Citadel and Netflix are proof that hiring the best SWEs at eye-watering salaries is actually the correct strategy
Netflix's competitors spend billions more to stream their content because their system isn't as efficient as Netflix's. The ROI if they just tripled the salary at which they hired engineers would've been cray. Citadel, famous for hiring the best CS new grads at 400-500k TC and growing them up to 7 figures in a few years, makes $30b annual profit with 3000 employees ($10m per head). If I founded a startup I'd rather have two $450k engineers than six $150k engineers. Not necessarily because the former would be more productive than the latter (they might not be) but because great engineers can flick the switch from impossible to possible.
Netflix success != Engineers. It’s the content. Mindgeek (Phub ) has more efficient system and more traffic on their platform with engineers getting paid 1/5 of Netflix employee. The only reason they pay 2-3x of other companies is that they are lean and don’t overhire people to change proto payload or write crud apps like all the other tech 2) they don’t have a diversified business like MSFT, goog, Amazon etc so they don’t need lot of people PS: If overpaying would have worked then Lyft, Pinterest & snap wouldn’t be going out of business Silicon Valley companies have common theme. Start with random idea, overpay to compete with big tech, create hype and cash out on IPO. Business model is mostly shit. No worries, sprinkle Ads on top of it to get some recurring revenue. Rinse & Repeat 🔁
Netflix's competition probably shells out more in operational costs to deliver 10% of the bandwidth. They only survive because they're backed by bottomless coffers (Disney, HBO, Amazon, YouTube). I think early on Netflix founders realized that their business model is basically unworkable unless content delivery costs are kept as low as physically possible. For a startup, success in this industry is a death sentence because the bandwidth costs would crush them.
Early mover advantage
I don’t think citadel is a good example here. Citadel is a HF not HFT. They rely more on quant/traders to make profit. SWEs are the cost center.
Citadel securities is hft though.
CitSec is one of the largest market makers, how are they not an HFT lol
Correlation != Causation
Don't think you understand either tbh.
I see where you’re coming from but your examples are retarded. I think Openai would better portray your theory
Openai success is due to PhD researchers. Not due to software engineers. There's a dearth of PhD researchers in our industry. No dearth of software engineers.
I would be shocked if excellent engineering practices around data, experimentation, serving etc aren’t a big part of open ai’s success. There’s nothing theoretically revolutionary about LLMs.
Doesn’t Meta hand out bags of money to SWE’s?..
And meta makes rivers of money off advertising when other companies seem incapable
Meta will eat everybody's lunch in a couple of years with Twitter, Snapchat and Tiktok out of the way. Instagram is the focal point of modern culture, like Facebook was in the late 00s.
I don’t think you realize that the difference between new grad swes at citadel compared to say meta is negligible. The quants are something else but tit for tat if you replaced a citadel eng with a meta eng and vice versa you wouldn’t notice a difference Most new hires let alone new grads are not flicking the switch from impossible to possible and the reason citadel does so well is certainly NOT because their engineers are insane. On netflix, their new grad offers are actually lower than most unicorns and meta. Pretty similar to google new grad before nego. Main difference is that on the plus side nflx is all cash but they do not negotiate on new grad offers at all.
Didn't Netflix only recently start hire new grads?
Yes
How weird is someone from microsoft equating netflix and citadel ?
Which one is better?
I couldn’t care less
That is the stupidest thing I have read today. Sorry for being harsh. Engineering efficiency and product success are not correlated. Microsoft is immensely profitable but it pays bulk of its engineers below market (think AMZN, GOOG, etc.)
All the first 10000 employees at Microsoft who stuck around for a non-trivial amount of time are probably stupid rich. Old big public companies are eventually strip-mined by CFOs and Wall Street. Google -> Microsoft -> IBM is the fate of every large tech company. Both Google and Microsoft seem to be finding reasons to pay less year after year.
That's a reasonable argument but Microsoft and Google don't live in the same space as far as engineer comp is considered, and yet Microsoft is arguably a more successful company. Also, I personally don't think Microsoft values bulk of its engineers as much as Google does, but we digress. I can give you more counter-examples. Lyft paid slightly better than Uber when they could. Snap, Roblox, Pinterest..there is a long list. All pay very well. None of them is a success story yet. Lots of people in those companies are already stupid rich from their stocks. Citadel and Netflix support your argument but there are counter-examples of how well-paid engineers couldn't make a dent in the business because good engineering is one of the necessary conditions for a good business in technology industry but it most definitely is not sufficient.
Trying checking the US streaming market share https://headphonesaddict.com/video-streaming-statistics/
Wow. “Headphone addict” seems to be the most trustworthy source. Let me spin a Wordpress website for you in 5 mins.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/disney-streaming-more-customers-than-netflix/ good enough for you?
Regardless of how efficient Netflix is if they have bad IP and no access to good content, engineers don't matter
/thread
Business > technology