> Many employees say they see the keeper test as a guise for ordinary workplace politics while some managers say they feel pressure to fire people or risk looking soft. Postmortem emails and meetings explaining why people got fired are viewed by some employees as awkward and theatrical when the audiences can be dozens or even hundreds of people.
So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift?
What a treat!
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons
So Netflix is actively propagating the obvious myth that all terminations are due to poor performance. Not because the nature of the project / technology changed, not because the chemistry between the fired person and key players like his supervisor has unfortunately gone south... No, it is always poor performance.
Good luck getting your next job!
And to help you on your way out, we'll make sure every single one of your former co-worker hears your former supervisor talking trash about you in very blunt terms.
You know, just to make it easier for these same co-workers to provide references to your prospective next employers.
> So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift?
This isn't what happens, as far as I've seen. These e-mails/meetings don't badmouth people or imply that they weren't competent. They give context around specific ways in which the person wasn't meeting expectations (as well as outlining out the ways in which the person was positively contributing). IME it's valuable context and isn't an assault on anyone's dignity (or "trash talking") like you're suggesting.
They largely badmouth people. I have seen very harsh things written after the employee was fired, with the employee having no opportunity to answer. Harsher for ICs than for Director and up – cowardice is always cheap.
You cannot write that that person is not at the level of their peers, that she was not able to communicate with the stakeholders in a company-wide email, with no opportunity for the fired person to comment.
In my book, that is all very unfair. I hope you are not used to that behavior, either actively or passively.
If they are such solid performers, they can get jobs in other FAANGs who pay just as well. Netflix pays well, but does it pay so much better that I should put up with this BS?
I doubt.
In fact, by keeping up this abusive charade, Netflix is guaranteeing that many of the best candidates will never apply. So my guess would be that their employees aren't the best, but perhaps the best candidates willing to accept this BS.
> Netflix pays well, but does it pay so much better that I should put up with this BS?
To the FAANG employee with a PHD who's been "hanging out" making widgets a 1st year programmer could build, the appeal I think is to invite people who want to show off the fire in their belly to do something.
And then they make 1st year programmer widgets, but with LOTS of passion and arguments and being told they can be fired at any moment.
The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation. The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
Netflix goes out of its way to pay top-of-market and often by a significant margin.
> The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation. The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
A Principal Engineer at FB would make "half" of $350-500k in compensation?
Pure nonsense.
Moreover, it seems like Netflix pays more cash and less equity, so some folks on this thread love to talk about "base compensation", "salary", etc.
What really matters is total comp, and from what I know, Netflix is about on par with the rest of FAANG.
I don't know much about them directly, but I do know folks who work for FAANGs very close to Los Gatos, and would certainly be inteested in moving if Netflix paid more "by a significant margin".
They definitely pay more at Netflix for equal IC positions and very likely for Director roles. It is very rare to find ICs making 600-700 k total comp at Facebook or Google, not rare at all at Netflix.
I agree, they sometimes exchange dignity for money.
In fact, it is not-my-wild guess that the probability of stopping a homicide steeply decreases with the amount of money given to look the other way. For some, even their sister's. Go figure for a job in tech.
So if they were nicer would they reduce their employee costs then? They justify their culture with I'm guessing handy-wavy justifications of business success?
The matter is not being nicer for the sake of it, but more not being a bunch of cultish, indoctrinating, out-of-touch-with-the-world, fake-no-nonsense people.
I also tend to judge very negatively people who are "nice" or "not nice" depending on the economic benefit they get from their conduct.
You're claiming total comp at non-Netflix FAANG for senior-principal is $175k-$250k?
Would love to see any specific numbers you have but that just sounds straight up wrong. IME $200k-$250k is around what L4s at Google make in total comp.
Are you sure this isn't a salary vs. equity thing?
There are multiple Netflix employees in this thread, all citing the same $360k total comp figure.
I'm guessing GP is someone who heard base salary data for Netflix vs other FAANGs, and doesn't realize how much of total comp at a non-Netflix FAANG would come from bonus and RSUs.
>The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation.
true according to acquaintances from there. Pure cash.
>The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
the base at FAANG is about half of NFLX. The RSUs take the total higher than NFLX. Know cases where $100K-$200K higher total comp offer from FAANG (i.e. mostly RSU) wouldn't move the NFLX employee - $500K cash change your view of the world :)
> Know cases where $100K-$200K higher total comp offer from FAANG (i.e. mostly RSU) wouldn't move the NFLX employee - $500K cash change your view of the world :)
That's really silly, but demonstrates Netflix's pay strategy. They don't pay better than other FAANGs - the comments in this thread indicate they pay less than the top FAANGs. But then they use the fact that it's "all cash" to appeal to folks who are misguided about RSUs.
they can get jobs in other FAANGs who pay just as well.
There are no shortage of articles, just on this very site even, indicating that all of the FAANGs have weird, dysfunctional internal cultures. So it would be out of the frying pan into the fire.
It's interesting to me that the discussions in this thread treat performance and ability to work with others as distinct. In a team-based work environment, one's ability to work effectively with others is a critical aspect of performance. If an employee engages in behavior that frustrates, annoys, or confuses others, performance suffers, particularly in any role above entry level, where leadership, communication, and mentoring ability are part of the job description.
On the other hand, I find it very strange that the article describes a sort of 'post-mortem email' that goes out to dozens of people that describes the failings of the (now-departed) employee. That seems like it would cause more problems than it would solve.
> If an employee engages in behavior that frustrates, annoys, or confuses others, performance suffers, particularly in any role above entry level, where leadership, communication, and mentoring ability are part of the job description."
I don't see arguments in the thread that being generally insufferable at work is not a performance problem.
Most of the comments are about the fact that you can easily lose your job for being disliked arbitrarily by exactly one person: your direct superior.
This can happen to people who are good performers and team players.
One obvious example: professional differences, where an employees generally disagrees with his superior's approach. None of them is necessarily wrong, they just have different professional styles.
One less benign example: the manager is incompetent, the employee is a top performer, so the manager is intimidated and tries to push the employee out.
There's a moderately good cure for the subject-to-managers-whim problem.
Have a policy that in any case of performance issues, the person with the bad ratings gets to move to a different area in the company with as clean a slate as possible without being naive. Ideally away from the management chain up to and including the director. Then have HR reevaluate after 3-6 months.
It's only moderately good because it's never (and shouldn't quite be depending on the cause of poor performance) a completely clean slate and because it is very expensive to execute.
I've seen a number of folks who has relationship problems due to their environment be salvaged as perfectly good employees this way. I've seen others who left with the realization that maybe it wasn't JUST the manager after all and hopefully growing from that experience. And of course, I've seen people think it's all a giant conspiracy against them as well.
"It is nothing personal" is usually one of the most blatant lies. It always is, and at the same time it isn't. I try to judge people simply based by the quality of work they produce, despite spending a lot of time with them we are not married. So nothing personal as lond everybody acts as professionals and adults.
That being said, most political office stuff is very much personal, at least for one party involved. And than it gets nasty. And yes, with review processes being incredibly intransparent, without a real chance for the reviewed to defend himself, bad reviews are an easy way to get rid of people.
Because Netflix pays 360k a year plus benefits. It’s a shit place to work if you don’t fit the exact culture though, which is pretty brash and confrontational
Huh, immediately then someone will complain Google is evil as it working with Chinese government and FB is evil because it is working Russians who meddled with US elections.
Infact I wouldn't know of many companies who can't be branded evil or full of BS for some or other reason.
Don’t choose them. It sucks I just said that.
But working at Google or Facebook is totally different. Netflix has a couple hundred engineers. They aren’t involved in selling ad funded content. I wouldn’t want to work at google or facebook
Just cash. Plus another 5% in free options. It’s a ton of money. No bonus, no RSUs or stock, just straight cash salary. And I didn’t write books on the language I used or anything, in my opinion I’m just a regular developer.
It may be on par, but that's total comp. My understanding is that the 'Flix doesn't do bennies, matching, vesting over time, etc., they just throw straight cash at you.
Reduces their overhead -- no plan administrators, etc. -- and no abstractions or surprise fine print in the 401k matching or classes of stock or whatever.
It's not dirt cheap, you can take 2 1hr $50 uber X rides a day if you so feel, and I don't think there is a limit? It's actually fairly generous.
Your still paying tax on it although, but it still would cost the company $2000 per month.
A company can also just give you more money without a 401k condition behind that matching program, and you can decide to put the money in. They don't have a large retail staff, so they can also probably do things like the mega backdoor roth too.
If you want cash it is. Netflix salaries are generally $350k+. They only hire seniors, but that can mean 4-5 years of experience. Not even Google pays that kind of comp in salary.
"not even Google pays that kind of comp in salary" -- maybe not a deliberate equovocation, but total comp ("salary" plus stock) at google is definitely at or above that range.
I don't know shit about Netflix vs Googles comp but there is a lot to be said for cash: there's no vesting period ; it's dependable, there's no weird dips because an investing firm got spooked; it's liquid, you can spend it at the bar tonight, right now; taxes are straight forward.
That said -- I mean this with all sincerity -- it does my commie heart good to see that absolutely no in this thread is buying Netflix's bullshit.
> there's no vesting period ; it's dependable, there's no weird dips because an investing firm got spooked; it's liquid, you can spend it at the bar tonight, right now; taxes are straight forward.
For the most part, these are all benefits of RSUs at a company like Facebook or Google.
They're totally liquid. They "vest", but in short order.
This isn't startup equity. It's very much real money.
They are "totally liquid" after 6 months which isn't totally liquid. And those 6 months are subject to the stock market so they inherently carry more risk than base (and higher potential rewards).
You seem rather... aggressive with how much you want to downplay the differences and your entire contribution to this thread has been attacking "Netflix apologists" and defending any argument for cash-based salaries. It's fine if you don't like their culture/comp structure, but you sure seem to have an agenda here.
My stock vests monthly and is automatically immediately sold at market price. It's a lot more cash like than you believe.
For a senior engineer, their stock will vest monthly or maybe quarterly. At Google at least, there is no cliff, so you begin vesting your first or second month.
> They are "totally liquid" after 6 months which isn't totally liquid.
That is simply untrue. In FAANGs I'm familiar with, vesting can be monthly, very much like cash compensation.
Your other claims are untrue as well.
I'm very much against presenting misleading information, such as comparing total comp at Netflix to base salary alone at other FAANGs. Especially when this misrepresentation is then used to make the blatantly false claim that Netflix comp is substantially higher than other FAANGs.
The number repeatedly quoted in this thread shows the opposite: Netflix total comp appears to be lower than other FAANGs.
I have no agenda here. My initial response to the article was based on what I read in the article. Holding meetings to explain how terminated employees were under-performing - is very toxic in my opinion, and fertile ground for abuse and misrepresentation. Several Netflix employees in this thread seemed to agree with this assessment.
Yeah at Google you have autosale as well, whenever rsu vested they get sold and cash comes into my account. Slight hassle at tax time, other then that more or less the same as cash.
First, I'm not a Netflix apologist, second, I explicitly said that if cash is important and third, I never compared it with the base salary of any other company. So what exactly was the point of this post?
You can't compare base salaries, you can compare the benefits of all cash vs stock awards (401k, higher monthly income, no market emphasis on income). That was my entire point, so this diatribe about Netflix apologists has no business in this thread.
I pretty explicitly said if cash is your goal (which has an impact outside of just take-home [401k]). And the 350k is at the low end (probably 3-4 years experience). $400k is typical. Google is pretty close at the Senior level to Netflix, but the all-cash comp is valuable to some people.
If you think that FAANG does not have their own special policies you are sadly mistaken. They don't even need to exist on paper. It could simply be tacitly understood.
Had this not been the case every single company would have been doing perp-walks of the managers engaging in such behavior.
As someone in tech, if you are making over $250k/year you should realize that unless you have a contract ( not as in 1099 but as in someone who has an individual, negotiated, untouchable using regular processes ) and you are not in the top 3 tiers of management, then to the management you are a very expensive line item which needs to be minimized. Google and Facebook are starting to tip over -- there will be stories about their culture popping up next year or two.
> to the management you are a very expensive line item which needs to be minimized.
"Expensive" is relative, though. The top places are growing and in constant need of great new employees. Firing an engineer making $250k just to hire a replacement making the same amount is actually highly expensive and wasteful - firing and recruiting can easily cost as much an annual salary.
Recruiting is really expensive.
> Google and Facebook are starting to tip over -- there will be stories about their culture popping up next year or two.
Stories about Uber's toxicity started popping up when it became unclear that all of those working for it would become multi-millionaires next two years.
Stories of Zenefits ickiness started popping up when it became unclear that those working for it would become multi-millionaries in next few years.
Stories of Netflix culture toxicity started popping up when it became no longer clear that Netflix will continue to eat the world of streaming -- hence continuing to provide massive $$ to those working for it.
People would take more abuse for a higher chance to make a boatload of money. The smaller the boatload or the less are the chances of making it, the less employees are willing to take.
If you are to look at Google and Facebook stories over last 6-12 months you would see more and more questions about how far those two companies can grow. As the growth trajectory slows down more and more stories about the internal ugliness show up because fewer people are willing to take it.
People tend to work hard and accept a lot of crap as long as they are making a lot of money, or hoping to.
Once those prospect dim, hell does tend to break loose. People suddenly lose patience with bad policies, with politics, with people they only barely tolerated before, with high levels of stress at work...
The same people who soldiered on like good boyscouts when the money was pouring in, will become fed up and recalcitrant once they run out of financial reasons to take shit from management.
> So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift?
Well no. It’s usually very positive about them and generally sad that things couldn’t be made to work.
The point is not that they were bad - the idea is Netflix wouldn’t have hired them if that were so! It’s that it just wasn’t a good fit due to misalignment of goals. Perhaps someone doesn’t want to change or just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to.
I’ve read a few departure emails in my time at Netflix and none of them - even the one with the C level exec who is mentioned in the article - were “badmouthing” anyone.
If anything they’re quite positive about the person tbh.
> It’s that it just wasn’t a good fit due to misalignment of goals.
That's not what Netflix's own spokesman say:
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons
Only "performance reasons", not "misalignment of goals".
> Perhaps someone doesn’t want to change or just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to.
Saying someone "just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to" is a very negative thing to say. As a hiring managing, hearing that about a candidate would cause me not to hire them.
> It’s usually very positive about them
Something is very distorted if you think saying about someone that he "just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to" and similar stuff that make a person unemployable is "very positive about them".
And once more, this contradicts everything else in the article. You can't have your cake and eat it, too: if Netflix is saying (through it's spokesman and multiple other execs in the article) that firing is always due to performance reason, then that's not a "very positive" statement about the person being fired. It's actually a very negative statement.
So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift?
What a treat!
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons
So Netflix is actively propagating the obvious myth that all terminations are due to poor performance. Not because the nature of the project / technology changed, not because the chemistry between the fired person and key players like his supervisor has unfortunately gone south... No, it is always poor performance.
Good luck getting your next job!
And to help you on your way out, we'll make sure every single one of your former co-worker hears your former supervisor talking trash about you in very blunt terms.
You know, just to make it easier for these same co-workers to provide references to your prospective next employers.
Have we said good luck already...?
(Netflix employees, why do you accept this?)