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Did any of this: Make my nextflix better? How about cheaper? Did it deliver better content? Is this the work product of 2000 engineers focused on delivering me

Did any of this: Make my nextflix better? How about cheaper? Did it deliver better content? Is this the work product of 2000 engineers focused on delivering me the worst content in the best way possible? What exactly am I getting for my 12, 20 ... wait what the hell is netflix charging now for their garbage content... 1000? 2000?d engineers at netflix and this is the article we get, this is their flex? I am underwhelmed.

throwaway894345 3y ago
I don’t like Netflix’s content either but I’m pretty sure that’s not up to the engineering department.
matt_heimer 3y ago
This is a bit like complaining about AWS because you don't like the product selection on Amazon.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  Is Netflix offering their services as a platform now?
  - matt_heimer 3y ago
    Not sure why that would matter, complaining about content in response to an article about infrastructure doesn't make any more or less sense if the infrastructure is available as a service. But I do consider some of what Netflix does to be a platform. Most of it is platform in the sense that some of their open source offerings are commonly adopted such as Spinnaker. But if you look at the adoption of microservices at Netflix a part of that includes Conductor, an open-source microservice orchestration engine. The Netflix developers that created Conductor left Netflix and formed a new company named Orkes to offer Conductor as a platform. So while its not operated by Netflix, the microservice efforts they've made have been turned into a service offering.
- ActionHank 3y ago
  Except for any aspect of the post to actually justify the engineering effort it would either have to improve efficiency or save money. All while Netflix has increased cost, stopped account sharing, and introduced ads. Net negative improvement for users whilst there was presumably some net savings or gains for Netflix. They've from offering a competitive offering to offering a compelling investment, shedding any guise of caring about their users along the way.
  - benced 3y ago
    Yes, the job of Netflix engineers is to help Netflix gain money.
munro 3y ago
And then I always think, Netflix only has ~3,600 movies... My friend's Plex server has 4x that (in just movies). I'm also often underwhelmed by Netflix's engineering posts
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  He should write a mastrubatory blog post about how effective his set up is... Hell he could do a cost comparison for running his service vs Netflix per month. I think this is the year where I go back to stealing content, none of these services are worth it.
  - ddalex 3y ago
    If paying for content is not owning it, then copying it is not stealing.
- alt227 3y ago
  But your mate doesnt have to stream them on demand to millions of people round the world. They not only have to store the movies, but access and simultaneously stream them thousands of times from anywhere on the globe. Imagine how many people are watching things like Stranger things series premiere at the same time.
  - gchamonlive 3y ago
    Let me have a copy locally, then you don't have to stream it to me every time. This is basically a scaling issue streaming platforms and publishers created themselves because of copyright. It makes their product expensive, bloated, clunky and make pirated content much more convenient. There are no excuses. Games are exactly like that. They just have to do better.
    - alt227 3y ago
      Doesnt change the required infrasctructure. On Stranger Things premiere day you still have to have the download infrastructure to handle hundreds of millions of downloads simultanesouly.
pas 3y ago
> so we can maintain our rapid pace of innovation so it will make things better, pinky-promise! I'm happy to pay them for the occasional good content, that I'll then torrent (because fuck smart TVs), but ... their app/client/website and their system seems to just work. I'm sure there are many things to optimize, etc, etc.. but probably they could reduce their development (and ops) budget by 70-80% if they would stop fucking with the system. though, of course, that'd require a drastically different mindset, different people, etc.
phailhaus 3y ago
Yes. > While it is still early days, we have already seen the benefits of the new platform, specifically the ease of feature delivery.
- barbazoo 3y ago
  What features though? Oh maybe a sleep timer for the kids section so it turns off after 1 or 2 episodes? No, that would be actually useful but wouldn’t warrant a blog post.
  - phailhaus 3y ago
    They have it in the article itself: it's why they were able to roll out a totally new plan tier quickly.
  - vundercind 3y ago
    Ways to make it better: 1) Implement Apple TV menu integration, like several other services do. 2) Bring back manual rating. My suggestions were way better then. 3) Like literally every other service that has parental controls: I wish you’d just give me a goddamn allow-list. That would be more useful than almost all other effort that goes into this stuff, and relatively easy. But almost nobody does it. It’s very frustrating. Ways to save a lot of bandwidth: 1) Stop being the only major service that auto-plays video with audio behind the menu when folks are just trying to browse, or are just idling on the menu and talking, and in either case actively do not want that (I know there’s a setting now, finally, that sometimes kinda works for a while—how about flipping that default around?)
kredd 3y ago
I mean, it depends? Obviously Netflix has extremely different priorities than 99.99% of the software in the world. Scale of operations is much different as well. It’s available in most of the countries in the world, in a lot of varying devices, requiring a ton of different video processing pipelines, content delivery networks, infrastructure and etc. Even very “straightforward things” like downloading for offline viewing can be a significant effort to implement. Now think of audio sync, post processing, sub delivery, localization, partnerships and etc., you can see how you would need a ton of engineering effort to achieve it. Just the scale makes it much nuanced perspective during implementation. You and me can dislike whatever content they’re delivering, but it’s very obvious how there are millions and millions of people who still enjoy it.
- zer00eyz 3y ago
  >>> It’s available in most of the countries in the world, in a... You get that your post right here is a better pitch for Netflix engineering than their own engineering. Blog about some top those problems, the things that your doing that make your domain hard and interesting...
  - trunnell 3y ago
    That's exactly what this post is about. It requires some background info to see the scale of their achievement, sure, but their choice is to put some of that burden on you, the reader.
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  [dead]
trunnell 3y ago
Don't be underwhelmed. It definitely makes your Netflix better: whatever you watch can be encoded better, which enhances quality and lowers the chance of a rebuffer interrupting your experience. And the improved encoding efficiency frees up money that can be spent on content production. But you can also just enjoy the story of developer achievement!
geodel 3y ago
The way I see is Netflix is mostly sprawling implementation of mediocre Java stack which is typical of large IT department in F500 companies. But their relentless tech marketing and extremely high pay for work which is a wrapper around enterprise IT has created an aura of sophistication and cutting edge in many people's mind.
matthewmacleod 3y ago
Yes probably all of those things. I’m not being wide.
smegger001 3y ago
I doubt the backed engineers have any say over the content side of the company so blaming them for that isn't really reasonable. And while it may not make it cheaper for you or improve the user facing interface again another team, it probably made it easier for them to maintain and debug and administrate, which is something all sysadmins and engineers should respect.
Tainnor 3y ago
If you hate Netflix, why don't you cancel your subscription?

throwaway894345 3y ago

I don’t like Netflix’s content either but I’m pretty sure that’s not up to the engineering department.

matt_heimer 3y ago

This is a bit like complaining about AWS because you don't like the product selection on Amazon.

barbazoo 3y ago
Is Netflix offering their services as a platform now?
- matt_heimer 3y ago
  Not sure why that would matter, complaining about content in response to an article about infrastructure doesn't make any more or less sense if the infrastructure is available as a service. But I do consider some of what Netflix does to be a platform. Most of it is platform in the sense that some of their open source offerings are commonly adopted such as Spinnaker. But if you look at the adoption of microservices at Netflix a part of that includes Conductor, an open-source microservice orchestration engine. The Netflix developers that created Conductor left Netflix and formed a new company named Orkes to offer Conductor as a platform. So while its not operated by Netflix, the microservice efforts they've made have been turned into a service offering.
ActionHank 3y ago
Except for any aspect of the post to actually justify the engineering effort it would either have to improve efficiency or save money. All while Netflix has increased cost, stopped account sharing, and introduced ads. Net negative improvement for users whilst there was presumably some net savings or gains for Netflix. They've from offering a competitive offering to offering a compelling investment, shedding any guise of caring about their users along the way.
- benced 3y ago
  Yes, the job of Netflix engineers is to help Netflix gain money.

munro 3y ago

And then I always think, Netflix only has ~3,600 movies... My friend's Plex server has 4x that (in just movies). I'm also often underwhelmed by Netflix's engineering posts

zer00eyz 3y ago
He should write a mastrubatory blog post about how effective his set up is... Hell he could do a cost comparison for running his service vs Netflix per month. I think this is the year where I go back to stealing content, none of these services are worth it.
- ddalex 3y ago
  If paying for content is not owning it, then copying it is not stealing.
alt227 3y ago
But your mate doesnt have to stream them on demand to millions of people round the world. They not only have to store the movies, but access and simultaneously stream them thousands of times from anywhere on the globe. Imagine how many people are watching things like Stranger things series premiere at the same time.
- gchamonlive 3y ago
  Let me have a copy locally, then you don't have to stream it to me every time. This is basically a scaling issue streaming platforms and publishers created themselves because of copyright. It makes their product expensive, bloated, clunky and make pirated content much more convenient. There are no excuses. Games are exactly like that. They just have to do better.
  - alt227 3y ago
    Doesnt change the required infrasctructure. On Stranger Things premiere day you still have to have the download infrastructure to handle hundreds of millions of downloads simultanesouly.

pas 3y ago

> so we can maintain our rapid pace of innovation so it will make things better, pinky-promise! I'm happy to pay them for the occasional good content, that I'll then torrent (because fuck smart TVs), but ... their app/client/website and their system seems to just work. I'm sure there are many things to optimize, etc, etc.. but probably they could reduce their development (and ops) budget by 70-80% if they would stop fucking with the system. though, of course, that'd require a drastically different mindset, different people, etc.

phailhaus 3y ago

Yes. > While it is still early days, we have already seen the benefits of the new platform, specifically the ease of feature delivery.

barbazoo 3y ago
What features though? Oh maybe a sleep timer for the kids section so it turns off after 1 or 2 episodes? No, that would be actually useful but wouldn’t warrant a blog post.
- phailhaus 3y ago
  They have it in the article itself: it's why they were able to roll out a totally new plan tier quickly.
- vundercind 3y ago
  Ways to make it better: 1) Implement Apple TV menu integration, like several other services do. 2) Bring back manual rating. My suggestions were way better then. 3) Like literally every other service that has parental controls: I wish you’d just give me a goddamn allow-list. That would be more useful than almost all other effort that goes into this stuff, and relatively easy. But almost nobody does it. It’s very frustrating. Ways to save a lot of bandwidth: 1) Stop being the only major service that auto-plays video with audio behind the menu when folks are just trying to browse, or are just idling on the menu and talking, and in either case actively do not want that (I know there’s a setting now, finally, that sometimes kinda works for a while—how about flipping that default around?)

kredd 3y ago

I mean, it depends? Obviously Netflix has extremely different priorities than 99.99% of the software in the world. Scale of operations is much different as well. It’s available in most of the countries in the world, in a lot of varying devices, requiring a ton of different video processing pipelines, content delivery networks, infrastructure and etc. Even very “straightforward things” like downloading for offline viewing can be a significant effort to implement. Now think of audio sync, post processing, sub delivery, localization, partnerships and etc., you can see how you would need a ton of engineering effort to achieve it. Just the scale makes it much nuanced perspective during implementation. You and me can dislike whatever content they’re delivering, but it’s very obvious how there are millions and millions of people who still enjoy it.

zer00eyz 3y ago
>>> It’s available in most of the countries in the world, in a... You get that your post right here is a better pitch for Netflix engineering than their own engineering. Blog about some top those problems, the things that your doing that make your domain hard and interesting...
- trunnell 3y ago
  That's exactly what this post is about. It requires some background info to see the scale of their achievement, sure, but their choice is to put some of that burden on you, the reader.
jiggawatts 3y ago
[dead]

trunnell 3y ago

Don't be underwhelmed. It definitely makes your Netflix better: whatever you watch can be encoded better, which enhances quality and lowers the chance of a rebuffer interrupting your experience. And the improved encoding efficiency frees up money that can be spent on content production. But you can also just enjoy the story of developer achievement!

geodel 3y ago

The way I see is Netflix is mostly sprawling implementation of mediocre Java stack which is typical of large IT department in F500 companies. But their relentless tech marketing and extremely high pay for work which is a wrapper around enterprise IT has created an aura of sophistication and cutting edge in many people's mind.

matthewmacleod 3y ago

Yes probably all of those things. I’m not being wide.

smegger001 3y ago

I doubt the backed engineers have any say over the content side of the company so blaming them for that isn't really reasonable. And while it may not make it cheaper for you or improve the user facing interface again another team, it probably made it easier for them to maintain and debug and administrate, which is something all sysadmins and engineers should respect.

Tainnor 3y ago

If you hate Netflix, why don't you cancel your subscription?