Adrian Cockcroft, Netflix's cloud architect, posted his notes from #defrag where he explains how Netflix gets out of the way of innovation.
If you haven't experienced a high performance culture, think about what it's like to drive flat out at a race track. Some people will be too scared to deal with it and drive around white knuckled at 40 mph, some will be overconfident and crash on the first corner, but for people who fit into the high performance culture it's exhilarating to push yourself to go faster each lap, and learn from your peers without a speed limit. When you take out the BS and friction, everyone gets so much more done that productivity, innovation and rapid agile development just happen. This is the key message, removing obstacles to a high performance culture is how innovation happens throughout an organization. Doing less to get more.
Cockcroft explains the pay, bonus, stock, management structure, and vacation perks:
We don't pay bonuses. We don't have grades other than senior engineer, manager, director, VP. We don't count the hours or the vacation days, we say "take some". Once a year we revise everyones salary to their peers and current market rate - based on what we are paying now to hire the best people we can find.
The whole story is interesting, and he has some interesting streaming recommendations mixed in with the story.
Ah! So that was the problem. They gave Hastings the wheel, he was overconfident and crashed on the first corner.
Posted by: IMACynic | December 31, 2011 at 10:26 PM
They don't pay bonuses to their workers or Hastings?
Posted by: Niahflame | January 01, 2012 at 07:33 PM
This kind of crap ticks me off. They cant solve simple recurring problems that they are aware of but spend loads of time talking about how great they are.
BS.
Posted by: rjm | January 02, 2012 at 01:07 AM
"They don't pay bonuses to their workers or Hastings?"
They don't pay bonuses to either.
Posted by: Jimmy | January 02, 2012 at 02:04 AM
Elegant, but, unfortunately this gets you even less for 8 bucks a month.
Posted by: Sal Riggione | January 03, 2012 at 02:24 AM
I'm confused how they incent staff. They pay market rates but expect "high performance" And no (monetary) recognition if you are a star performer
Posted by: david | January 03, 2012 at 02:59 PM
Paying more to get less.
Fixt.
Posted by: eviltimes | January 03, 2012 at 10:34 PM
@david,
They don't pay market rates -- they pay either top of market, or above market. That means that when things work as they should, any Netflix employee should be making more on a given year than they would be able to make in straight comp + bonus elsewhere. The stock option stuff is confusing, and hard to compare.
So how do they incent staff? Mostly they try to hire staff that isn't particularly incented by the next bonus they may get. High performers, huge impact kinda people who expect a fair compensation in excahenge for moving mountains. Works pretty well for them, most of the time.
Posted by: UghBadName | January 04, 2012 at 12:31 AM
wo yao mai che piao
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