
Netflix: Culture of Fear - ardit33
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Netflix-RVW484559.htm
======
elq
I've worked at netflix for about three years. I'm a software engineer and work
on personalization. In the time I've been there, not one of the 40 or so
people that I know well or work with have been fired. One person I was
acquainted with was fired - no one found it surprising. Note that IT was a
hellhole with firing about a year ago. Two really good people got dropped. I
know more people that have quit - 3, but 1 has come back.

re: pay I make far more than I've made at any of the 4 FT jobs I've had in 15
years. I'm paid a bit less on an hourly basis than my highest rate charged
when I did consulting. I'm good. I was expensive.

re: benefits. Netflix matches 401k, they have an ESOP, they have a unique
option plan, free (decent) lunches, snacks & drinks, etc.

re: health care. I'm single, my very good insurance program came out to less
than $30 per paycheck since I've worked there. Next year they're changing the
way insurance is done - every employee got $10k extra pay. This is intended to
be used to cover the full cost of insurance, using my current benefits as a
baseline it's a bit less that $8000 per year. People with dependents will
almost certainly pay more. Many might be unhappy, I personally think it's
fair.

re: fear. I have failed many times. I have succeeded more. Perhaps I'm just an
smug asshole, but I've never once felt fear for my job.

re: innovation. I've personally spent more time innovating than at any other
job I've had, including my last in a corporate research "lab".

The glassdoor review that I wrote after 6 months -
[http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Netflix-
RVW...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Netflix-RVW42606.htm)

~~~
cookiecaper
Thanks for this perspective, I appreciate it.

However, you noted that the IT department (assuming IT and engineering are
separate at Netflix) was overboard with firing. If the manager on Glassdoor
worked there, do you think his review is more justified?

Netflix's pronounced strategy is great if you have judicious and fair managers
all the way up the ranks in your department, but it seems that it only takes
one bad manager to spoil a large bunch of good apples; overall performance is
a pretty subjective metric after all, and if you get a particularly closed-
minded or prejudiced manager (and such people are plentiful in the IT and
engineering sectors; those of us who work with absolutist machines all the
time seem to inherit a bit more of their habits than might be desirable) and
he gets annoyed at something about you or your work, I doubt it's a very long
walk from "awesome excellent performer" to "adequate performer" and a
severance package for your average employee.

Does Netflix have guards in place to protect against that? Do you think that
the situation the reviewer described could have occurred in the same company
because his department had a more difficult manager on the loop? Do you think
that you've stuck around because you share the views or preferred styles of
the other managers, which thereby makes you "super great performer"? Do you
think that the Netflix policies have a tendency to create a useless feedback
loop of yes-men and groupthink?

The problem with running a programming team like a sports team is the
difference in transparent metrics. There's a few simple measurements for the
value of an athlete, depending on perspective: if he has good name
recognition, he is a valuable business asset, even if he's not really a high-
scorer; if he scores a lot of points and puts your team over the top often,
he's a good asset because he increases the value of your franchise by making
it win more often, and so on.

The metrics in engineering, especially the day-to-day engineering of going
into work, working on programs, and then coming home, are much less clear.

~~~
elq
IT fits under the operations umbrella. Engineering fits under the product
development umbrella. We're very separate - cost center vs. profit center.

Assuming the reviewer came from IT or another operations group, some of what
was written is more understandable, but much of it is not.

Our number one guard against a capricious manager causing trouble is the
culture of openness - we're encouraged/expected to say what we think (even if
it's controversial). We also have a 360 review process that is unique in that
anyone can review anyone else. I could write a review for Reed if I so chose.

I've stuck around because:

\- I love working with the people I work with - they're smart, call out
bullshit, write good code, value quality, and share knowledge freely.

\- I think the management is very competent - as a whole (from exec's down to
engineering managers) are at least as smart as any I've interacted with, but
they are they are more ethical than any. Every last manager I've interacted
with has earned my respect, I don't give it easily.

\- The environment is as a-political as I've seen. The meritocracy I expected
to find in academia.

I absolutely love working at netflix, they've spoiled me for any other job.

~~~
cookiecaper
So how does the 360° review process help people who are on the chopping block?
Can they request an appeal or re-evaluation? What if someone at an obstructed
angle files a review? Just what happened in IT that caused those "two really
good people" to be fired? Good sports teams don't let their really good people
go. Why didn't you file a review for the two really good people in IT?

Who has final authority to determine that someone is adequate or
extraordinary? Again, the idea is subjective, and can be biased toward not
performance but individual compatibility, socially or professionally.

------
AndrewWarner
If anyone at Netflix wants to do a Mixergy interview about how this works,
even anonymously, contact me.

If this is really how things are there, I want to understand why it works.

------
ghshephard
Not willing to take risks? Find me another major company making (and
apparently succeeding) these types of moves into the Cloud.

See: <http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco>

I challenge anyone to walk through Adrian's DevOps slides of what they are up
to at Netflix and suggest that they aren't getting shit done this year:
[http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco/netflix-on-cloud-
combined...](http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco/netflix-on-cloud-combined-
slides-for-dev-and-ops)

With that said - yes, Netflix does chew up people and spit them out pretty
quickly. I know a number of people who are moderately successful other places
that didn't do so well in Netflix's rather meritocratic environment.

It's almost cliche now, but it bears repeating, at "Netflix they reward
adequate performance with a generous severance."

The pay is actually pretty good over there. Network Engineers (the ones that
can manage to hang onto their jobs) make about $30K more than Radford 50th
percentile for the Bay Area.

~~~
jamesaguilar
> than Radford 50th percentile for the Bay Area

Can you give us the value rather than the symbol name, please?

~~~
ghshephard
Well - I'm not sure if it means anything to say that I've spoken with network
engineers from Netflix who make from $130K - $185K, but there you go. Those
numbers, by themselves, don't actually mean anything. $185K is undervalued for
a Sr. Network Architect. $130K might be good, bad, great, or average -
depending on what your responsibilities are.

A better way of looking at it, is if you have two job opportunities, one at
Netflix, and one at a bog-standard Radord 50th percentile silicon valley
company, my anecdotes (four) indicate that that you would be looking at about
$30K/year more at Netflix.

With that said - Netflix isn't so much interested in 9-5 employees, as it is
in entrepreneurs who can navigate the company, show leadership, and get
results. It's a challenging environment for an employee that looks for hands-
on management.

~~~
artsrc
Are you comparing to full time or contractor roles? Contractor roles
frequently pay more, but have less job security.

NetFlix should be compared to the contractor scale if they offer low job
security.

~~~
ghshephard
These are all full time roles. If we wanted to compare with a contractor, we'd
have to fold in Netflix Actuals for Bonuses + Equity + PTO and Benefits. But,
you make a good point - the less and less security you have as an employee,
the more closely that position resembles that of a contractor in which case
you should be targeting about a 30-50% hourly increase (Taking into account
the Benefits package). Hint: To get the 50% increase, remit your hours through
friendly "Contracting Agency" instead of doing so personally - for numerous
reasons, a contractor who would make $100/hour contracting individually, can
somehow be charged out at $120/hour by their contracting firm.

~~~
salemh
How about a Sr Developer "informal" team lead ~$160,000?

As a Tech recruiter, I gained him a new job (at lower pay), and his complaint
with Netflix were two fold.

Work-balance (family) and, he couldn't move up into a formal Lead role (though
was acting as such, this could be a variable of the candidate itself). The new
job handled both of these concerns. Otherwise, as a Tech recruiter, it was
very hard to "head hunt" Sr/ Mgr / VP anything at Netflix...interesting
article and discussion.

------
brown9-2
The part about "fear", or the high pay and low benefits, shouldn't be
surprising if you are familiar with Netflix's values. They place employee
performance above all else and strive to create a place where high performers
want to work - which means getting rid of anyone who isn't one. Their values
are to give employees huge amounts of freedom and responsibility and to let
the individual's decide what to do with that, for the good of the company.

See the slideshows at <http://www.netflix.com/Jobs>.

As for the validity of this review, I find it hard to believe that even all
the way back in May 2010 someone could think that Netflix's streaming business
wasn't already a success:

 _So you guys did one thing well, a long time ago, and you've been marginally
improving that business (DVD rental) ever since. Your astoundingly high
turnover rate worked in that world, because all the processes were in place.
But now you are trying to get into the streaming business, and that business
only runs with knowledge workers at the helm._

edit: I think it's certainly possible to mistake "a culture of high demand for
high performance" for "a culture of fear" if your only experience at the
company is one in which you were deemed to not be a performer. But as an
outsider, I can see why Netflix values and wants to create this culture and I
admire them for striving and sticking to it.

I'd also like to point out that of the majority of reviews posted with the
word "software" in the title, the majority seem to rate working at Netflix a 4
or a 5, although with a few 1's and 2's in there.

~~~
zaphar
Agreed. Purely from my experience as a heavy user of their streaming product I
would not have guessed that the programmers are afraid to innovate or spend
all their time watching their rear. They have in my opinion one of the best if
not the best streaming product on the market. They must be doing something
right.

~~~
vital_sol
I've been a Netflix customer since 2005. Last time I tried to use their
"streaming service," it demanded that I use IE instead of Firefox to watch a
movie. I never tried it ever since. Yet I'm still renting DVDs from them.

~~~
male_salmon
You can watch instantly using a variety of browsers including Firefox and
Chrome on Windows and OS X.

~~~
krakensden
And even in Linux, so long as you're on an embedded device like a television
or set top box. It's impressively ubiquitous.

------
male_salmon
I work at Netflix and I cannot say that my experience reflects this particular
review. I like working here because my coworkers are intelligent and I get to
work on exciting projects. The slides we have on the jobs page are fairly
accurate.

That said, I can't completely discount other people's experience since I only
have my own experience to go on. It would seem that folks are let go because
their skills are no longer relevant or they don't perform to par. This does
not necessarily indicate that the person is a poor employee, but that he/she
was not able to deliver given a particular context.

------
aresant
Cynic in me wonders if this post is tied to the recent frenzy around traders
shorting Netflix? Even a few of the supporting comments feel scripted.

Say this because Netflix seems to have great luck attracting people that I
respect personally and their culture building and HR practices are fairly
lauded elsewhere . . .

~~~
ardit33
I did post this (the link of the review) because I have heard from multiple
people (in person) about their culture. Netflix seems to have the sports team
philosophy "Put the best guy in place for the job", and if that job changes
and that person is not the best fit they will fire that person and find
somebody else instead of some retraining.

The original "Netflix culture slide" were just an attempt to rationalize (and
romanticize) their behavior, instead of "we will use you and throw you out if
you are not to the exact fit", to "we want only the best people to work with
us".

A lot of people in the start up community thought that those slides (and
Netflix's culture) was really cool, but the reality seems very un-rosy. I
think it is good too look beyond the PR.

As somebody mentioned on one of the comments, looks like their culture came
from "Logan's Run".

As an engineer I have been contacted many times by Netflix recruiters, and
that's why I started digging down a bit more into it. If you are an employer
of Netflix, just consider yourself as a glorified contractor.

I found this link from this question on Quora: [http://www.quora.com/Does-the-
Netflix-work-culture-create-a-...](http://www.quora.com/Does-the-Netflix-work-
culture-create-a-culture-of-fear-amongst-its-employees)

~~~
brown9-2
The Quora question, the linked-to blog post, etc, are all based around the
same two glassdoor articles.

Are you sure you aren't basing your judgment on just a small handful of
opinions?

------
stoney
> Sure, if I fired all the employees every few years I'd stay away from
> process too.

I think I'd do the opposite - if employee churn was high I'd want to be damn
sure that well documented processes were in place so replacements could get up
to speed quickly.

------
lukev
It feels like the author of this is an corporate lifer who isn't comfortable
with being actually responsible for product performance, or without being able
to shelter behind hide-bound processes.

Some process is needed, sure, but large companies are far more likely to be
held back by overly rigid processes and lack of agility than lack of process.
If anything, this makes me more impressed with Netflix, that they've managed
to maintain a more startup-like culture despite being a huge company.

It's not for all employees, sure, and it's absolutely within this guy's rights
to find a position more comfortable for him. But after reading this I'm even
more inclined to invest in Netflix. Once a company solidifies its processes
and acquires parasitic employees, it's well past middle age and is unlikely to
do anything remarkable.

~~~
philwelch
It feels like you didn't critically read the review, and are just trying to
impose your own interpretation on top of it.

Processes and lack of agility come into place in a mature company as risk-
aversion. If the company is scared to fuck up, they introduce processes to
prevent fuckups, even though those processes also dampen remarkable
innovations.

Judging from the Glassdoor review, Netflix's firing strategy has the same
effect--individual employees don't want to fuck up, so individual employees
adopt a risk-averse cover-your-ass strategy, which also happens to dampen
remarkable innovations. A culture like that has the same lack of agility and
infestation from parasitic lifers, they just happen to add heaps of politics,
stress, and unhappiness on top of it.

~~~
lukev
Except that everything I've read about Netflix indicates that they're not
risk-averse. They seem to be innovating in just the right areas.

And yeah, I may be reading into it, since I have some frustration with large,
process ridden organizations right now. I'm just saying, this is only one
guy's take.

~~~
yannickt
"I'm just saying, this is only one guy's take."

There are many other negative reviews of Netflix on Glassdoor. I am sure that
some people are happy to work there, but I don't think someone would take the
time to write such a lengthy and well-worded review if there was no truth to
it.

~~~
treeface
>I don't think someone would take the time..

Of course they would. There are an infinite number of scenarios that could
lead to somebody posting an entirely fabricated review, regardless of its
length or well-wordedness.

However, I agree that there is probably at least some truth to this.

------
ericd
This review doesn't jive with the apparent performance of the company in the
market. They're the front-runner in an extremely tough space with hostile
partners, and even more amazingly, they did this while starting as a company
that ships physical goods around the country. There aren't too many things
that are harder than moving away from a successful business model, but they've
done it really well.

They don't appear to be afraid to innovate at all. Hell, they even started
making their own hardware (Roku).

~~~
yannickt
Many tech companies perform well despite the (poor) treatment they give their
employees. Amazon is not particularly well rated on Glassdoor, and I've heard
plenty of horror stories about EA (and other game companies) from people I
trust.

~~~
wyclif
Good observation, particularly using Amazon as an example. As a former
employee, I just nodded my head.

------
Umalu
It is rare to see a truly performance-based employment system at a company
because, as this post (and the comments) show, in order to execute well you
have to continuously cull the low performers from the herd. This creates a
culture of fear, especially in those likeliest to be culled. This is not
unique to Netflix -- each year General Electric culls the bottom percentile of
its management. The trick is to have performance criteria that are clearly
understood so that the process is not arbitrary and capricious. Companies that
do not cull low performers tend to attract low-performers who ultimately
ensure that the company itself gets culled. It's a tough world out there.

~~~
conover
Unless you work in government, then your company can't be culled.

------
mithaler
Sounds awful until you click on the Reviews link at the top and find many
mixed opinions on the same subject. (I stopped clicking through the reviews
when it made me log in to keep looking at them though.)

A bunch seem to agree on the high turnover thing, but some don't seem terribly
bothered by that, citing it as a great experience nonetheless (and I haven't
seen any others claiming the same stressful don't-screw-up-a-single-time-or-
you're-fired attitude).

Interestingly, the main thing I'd known before about Netflix's employees was
their famous vacation policy, and I haven't seen any reviews there mentioning
it:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/7945719/Netflix-
lets-its-staff-take-as-much-holiday-as-they-want-whenever-they-want-and-it-
works.html)

------
randall
Just in case you're living under a startup-free rock, here's Netflix's culture
deck from last year which could potentially jive with the Glassdoor-er's view.

<http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664>

------
c2
Any company culture is going to have it's controversies. Personally I think
too many companies hang on to ineffectual employees for too long.

I read the Netflix slide deck and didn't see anything I didn't immediately
agree with. I would not hold their culture against them when looking for a job
there.

The one thing I thought was a bit off was "you should ask your manager if they
would fight for you to stay". IMO - if the employee is having a performance
issue, the manager should bring it up not the employee.

~~~
c2
Unrelated, but it's also kind of frustrating to put time and thought into a
comment and then to be drive by down voted.

If you disagree with my comment (which in and of itself is not really a good
reason to down vote), then please reply with words. I am happy to have a
discussion and talk about it. We both might learn something.

------
jacobmg
Perhaps this explains one of the most ridiculous posts I've seen from a
corporate blog in a long time?

[http://blog.netflix.com/2009/06/closed-captions-and-
subtitle...](http://blog.netflix.com/2009/06/closed-captions-and-
subtitles.html)

Essentially them complaining it will take a _year_ to implement closed-
captioning because silverlight can't process SAMI files automatically
(basically glorified text bolding/syncing)

After I read that I guessed there was something wholly wrong with their
corporate culture and management.

~~~
haploid
I'm not sure what your point is regarding something being wrong with their
management.

Are you suggesting they should migrate away from Silverlight? That they should
choose a different data format? That they are probably lying about
implementation time, and just don't want to do it?

~~~
jacobmg
The latter or incompetence or they just don't care enough about it to really
investigate a viable solution (most probable.) Their technical reasons are
invalid after all, so something is wrong, how much is the question.

------
ben1040
From this post, it sounds like they only took the stick from the Jack Welch
approach (firing the bottom 10%) and not the carrot (rewarding the top 20% for
doing well and coaching the middle 70% to improve).

~~~
puredemo
In my experience, this strategy works remarkably well.

------
BlazingFrog
I don't know if the culture at Netflix is to blame but I've been noticing more
and more how poorly designed their consumer-facing interfaces were. The UI
"feel" on the web site strikes me as aged where there's so much that could be
done to make me want spend the extra $15/month to upgrade my membership. I
won't even mention the iPhone/iPad apps that are nothing more than a very weak
implementation of an HTML iFrame.

------
doorty
The fear prevents innovation? They just started a streaming only plan and have
clients on many mobile devices, dvd/blu-ray players, and gaming systems. They
went from owning the movie rental space to the movie streaming space. I think
they're doing alright.

------
noonespecial
If you go and read this slide deck about Netflix's coporate culture (starting
at about slide 23):

<http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664>

You might discover why there might be a "culture of fear" among the average
performing employees, and why they might throw off a good bit of negativity in
their hiring/firing cycle.

~~~
binaryfinery
Indeed. I thought those slides were awesome. Is this all some brilliant hiring
plan?

------
zhyder
No health benefits, really? That should be really easy to verify objectively.
Can someone here corroborate that?

~~~
male_salmon
Not true. I have health benefits from Netflix.

~~~
harryh
The post seemed to indicate "no health benefits for family members" which is a
benefit that many tech companies offer. Can you comment on that?

~~~
male_salmon
Not true. You can opt for family coverage but there are more out-of-pocket
costs for the employee. I don't know how this compares with other companies
though.

------
weaksauce
Is it really 20% turnover for knowledge workers or across the whole company? I
am sure that turnover rate for the envelope stuffing must be very high. Those
types of jobs always have high turnover.

------
j_baker
Every time I read about netflix's culture, I'm reminded of the old saying
about the Model T: "you can get it in any color you want as long as it's
black". The impression I get about Netflix seems to have an underlying theme
of: "we give you unlimited freedom as long as you're doing the things we want
you to do".

------
sankyo
It seemed to me that a lot of the reviews were from people who worked in the
call center, not developers, network engineers, etc. No doubt that it is quite
a different experience between the two groups.

------
pingswept
20% annual turnover rate seems pretty low to me for a company more than 10
years old. Anyone know of statistics for comparable companies?

------
Terretta
See Topgrading[1]: _"Simply put, topgrading is the practice of packing the
team with A players and clearing out the C players," Smart writes. "'A
players' is defined as the top 10 percent of talent available at all salary
levels--best of class. With this radical definition, you are not a topgrader
until your team consists of all A players. Period."_

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Topgrading-Leading-Companies-
Coaching-...](http://www.amazon.com/Topgrading-Leading-Companies-Coaching-
Keeping/dp/0735200491)

------
radioactive21
I've actually heard both good and bad about Netflix, but the the negative
experience told was not as bad as stated in this post.

Maybe it's more or less the unit that you're with at Netflix?

------
jey
Does this glassdoor post apply to engineering/creative roles too? I don't
think that destroying morale is productive, but I could at least understand
what they were trying to do if this only applies to their
warehouse/fulfillment/etc operations: if you don't stuff enough envelopes fast
enough, or encode and annotate movies fast enough, or deal with customer
service calls efficiently enough, it can make sense to replace you with
someone who does.

~~~
bloggergirl
Creative roles? Have you seen the Netflix creative? It was last updated in
2004. I don't think they have creative roles. ;)

------
jallmann
No benefits? Really? None at all?

~~~
male_salmon
Not true. I have health benefits (incl. dental and vision), FSA, free lunch,
coffee, snacks, soda, etc.

------
bloggergirl
I've read exactly the same thing about Netflix hundreds of times on Glassdoor
------ almost every review says the same thing: fear for your job. My partner
was offered a job there and decided against it after reading some of those
reviews.

Not cool for any company --- especially a supposedly cool tech co --- to fire
people as their employees say they do. When you read the details of these
Glassdoor posts, you'll see just how rough some Netflix employees have it.

