
Working at Netflix 2017 - dmit
http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-05-16/working-at-netflix-2017.html
======
mimsee
> We don't do anything shady, and we're proud of that. We're an honest
> company.

Maybe not shady, but surely controversial.

[0]: [https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-media/](https://www.w3.org/TR/encrypted-
media/)

[1]: [https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-
bad...](https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/18/drm-for-the-web-is-a-bad-idea/)

[2]: [https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-
standards](https://www.defectivebydesign.org/drm-in-web-standards)

~~~
Freak_NL
Yeah, being limited to 720p because you run a free software operating system
is not my idea of 'not shady' (Netflix is keeping their streams on Firefox and
Chrome on 720p as a matter of policy, 1080p requires IE11, Edge, or Safari on
a non-free operating system, or their proprietary app on an approved operating
system).

The only way this makes sense is if the purpose of this blockade is to push
people towards devices and operating systems that are completely locked down
with DRM, from the software to the hardware. I can't think of any other reason
— if Netflix does serve me 1080p and 4K streams, would that cause a sudden
increase in the amount of pirated releases available?

I can _already_ get everything on Netflix, in 1080p, if I really want just by
visiting the usual pirate haunts! So what exactly is gained by degrading my
viewing experience by only allowing me 720p as long as I choose to run a free
operating system instead of a fully locked down platform?

I wish Netflix would give an honest answer on their DRM strategy, because it
is driving me away.

I could understand if this was done because of licensing issues, but Netflix
has decided on a blanket ban of 1080p and higher for their customers on free
operating systems and anyone else who wants to use Chrome or Firefox.

~~~
snuxoll
If it was licensing issues, it'd at least be nice if Netflix only lowered
quality where required instead of across the board. For crying out loud, why
can't I get 1080p streams of Netflix originals on Linux - I've got the stupid
Widevine CDM installed, what's the problem?

~~~
abritinthebay
Would be nice, but at the same time it's a lot simpler to just do it once.

------
foepys
This might be a bit off-topic but I heard that Netflix pays pretty well, even
compared to other SV tech firms.

Why does the author only have a pretty small desk directly at a (what I
assume) small recreational area? Is this considered a normal desk at a top SV
tech firm? I'd probably go nuts after a few days because people are constantly
passing by and are talking while I want to concentrate on work.

I'm from Germany where more and more companies try to implement the same open-
office plans. Everybody I know that works in such an environment considers
them as hostile to productivity. Somebody is constantly talking about useless
stuff and disturbs others by that and using headphones is deemed as rude and
anti-social.

~~~
brendangregg
The norm in SV (from visits to other companies) seems to be open office layout
-- desks everywhere without walls or dividers. Ours is more private, I think
it's called "semi-open", and out of shot behind me is a carpet-wall-thing
that's about 5.5 feet high. So I'd say Netflix is a bit more private than the
norm.

I don't know what happened to private offices in SV. Sun Microsystems had a
private office for every engineer, but Facebook tore them down when they took
over. (I gave a talk at Facebook and included a floor plan from the Sun days:
[https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/linux-bpf-
superpower...](https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/linux-bpf-
superpowers/2) )

------
faizshah
Cached:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srnZUa...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:srnZUaFAExwJ:www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-05-16/working-
at-netflix-2017.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
zerr
Are they still proud of high turn-over rate and the "culture of fear"?

~~~
drewg123
What makes you think the Netflix turnover rate is high?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying that I have not personally
experienced it. I've been at Netflix for a little less than 2 years. We've had
zero turnover in my immediate group (the team that runs the OS used on the
OpenConnect Appliance), and very little turnover in adjacent teams. I
experienced far more turnover at Google.

~~~
pfarnsworth
Our TPM worked at Netflix for 2 years and she said that she personally saw
about 20 people let go during her time.

~~~
zerr
I could understand this if interviews were broken (in a different way) at
Netflix - is this the case? i.e. is it ridiculously easy to get a job there?

~~~
bmwe30is
I wouldn't say it's easy to get a job here. I've been working here for nearly
2 years now.

The interview process is as challenging as it needs to be to find the right
people for the job. This varies from team to team. We don't follow a corporate
set of rules to hire engineers.

This company is more adamant about letting folks go whom don't get the work
done or aren't able to perform.

They want good engineers to solve challenging problems. The teams are fairly
lean so you can't really float by doing the bare minimum.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> They want good engineers to solve challenging problems.

Serve bits. Suggest movies based on coarse signals. Is there much left?

Netflix is not SpaceX nor Tesla; its an online Blockbuster Video. Serving
video in 2017 is not complicated.

~~~
phamilton
Supplying sufficient video to be responsible for 25% of consumer internet
bandwidth is a different story.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Can you be more specific? Do you mean producing their original content? Or
rendering renditions for each bitrate, and then pushing those renditions out
to their custom CDN appliances? (OpenConnect)

I can most definitely get behind original content production being hard. But
pushing a couple hundred TB (or even low double digit PB) of data out to CDNs
doesn't require a fleet of devs.

~~~
phamilton
Total content is likely closer to 100 PB. The "25% of consumer bandwidth" is a
proxy for how heavily Netflix is used.

Take a look at some of their open source projects and their tech blog to get a
feel for the problems they solve at their scale.

[https://netflix.github.io/](https://netflix.github.io/)
[https://medium.com/netflix-techblog](https://medium.com/netflix-techblog)

Some things I find personally interesting:

They run a 5000 node Cassandra cluster.

They can failover an entire datacenter in 27 minutes.

------
tpae
I'm pretty sure I've had few recruiters tell me, poaching from Netflix is
almost impossible because of their ridiculously high salaries.

~~~
zerr
When you factor in stocks, bonuses, healthcare and benefits the pay is same as
in any other big N companies. Add family-friendliness, job stability to the
list and you have much more than Netflix offers.

~~~
bmwe30is
I would venture to say that our family-friendliness, stability, and benefits
are on par (if not better) than other large companies.

Everyone takes whatever time off they need. There's no guilt associated - we
always shun folks that check email and chat channels when they take vacation.

I personally appreciate cash directly in my pocket versus a gym, yoga rooms,
and toys scattered about in the office.

I come to the office to work, not play. I don't need nor want the company
buying things that don't help me get my work done effectively.

I also appreciate the sense of mobility in my career. I don't have to wait
four+ years for stock options to vest. Four years is a very long time in any
tech company. I also don't want my compensation tied to stock performance.

~~~
ryandrake
> I also appreciate the sense of mobility in my career. I don't have to wait
> four+ years for stock options to vest. Four years is a very long time in any
> tech company.

On the flip side, you also don't want to be faced with a massive drop in your
take-home pay after the 4th year (once salary+RSU becomes just salary),
forcing you to jump ship. I've been to a few "vesting parties" for co-workers
where they quit after exactly 4 years to the day. I'm told some companies are
known to do "evergreen grants" to help mitigate this effect.

~~~
arielweisberg
I am surprised to hear there is any company that just quits you on stock cold
turkey.

The expectation everywhere I have been is that you will get refresher grants
not just at the end of year four but earlier than that. Anywhere from 6 months
to 2 years.

Either way I don't care what they do. If my compensation changes for the worse
for the worse (knock on wood has never happened) or my stock isn't performing
then I deal with it then.

I value options from every company that gave me them at zero and 2/2 I was
right. Hell they had negative value at one since I exercised and I really
think I will be lucky if I even get that money back. Getting crammed at every
financing event sucks. Live and learn I guess.

------
xster
Am I crazy or does it look like you're not sitting in a open-plan office/farm?
And you have your own lounge chair by the window?

~~~
ralmeida
That called my attention as well, but I figured they would be in semi-open-
space: some privacy provided by the shell to the left of the chair and maybe
one behind the chair, but open to the front and to the right of the chair.

As in, maybe there's another workstation to the right of the chair positioned
in symmetry (open to the left and shelf to the right).

The chair by the window looks like belonging to the hallway in front of the
pictured workstation.

Just speculating though.

------
fancy_pantser
I've always wondered why they don't hire remote.

------
Cieplak
@brendangregg

You mentioned FreeBSD; what are your thoughts on the state of DTrace on Linux
vs FreeBSD?

ps: I love your DTrace book! It's sitting on my desk now.

~~~
brendangregg
Linux caught up last year:
[http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-
linux...](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-
linux-2016.html)

Thanks for getting the book! DTrace is invaluable for solving a set of needs,
and we're using it on our FreeBSD CDN. Over time, Linux has been adding
capabilities that can solve the same set of needs, although using different
technologies.

Right now, the Linux kernel (4.9+) can do the same things as DTrace, but the
interface we're using (bcc/BPF) is currently 10+ times more verbose and much
more difficult to use. Who does that hurt the most? At Netflix, me, as it's my
job to add advanced observability to our analysis GUIs, and actually write the
bcc/BPF.

So far I've given conference talks on bcc/BPF at Performance@Scale, USENIX
LISA, linux.conf.au, BSidesSF, and SCALE. Next is Velocity Conf.

~~~
srcmap
Brendan

Love your work on DTrace.

Have you seen / configured a system that keep the FTRACE/DTRACE log data in
memory during a crash/ reboot cycle for postmortem kernel crash type analysis?

If so, love the see any reference to how to setup something like that for
typical x86 Linux.

Did that long time (10+years) ago on MIPS+vxwork/Linux with someother trace
log type system. Miss that capability.....

Thanks

------
pfarnsworth
Question to OP: How many people were fired or let go during your 3 years? And
did they let go of people that you felt was a mistake?

------
nrki
I somehow picked up "Australian vibes" from this article, without any proof in
the article that Brendan is Aussie.

The cricket ball on the desk then helped, with the "G'day" on the front page
of his site proving it. :)

------
dirtylowprofile
The Netflix iOS app is terrible though. Multiple crashes a day. What's up with
that?

------
Erwin
Is that a C64 boot screen mousemat? Cool.

------
En_gr_Student
link isn't working..

~~~
H1Supreme
Still down. Probably zapped his monthly bandwidth in an hour.

------
fooey
Netflix's culture deck is one of the most horrific things in the tech industry
I've ever seen. It's so ruthlessly mercenary, I have a hard time understanding
how why people put up with them.

~~~
dominotw
Netflix recruiter forced me to read all 200 pages of it and asked me pop quiz
on it during the subsequent call. No Joke. During the interview interviewer
constantly referred to "Netflix culture" as if they were in some sort of cult.

Why does a corporate company need to invent some ridiculous "culture" is
beyond me. You pay me I do work, thats all the culture I need.

>>Then while working here, staff cite the culture deck in meetings for
decision making advice.

These meetings sound like fun.

~~~
dasmoth
I don't know how close the thing you read is to what's on slideshare, but the
public version has a slide which explicitly addresses the "this is not for
everyone" issue, and says they're trying to filter out the people who won't
like it. I suspect questions about the culture deck are more about making sure
you're coming in with open eyes than about ensuring you've memorised every
last phrase.

~~~
dominotw
Thats nice. Play nasty games with people trying to find a job and put food on
the table.

What is wrong with these people.

~~~
dasmoth
I don't get this at all.

Wouldn't the "nasty game" be to hire them then fire them after a few weeks
because they don't bring the level of intrinsic motivation that the
environment requires?

Or are you saying that no employer should be able to demand this level of
motivation, even if they're totally up-front about it?

------
blazespin
Netflix has a 3.4 rating on Glassdoor. Yikes. I wouldn't consider working at a
company unless it had 4 or more.

~~~
jedberg
I would never use Glassdoor for evaluating a company. It skews towards people
who are upset, they don't verify that you actually worked there, and they
combine hourly workers with salary workers, which could be two _very_
different experiences.

~~~
openmosix
Not to mention that most of the experiences are team-based. In any
medium/large size company, you can end up in a terrible team and your view of
the company is very negative. You can end up with a brilliant manager and
great team, and you love the company.

------
bronlund
Answer me this: Why does the interface suck so bad? How are pissing off 100
million subscribers good business?

I apologize for not expanding my view with a detailed analysis, but damn.

The update you guys promoted like half a year in advance made it even worse.

~~~
jedberg
The interface is the result of tens of thousands of A/B tests. Every change is
tested and produces greater general happiness.

There is a probably a bimodal distribution on happiness, but they only
optimize for the bigger curve instead of both, to reduce complexity. So while
you, and an advanced user, might want a lot of advanced features, those same
features scare away the majority of casual users. So it's a business decision
to cater to the majority at the expense of the minority to reduce overall
development cost.

~~~
bronlund
I'm not talking about advanced features here, but stuff like that annoying
zoom on hover and not remembering my sort preference and such. Just bad
design!

The most annoying thing maybe is that I can't hide stuff from the lists. Like
when I watch 2 minutes of something and decides that I will never ever watch
that crap again - that piece of crap will forever haunt my interface.

