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.

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.

Money, of course. Plus, people working in tech and making very good money are not known for "spine-straightness".

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.

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.

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".

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.

Almost same outcome.

:shrug: You need better data.

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?

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Also, I won't have to live in Los Gatos.

Infact I wouldn't know of many companies who can't be branded evil or full of BS for some or other reason.

Reduces their overhead -- no plan administrators, etc. -- and no abstractions or surprise fine print in the 401k matching or classes of stock or whatever.

How costly and valuable are a few Uber rides per year (that are also justified as a business expense)?

Now compare that to a decent 401k matching program...

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.

Let me take a stab at this: money is good.

> Let me take a stab at this: money is good.

Better than everywhere else, including other FAANGs, where you don't have to tolerate such policies?

Effectively what they're doing is comparing total comp at Netflix with base salary at other FAANGs, which is very misleading.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Agree to all the other points though.

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.

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.

"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.

What do you mean by that?

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.

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.

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.