. I want to either pursue freelancing or find a role at a small company. Two things I've never really done before. As for the culture. It's not nearly as cutthroat as people assume it is. But it's true that Netflix wants you to perform well. This gets balanced out with good communication from management and your peers. Netflix emphasizes candid feedback, so you pretty much always know where you stand. At least, in my experience. It's a big company, so mileage may vary.
- tasuki 6y ago
  Kudos. Small companies can be great fun!

rebelos 6y ago

Could you elaborate a bit on where the bulk of the technical effort is being applied at Netflix these days, aside from recommendations and improved scaling? From the point of view of the user, the product has seemed fairly static for the past several years. But obviously there must be a lot going on behind the scenes. I assume the broad buckets of continuous effort are "get the right content to the right users", "add more content" (which may involve some engineering support via e.g. analytics), and "scale it up to effectively reach more users". It seems like Netflix has fully shifted from a chaotic "zero-to-one" innovation state to a more mature "continuously aggregate marginal gains on top of a solid foundation". Is that a fair characterization? The only conceivable "problem" with the above from the engineer's POV is that (1) individual contributions might feel less exciting and (2) it becomes progressively harder to find ways to move the needle. Though I would assume this is a problem at virtually any mature technology company. On the bright side, a marginal gain applied at a massive scale probably feels pretty rewarding.

city41 6y ago
I can definitely say a lot of focus and innovation is happening on the studio side of Netflix. This is where tools for casting, managing the logistics of filming, budgeting, etc are being built in order to scale up Netflix's ability to create content. I spent the last 2.5 years of my time on this side. https://jobs.netflix.com/teams/studio-technologies https://jobs.netflix.com/teams/studio-technologies My first 3 years were on the consumer side, working on the TV client. I'm a bit more out of touch here. But I'd still say interesting engineering is happening here. I agree sometimes it is "marginal gain at massive scale", but that can be really satisfying and challenging in its own right. There are many different teams focusing on a lot of different things here. The consumer side is pretty much entirely driven by A/B tests. So teams might take on a big idea, but it can be hard for those to beat out the established norm sometimes. That may be a factor in why you feel the product is "static". Also the wide range of devices and internet connections can segment engineering. Many efforts apply across the board, but other projects might only apply to say high end game consoles for example. Regarding "get the right content to the right users", I don't have much experience with that. That's more in the domain of backend teams. I do know they also do A/B tests to guide innovation, but that's about all I can confidently say there.