I’ve heard that most ICs at Netflix have senior SE titles, and it seems there are even no internal levels like FB (from levels.fyi). So does that mean there is no promotion at Netflix? How do they reward top performers? Also regarding technical leadership, how to decide who are tech leads for a team if there are no titles or levels?
No IC promotions is a welcome shift in corporate governance, in my opinion. Why focus on arbitrary "external" titles when we are all perfectly capable of learning and growing on our own? On the other hand, rewards are just increases in salary, measured in terms of shifting "top of market" which is heavily influenced by your manager. I feel more standardization is required in this area. And why does deciding on a tech lead matter to you?
You will need someone to set where you are heading to in term of technical solutions. That’s often decided by titles/levels in other companies. Just curious how does that work in Netflix? Personally I have title system and promotion driven culture. Just wonder how the Netflix model works.
https://jobs.netflix.com/culture <-- search for "Informed Captain"
We are all seniors and we run microservices so you decide how best to run them. There are paved road solutions to certain extents but you are supposed to fill the gaps.
The netflix way sounds a heaven to me. Engineers that chase titles and promotions are not truly great engineers. Engineers that need “tech lead” for directions are not proactive or driven or senior enough.
Me too, but just not sure whether that’s real and whether there are any hidden problems behind the Netflix way.
There are tons of issues with Netflix way. Without levels - personal connections, tenure and politics triumphs every technical decision that is taken here. All that one title no level sounds great on paper, getting it right in practice is extremely hard.
8 yoe 550k? Congrats, what’s your title?
Yeah curious too. Will apply LinkedIn for whatever role you are at for sure.
Prob sr staff/manager or staff/manager that rode stock appreciation to the moon
Mmm... I'm not sure I understand the advantages of a level-less ic system. Enlighten me? (And levels not always just vanity. In some companies they are not public)
To prevent engineers from chasing titles and promotion rather than doing useful things.
If the setup is right - “doing useful things” is what leads to promotions and higher levels. If you assume that Netflix setup is right, you can make the same assumptions about companies with levels.
This one title one level solution doesn’t work in my opinion. Technical solutions which are at a company/org level are decided purely by personal connections at this point - which is dangerous than if we had levels. Conflict resolution is broken. No incentive for being a high performer as there are no measurable rewards tied to it. Netflix is a simple product - one business domain and approximately a thousands engineers. I highly doubt that this model can work at large companies with complex business model.
this anecdote seems intuitive - there are levels, they are just hidden
No, fb has levels. They just don't show.
Netflix had an internal vote by engs and the super majorities of them hated leveling. Just FYI. I don't think Netflix has a simple product either. Very few companies run thousands of interconnected microservices.
We don’t have a thousand micro services. Please go to Spinnaker and see for yourself.
How hard is static content streaming where all the content is controlled (we don't have user generated content like Youtube)? These days with AWS and CDN, getting a video streaming app up and running is not that hard, as many companies are doing it already. AWS solves most of the scale challenges for Netflix. I also agree that we don't have thousand of micro-services. Don't quote numbers that you can not back up.
Not having titles, levels or promotions is a huge limiting factor for Netflix to hire and retain the best talent. Most people I know are here for the $, and the talent quality here is pathetic. Someone in the internal forum had posted evidence of Netflix engineers writing 500+ lines within a single method and using GOTO statements in Java :) My two cents: Netflix at best has the engineers at L5/T5/E5 at top tech companies. I don't know a single personal that I can call Staff/Principal level. This all works because the problem domain is super simple - static content streaming with zero user generated content.
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