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Sort of an aside question, but the article praises Hastings ability to execute: > To say that Hastings excelled at execution is a dramatic understatement; inde

Sort of an aside question, but the article praises Hastings ability to execute: > To say that Hastings excelled at execution is a dramatic understatement; indeed, the speed with which the company rolled out its advertising product in 2022[...] is a testament that Hastings’ imprint on the company’s ability to execute remains. Is there a place where one could read details on what made him so great at execution?

criddell 4y ago
I don’t know if it has anything to do with his business acumen, but he was a pretty talented software developer. I originally knew of him from the Purify memory debugger.
JacobDotVI 4y ago
He wrote a book called Blitzscaling regarding how to execute: https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-Massively-Companies/dp/1524761419/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SD4HQ4WTA12R&keywords=blitzscaling+reid+hoffman&qid=1674492954&sprefix=blitzscal%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-... The book Netflixed (mentioned in the article) is likely also a good source: https://www.amazon.com/Netflixed-Epic-Battle-Americas-Eyeballs-ebook/dp/B007X5ZE4W/ref=sr_1_1?crid=16CFIAH8XIFN9&keywords=netflixed+the+epic+battle+for+america%27s+eyeballs&qid=1674492992&sprefix=netflixed%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Netflixed-Epic-Battle-Americas-Eyebal...
- wheelinsupial 4y ago
  I think the book Blitzscaling is by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. Reed Hastings wrote No Rules Rules https://www.norulesrules.com/ https://www.norulesrules.com/
ajmurmann 4y ago
The No Rules Rules book by him and an actual author is really good.
jedberg 4y ago
I can tell you as a former employee what I think it was. Reed was a developer, and in fact made software to make other developers more productive. He still thinks with that mindset internally. The entire culture at Netflix is built around enabling engineers to do what they think is the best thing. This in turn attracts engineers who like that kind of environment. I would gladly work with any of my former Netflix coworkers again in a heartbeat. The way this manifests is the mantra "context not control". From Reed on down, management's job is to tell the people that work for them "this is what we want to accomplish as a company/team/group". It is then up to those people to set the agenda. So I'd say Reed's execution is that he is great at making sure the right people get hired and the culture remains one of high performance, attracting talented engineers who want to work somewhere where making big changes is accepted. I wasn't there for the ads rollout, but I suspect it went something like Reed saying, "The time has come for us to roll out ads, we need the extra revenue". Then everyone down the line said, "this is how our department will contribute to that". Then the engineers said, "this is what needs to change" and just made it happen and no one got in their way. They have excellent developer tools that enable rapid prototyping and deployment, so while the engineers were building the ad tools, the content team was hiring the best ad exec they could find, who was very interested in the challenge of building an ad organization from scratch, and then everyone probably got out of their way. I say this because I was there for streaming, and it went very similarly. Reed (and the other execs) agreed that the technology had now caught up to his vision, and it was time to stream over the internet. So the engineers built it while the content team was created to start licensing content. Then some of the engineers said, "we could do this a lot faster and eventually worldwide if we hitch our wagon to this new AWS thing". And so management got out of the way and said "if that's what you think is best, we will support that". And so they started building on AWS, and hired a bunch of people who expertise in building on AWS (that was how I got in) and the rest is history. We kept hiring great engineers and saying "if we do it this way it will be a better experience for the customers" and for us internal teams, our customers were other engineers, so we made the best internal tools we could to enable developers.
- secabeen 4y ago
  > "we could do this a lot faster and eventually worldwide if we hitch our wagon to this new AWS thing" Standard reminder, this was for all the non-content delivery parts of Netflix. They have always and continue to run their own CDN in-house, and don't use AWS for that part. It also took almost 8 years to fully transition to AWS: https://ayushhsinghh.medium.com/case-study-how-netflix-is-using-aws-and-its-own-cdn-64ca6282eda0 https://ayushhsinghh.medium.com/case-study-how-netflix-is-us...
andsoitis 4y ago
Two readings: * Netflix Culture (originated and articulated by Reed): latest version at jobs.netflix.com/culture * No Rules Rules (book he co-wrote). In essence it is about how the aspirational / North Star culture maps to the day to day experiences of people who work there

criddell 4y ago

I don’t know if it has anything to do with his business acumen, but he was a pretty talented software developer. I originally knew of him from the Purify memory debugger.

JacobDotVI 4y ago

He wrote a book called Blitzscaling regarding how to execute: https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-Massively-Companies/dp/1524761419/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SD4HQ4WTA12R&keywords=blitzscaling+reid+hoffman&qid=1674492954&sprefix=blitzscal%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscaling-Lightning-Fast-Building-... The book Netflixed (mentioned in the article) is likely also a good source: https://www.amazon.com/Netflixed-Epic-Battle-Americas-Eyeballs-ebook/dp/B007X5ZE4W/ref=sr_1_1?crid=16CFIAH8XIFN9&keywords=netflixed+the+epic+battle+for+america%27s+eyeballs&qid=1674492992&sprefix=netflixed%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Netflixed-Epic-Battle-Americas-Eyebal...

wheelinsupial 4y ago
I think the book Blitzscaling is by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. Reed Hastings wrote No Rules Rules https://www.norulesrules.com/ https://www.norulesrules.com/

ajmurmann 4y ago

The No Rules Rules book by him and an actual author is really good.

jedberg 4y ago

I can tell you as a former employee what I think it was. Reed was a developer, and in fact made software to make other developers more productive. He still thinks with that mindset internally. The entire culture at Netflix is built around enabling engineers to do what they think is the best thing. This in turn attracts engineers who like that kind of environment. I would gladly work with any of my former Netflix coworkers again in a heartbeat. The way this manifests is the mantra "context not control". From Reed on down, management's job is to tell the people that work for them "this is what we want to accomplish as a company/team/group". It is then up to those people to set the agenda. So I'd say Reed's execution is that he is great at making sure the right people get hired and the culture remains one of high performance, attracting talented engineers who want to work somewhere where making big changes is accepted. I wasn't there for the ads rollout, but I suspect it went something like Reed saying, "The time has come for us to roll out ads, we need the extra revenue". Then everyone down the line said, "this is how our department will contribute to that". Then the engineers said, "this is what needs to change" and just made it happen and no one got in their way. They have excellent developer tools that enable rapid prototyping and deployment, so while the engineers were building the ad tools, the content team was hiring the best ad exec they could find, who was very interested in the challenge of building an ad organization from scratch, and then everyone probably got out of their way. I say this because I was there for streaming, and it went very similarly. Reed (and the other execs) agreed that the technology had now caught up to his vision, and it was time to stream over the internet. So the engineers built it while the content team was created to start licensing content. Then some of the engineers said, "we could do this a lot faster and eventually worldwide if we hitch our wagon to this new AWS thing". And so management got out of the way and said "if that's what you think is best, we will support that". And so they started building on AWS, and hired a bunch of people who expertise in building on AWS (that was how I got in) and the rest is history. We kept hiring great engineers and saying "if we do it this way it will be a better experience for the customers" and for us internal teams, our customers were other engineers, so we made the best internal tools we could to enable developers.

secabeen 4y ago
> "we could do this a lot faster and eventually worldwide if we hitch our wagon to this new AWS thing" Standard reminder, this was for all the non-content delivery parts of Netflix. They have always and continue to run their own CDN in-house, and don't use AWS for that part. It also took almost 8 years to fully transition to AWS: https://ayushhsinghh.medium.com/case-study-how-netflix-is-using-aws-and-its-own-cdn-64ca6282eda0 https://ayushhsinghh.medium.com/case-study-how-netflix-is-us...

andsoitis 4y ago

Two readings: * Netflix Culture (originated and articulated by Reed): latest version at jobs.netflix.com/culture * No Rules Rules (book he co-wrote). In essence it is about how the aspirational / North Star culture maps to the day to day experiences of people who work there