Hello everyone, I’ve been at Netflix close to a year now. My performance, WLB, team are all great and I’m also up for promotion. The only thing is that I feel like in this point of my career prestige doesn’t matter to me, impact does a lot. I worked at G, early Nutanix, and now N. I’ve been thinking, I feel like I want to join a startup and have a huge impact. What do you guys think. Where does one go from here? YOE 8, TC 560
Are you at Netflix or Nutanix?
Left Nutanix to go to Netflix
If Netflix can pay you well and you are happy, I don’t really see a point for you to move to a startup. Sure some are doing meaningful things but you are joining a new team and there are many variables at play. Ie founders reputation like successful past exits, your equity stake, your investors and whether they ultimately control what the company does etc. I would leave only if you are stagnant and money really means nothing to you.
I agree with your perspective but how about if it was a reputable startup with strong trajectory? Like early stage unicorn something like Airtable, Cohesity, Snowflake
I’ve used Airtable and I am not convinced that it really has much of a real trajectory. It’s basically a nice saas based project management tool. I can’t speak for the other two. I would say if you really care about scaling make sure you are going in as a very senior person on the respective team. Otherwise you are just another cog in the wheel.
Impact depends on how you look at it. A small feature you do there helps millions of users. A new product you launch at a startup can help from a few people to thousands. Of course the startup can grow and your can get to more people, but it also might fail. YMMV
I agree with you man. The impact I’m looking for is actually helping scale a company. Obviously I would join a good trajectory startup not something random.
You won't have difficulty finding a company in need of your talent, but expect a big pay cut and a lot of paper money.
Financial suicide.
Netflix isn’t offering enough impact? Isn’t the the engineer to market cap ratio huge? If you join a startup you're gonna miss taking home 30k a month. Do you have enough capital saved to continue your lifestyle while you work for paper money? Startups are risky beyond the obvious financial risks. The ceo could be a sociopath, your manager incompetent, your coworkers green, the list goes on. There's a lot of nice guarantees that come with working at a FANG that we start to take for granted. You'll either have to be prepared to handle a much more challenging work life, or hope that Netflix will take you back with open arms if things don't pan out (which, given their firing policy, seems unlikely).
Everything you said is 100% right. Netflix is great it really is and I never take it for granted. It’s impactful but I feel like I want to help scale an actual company. Trust me I know it sounds stupid but it’s just what’s on my mind. And no I don’t have enough net worth yet to continue my lifestyle if I worked at a startup. I’ve been saving aggressively for the past 4 years but I have ways to go... Also what do you think if it was a reputable startup like Airtable, cohesity, gusto, snowflake etc.?
I haven't heard of any of the startups you listed, but that's probably just me being out of touch. If it were me, and I didn't have the savings, I would either work at NFLX for at least another year living more frugally, or at the very least, like you said, join a startup with a good reputation. One that is more likely to become liquid than go bankrupt (airbnb, stripe) would be ideal, but that's almost always going to be a tradeoff for potential impact. I'd generalize the above by saying the longer to let yourself save up, the riskier a move you can make.
Why not retire and start something directly impactful like orphanage, animal shelter, etc.
Nice TC man. My advice would be save up until you have a comfortable net worth and leave if you really need to do something impactful. What’s your net worth goal? As Uber mentioned, the more you save up the less the risk. If you have a comfortable net worth then you won’t have anything to lose if startup fails and everything to gain if it takes off.
I agree with everything you said man. This is the approach that I was planning on taking. My NW is around 3.5M right now including everything, my plan is to hit at least 5M. That way if I leave like you said, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
TC got me sprung 👀
You are making 560k with 8 yoe; you pull. I would stay at NFLX for several more years until you have enough money to start your own venture. Then you can have the most impact.
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You should try Nutanix next.
Been there done that. It was great when I joined the culture was amazing. I left when stock was still okay so I wasn’t there for the downtrend. Also funny because Azure was begging me to join, too bad Microsoft is 💩
Microsoft why are you hating?