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In summary, Netflix told all their employees that they are so amazing at their job, they are the top 10% of the whole world, they are like NFL athletes. If they don't perform to top tier levels, they'll be shown the door.

Here's a thought experiment: pretend that Netflix is lying and that their employees are not actually made up of the top 10% of talent industrywide. Let's for this thought experiment assume the realit is that they have slightly above average talent because Netflix pays slightly above industry average.

But now they've convinced those employees that they're not just slightly above average, they are like elite NFL players. And that means they have to work like elite NFL players. Netflix convinces their employees to work XX% harder with longer hours than the rest of the industry because they think they are elite.

"Only amazing pro athlete geniuses can work here" is way more motivating than "You have to work yourself to death with extra hours to make quota or you're fired!" because it's a manipulation of the ego.

I think this thought experiment is closer to reality than Netflix or their kool-aid-drunk employees will admit, and that Netflix's "pro athlete" culture is worker-harming psychological manipulation.

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vineyardlabs 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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dangus 3 days ago | parent [-]

I was really giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think Netflix had anything special above and beyond any other Silicon Valley software company. They just pushed this narrative and nobody questioned them.

Netflix as a business isn’t even way ahead of competition anymore. It’s not better than Hulu or Max or anything else.

Netflix’s platform crumbled handling live streaming a boxing match, while Amazon and the rest of the legacy media companies have no issues streaming NFL games every weekend, and I’m supposed to believe that Netflix engineers are better than the ones at Paramount+ who never made me wait for a buffer to watch Premier League or NFL on CBS.

	▲	vineyardlabs 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah perhaps times have changed. When I was an intern at JPL 10 years ago they brought some senior Netflix folks in to talk about their CDN reliability efforts and it was really impressive. I believe it was called Chaos Monkey and it effectively would take down data centers in production at random, forcing their network to be extremely reliable. Pretty wild idea.

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jonas21 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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?"

	▲	dangus 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The employees are making that judgment in an environment that has been tainted by the psychological manipulation itself. How many people have brains that are going to seriously put up a fight for objective truth when other people talk them up like that? If you tell me my team is full of excellent talent I’m not going to self-sabotage my ego and question it. It’s negative psychological manipulation when it’s being used as an excuse to fire and replace reasonably productive people. The employment contract is highly lopsided. An employee is harmed far more when they are fired than a business, and Netflix exploits that advantage with this organizational culture.
	▲	MilanTodorovic 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		My guess would be that it nurtures the imposter sydrome once the "top performer" starts struggeling with something they shouldn't if they truely were a top performer.