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Forgive my ignorance. Is `IT` the same as `engineering` at other companies, or is this something else?

• justizin 13y ago
  His actual title is "VP of IT Operations", which is usually part of an Engineering department, but very close to the executive team because of things like budget and business guarantees. Note the Unix / Networking background.
• bri3d 13y ago
  "IT" is too vaguely defined to mean much anymore, but based on this interview I suspect it's internal infrastructure at Netflix. Stuff like staff PCs, internal data warehouses, sales, finance, and marketing software support, WiFi APs, routers, keeping the backoffice servers and network up, ensuring reliable WAN and LAN connectivity so engineers can reach production securely, intrusion detection and analysis, and so on. Generally in smaller software companies I hear R+D and consumer-facing applications referred to as "engineering" with external-facing infrastructure (like the production datacenter) referred to as "operations," with "IT" being reserved for this internal backoffice kind of stuff. In other places, especially larger corporations, I've often heard everything having to do with a computer lumped in as "IT."
  • xivzgrev 13y ago
    Yea I was surprised. When I saw the title I thought infrastructure meant network infrastructure, which seems like a white-hot area of innovation given how much internet traffic they consume. But no, this interview was on internal IT.
• dpritchett 13y ago
  IT is usually the catchall infrastructure/support function. For some companies (like Netflix) you probably also have a product engineering group.
• puppetmaster3 13y ago
  It's office automation. As opposed to Netops, that operates their business such as video streaming.