

Announcing the Netflix Cloud Prize - jedberg
https://github.com/Netflix/Cloud-Prize/blob/master/README.rdoc

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hucker
Some of the evaluation criteria [1]:

* Submission provides evidence that code is in use by other projects, or is running in production at Netflix or elsewhere

* Submission has a large number of watchers, stars and forks on github.com

So the entrant has to prove that it is used in production at Netflix? And why
would they care about the number of watchers/stars/forks? If I made a great
contribution to something very specific (let's say aiming for the "Best
contribution to performance improvements" or "Best contribution to code
quality" awards), why would anyone watch/star/fork my repo? This seems more
like a popularity contest to be honest...

[1] <https://github.com/Netflix/Cloud-Prize/wiki>

~~~
arscan
Coming up with _measurable_ criteria is hard. It may not be perfect, but how
else would you gauge community adoption?

Or are you complaining about netflix wanting projects "that contain a
substantive contribution, working code and which have high _community
adoption_ "?

If that's what they want, then that's what they want and should award prizes
accordingly.

~~~
hucker
Good point.

I guess I'm partly missing the point of the competition, and missed the fact
that the entry could be anything(?) and does not have to do with something
directly Netflix-related (either customer facing or operations).

~~~
photorized
I am not going to debate that. As a long time Netflix customer, the
recommendation engine does not impress me. This is what I was recently
recommended (thriller? Okay), see anything wrong with this picture:

<http://imgur.com/Lu0xfRV>

~~~
millerm
Hah. If you look for the animated Pixar movie "Brave" and look at the "More
like Brave" section it suggests "Magic Mike" (Yeah the stripper dude movie).
That algorithm needs work.

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run4yourlives
I'm sure this will be massively popular, but the cynic in me can't help but
think this is a great way for a company to do very cheap R&D.

It's similar to their algorithm contest - where they basically had a fixed
potential investment but reaped rewards thousands of times greater than what
they could have afforded by tapping into people willing to work for free as a
hobby.

On one hand I think it's a great idea, but on the other I'm concerned about
how this can be exploited; industries built on passions tend to massively
undervalue employees. See: Aviation, Sports, Publishing.

~~~
photorized
... cheap R&D and cheap publicity.

Much like the infamous recommendation data challenge, that was never put in
production.

I am, too, a cynic - and I think their data model is flawed from the beginning
(user account vs. household, among other things), causing schizophrenic
recommendations.

~~~
jedberg
> user account vs. household

Profiles are being tested now and will soon be deployed to all customers.

~~~
twoodfin
Woo! Will there be a way to disentangle existing watch-instantly histories or
to simply reset a profile with a clean one?

~~~
jedberg
I don't think you can reset a profile, but the workaround is to just make a
new profile, which will have a clean slate. Then you can go through and rate a
couple things to help it learn.

------
Splendor
What developer would participate in this after Netflix pulled the rug out on
their API?

~~~
jedberg
Netflix didn't really pull the plug on the API -- everyone who was using it
(which were only a few people) are still getting the same experience as they
had before. There will just be no new growth in the use of the API.

~~~
trotsky
Since a lot of us may be familiar with your old employer, it's probably worth
noting that we're discussing your current employer.

~~~
jedberg
Fair enough.

Disclaimer: I work for Netflix.

------
TwistedWeasel
So, they want lots of engineers to do work for them and then only pay the one
they like?

~~~
Maro
I was at their meetup yesterday. What you're implying is definitely _not_ the
vibe.

I thought Netflix OSS is great. They're opensourcing something like 30
projects, putting on super well organized meetups with expo like rooms where
you can pick Netflixers brain about the software and their internal systems in
general, free food&beers, free Ts, etc. It was great.

They do it go give back to the community, to get patches and ports from the
community, and hiring of course, there's nothing wrong with that!

~~~
phamilton
I was there too. I went with a coworker who is a former Netflix employee. He
was almost celebrating with each announcement. His biggest complaint about
working at a startup is not having access to the tools they have built up.
Netflix has built up an amazing platform that is tightly integrated with AWS.
By making these tools open source our little startup has a quicker route to a
robust and scalable platform. In my opinion that is awesome.

------
ichinaski
After the Python at Netflix post, <http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/03/python-
at-netflix.html>, I was expecting some Python repos on GitHub. It seems that
all the open source projects they have use Java mainly.
<https://github.com/Netflix>

~~~
jedberg
Our first Python contribution is coming by next Tuesday, and that will be the
bakery, aka Aminator.

More Python should follow shortly. Python is much newer here, so we aren't as
far along the open source path.

~~~
ryanfitz
Thats great to hear the ami bakery is finally getting open sourced. I wrote my
own ami bakery and it has completely changed the way we do releases at my
startup. I'm Looking forward to hacking on this for the contest.

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ksowocki
Is it just me or does the repo that we're supposed to be forking _only_
contain the readme and the contest rules? Is there a baseline app to be
extended?

~~~
jedberg
The repo you fork is just a readme. Then you add in your submission, which you
derive from all of the other open source software in the Netflix Github
account.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make this clearer? I've seen this
question a few times.

Edit: Thanks for the feedback everyone. I've incorporated it into the page.

~~~
recuter
Link to this more prominently: <http://netflix.github.com/>

Also maybe spitball some examples of what you expect people will do with this.
Lots of cool repos there but it is a bit overwhelming.

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ComputerGuru
All the projects eligible for this contest are Java.... :\

~~~
jedberg
Wait a couple of days and there will be a Python project.

You can also write a new monkey in any language you want.

~~~
odis
So, for instance, I could develop an Edda client using C++11 and OpenGL for
OSX?

~~~
jedberg
Definitely! Sounds like a perfect entry for the portability prize.

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btbuildem
They've done something like this with movie recommendations in 2006 -- got a
super-cheap solution to a hard research problem.

~~~
ceejayoz
That they never used...

<http://www.wired.com/business/2012/04/netflix-prize-costs/>

~~~
jedberg
That's not entirely fair. What Netflix got wasn't production ready, but some
of the ideas are still in the current version of the recommender.

~~~
dpritchett
A quick read of this thread suggests that you could really get out in front of
things with a well-placed FAQ, whether on a Netflix site, github, or your
personal site.

Assuming your job description is something like relations.

------
Justsignedup
Wow that's a cheap way to get free consultants. Assuming 40 new features get
created... giving the best one a price. I kinda hate these competitions.

However, they are a fun way to recruit.

