> I would expect only a minority of developers would be willing to try working there, despite the awesome rewards.

So much this. OP's description of the work environment is stressing me out and I don't even work there.

At best a strategy like the one described above will get you the top 10% of people who are willing to put up with that kind of work environment, which means you might get the top 10% of single, childless 20–35-year-olds—people who are motivated first and foremost by ego and pay and don't value stability and work-life balance. But in the process you're more or less explicitly saying that you're not interested in people who are further along in their lives and value stability and reliability more than ego and raw paycheck size.

This means that you're missing out on the top 10% of 35–65-year-old engineers who are now parents with responsibilities outside of their career, even though the top 10% of that bracket would typically be "better" by most metrics than the top 10% of the younger bracket you're pre-filtering down to.

In a startup environment this might be a perfectly rational tradeoff—you want to filter for people who don't have much else to do and can give you a huge amount of unpaid overtime in exchange for you stroking their ego—but past a certain size and market share you need the stability offered by mature, experienced professionals.

If Netflix failed to get over that hump, it's not so surprising after all that they fell so hard in the last 10 years.

> the most basic stuff in their business, which is to produce good content in the first place, and very importantly, NOT FREAKING CANCEL the best content!

It isn't that simple. Making money from content is not 1-to-1 related with the quality of the content. There are many examples of great content that doesn't make money, and many examples of content that makes a lot of money that isn't great. Also there are many differing opinions on what 'great content' even is.

I think it's safe to assume gp has drunk the koolaid. I spoke to somebody from the army once, and they too had the top 10% and it's difficult to imagine that every employer employs the top 10%. it's a cultural meme really, like everybody tells themselves they are good people really.

> difficult for me to believe that they really got 10% top performers

It's difficult to achieve, but it's not an unreasonable objective to have. After that there is a question of measurement. How do you measure that? Did they? What was their score? - and yes, until the evidence is released, they probably didn't. (But I would also cut slack on the measurement - it IS difficult to measure so a decent attempt - a top 10% attempt? - will do.)

Where the "top performers" meme obviously fails is when every new business and their sister claims the same thing. We are all winners here and all that.

> It's really difficult for me to believe that they really got 10% top performers.

Of course there is no hard data on it, but I can say anecdotally the people I know who went on elsewhere were consistently rated at the top of whatever organization they landed at. And also, there wasn't a single person there that I would not want to work with again and would jump at that chance.

> For one, knowing the cut-throat nature of employment there, I would expect only a minority of developers would be willing to try working there, despite the awesome rewards.

On the flip side, a lot of people wanted to work there because of that culture. But you're right, some really great people wouldn't even apply, won't deny that.

> Finally, just as a cheap shot at Netflix, sorry I can't resist as a customer: they absolutely suck at the most basic stuff in their business, which is to produce good content in the first place, and very importantly, NOT FREAKING CANCEL the best content!

Actually, objectively, it's not the best content, which is why it gets cut. The way that decision is made is every piece of content is charted on a cost vs minutes watched. Then that chart is looked at by actual humans.

Some content, like reruns from the 1950s, is super efficient. It's not watched a lot but it also costs very little, so it stays. Some content, like the latest Marvel movie (before Disney had their own streaming service) was very inefficient, but it was kept because it was a big marketing draw. But some content didn't quite make it over the line because it was expensive but niche. It was popular amongst a small set of die hard fans.

I think your complaint it more about the industry in general though -- it's not just Netflix that doesn't give a show room to grow. Even the old school TV networks cut shows much quicker now than they did before.

> I won't even mention how horrible their latest big live stream was... oh well, I just did :D.

Netflix knows it didn't go well. Streaming in general used to break just as much. But the nice thing was that they gave us the resources to hire the right people and the autonomy to fix it. And so we did things like create Chaos Engineering and OpenConnect. I suspect the same will happen with live streaming.

> Another reason I really don't trust that to be true is that I've never seen a good way to measure who is a top performer and who is not.

I can work at a new place for a week and know who the top performers are. Their names are all over the commits, and whenever you ask someone a question, you get funneled to the top performers.

Then you talk to them. If they're open and engaging, and don't seem like they got their status just by being around forever, they're almost certainly a top performer.

Netflix has a reputation for the highest salaries in tech. That tends to attract top talent.

https://medium.com/dice-insights/netflix-ceo-explains-why-he...

The interesting thing about this thought experiment is that you assume Netflix would have slightly above average employees if they have slightly above average compensation. Now what happens to the experiment if Netflix has ridiculously above average, end of the bell curve compensation (as they do)? Serious question, I do not and have not worked for Netflix.

Most Netflix employees have worked at other places and can make the comparison for themselves. They don't have to take Netflix' word for it.

Also, since when is telling people they're good at what they do "worker-harming psychological manipulation?"

> problematic pattern where interviewers pose esoteric questions they've recently researched

The days of the “brain teaser” interview question are gone, at least from the “magnificent 7” and similar big tech companies. Nowadays it’s coding, behavioral, and design, at least for engineers.

I concur with the sentiment that performance ranking has a very significant social component. If you have a bad relationship with your manager, watch out. But also, if your manager has a bad relationship with THEIR manager, or are not adept at representing their employees, you can get screwed too.

I loved the unlimited vacation policy. I took more vacation at Netflix than anywhere else. No one was anxious about using it.

It helped that senior leadership set a good example. The CEO took a few weeks off every year and made sure everyone knew that it was ok to do that. He also made sure all his directs took a few weeks every year at a minimum.

There was a culture of management encouraging you to take advantage of the program.

In my ideal world, no they do not. Pay equals what it would cost to rehire me today. Performance should always be great for what you are expected to do.

Where the two correlate is that if you're hiring a mid-level person they get mid-level pay, and if they are top performing mid-level, they get promoted to senior and get commensurate pay.

So performance leads to promotions which leads to better pay. But pay is not directly correlated with performance. I expect everyone in the same level to have equal performance (over the long term, of course there will be short term variations).

I read that as compensation wasn't correlated to your performance relative to peers. Which is I think what most people would appreciate in an ideal world. I don't think they meant absolute performance and compensation weren't linked.

>The incentives are against a fair evaluation: the reviewers have the incentive to overly criticize others so that they can stand out more.

Wouldn't that(how you view and fit in with your team) be part of your review? If I was Bob's manager and all reviews he gave of his teammates were "Teammate M is a dumbass and the only reason they are productive is because I do 80% of their job for them", wouldn't leave me thinking Bob is great. It would leave me thinking Bob is a jerk who doesn't work well with others.

If performance is not tied to pay, why would you have an incentive to do that?

If anything the incentive is problematic in the other direction. People tend to be nice because they don't want to say mean things that they know the manager will see.