Tread Carefully - Director Netflix Employee Review

2.0
Apr 26, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Pay. Unequivocally the best in town. Full stop. - Travel & Expense Policy. Nowhere else will you be allowed to effectively do whatever you want, with limited oversight and an occasional audit. Need to fly business? Book business. Need to stay in a swanky hotel. Stay in said swanky hotel. Just don't abuse it. - Uber/Shuttles. Pre-Pandemic, of course, the company Uber account to/from work is a nice touch, though it's not great they add it to your taxable income without telling you about it. They also have shuttles all over LA to pick you up and drive you to and fro. - Family Planning allowance. Real big high five for the $75k contribution to family planning, fertility, what have you.

Cons

- So. Many. Feelings. Good lord, be adults and do some actual work. - Meeting-heavy culture. Every 30min chunk of your day will be full and you will get nothing done. Prepare to turn on and work late once you've eaten dinner or your kids go to bed. They know it and do nothing about it. - Work life balance. You have no life anymore, there is only Netflix. - Reorganizations are constant. If you want a comfortable existence in your role this is not the place for you. - Leadership changes are constant. Since senior leadership does very little in the day to day work of building campaigns or managing talent, they make their hay moving people around the chess board like little pawns to justify their existence and politicking to get Ted's ear. It's gross, and the string of senior marketing departures validates its grossness. - Content is king. The Content Org that is. They can spend 20billion to make content, while Marketing panhandles on the side of the 101 for loose change to cut trailers, execute photo shoots, or do anything innovative. - Campaigns are teeny tiny. Unless you're a Ryan Reynolds movie, Stranger Things, or Bridgerton, you aren't getting a campaign; more a loose collection of assets geared toward keeping your talent happy. So if you're looking to build big, integrated, global campaigns, this likely isn't the place for you. Which is hard because... - Ted promises talent a lot! So the Content and Marketing teams are between a rock and a hard place, as no one wants to tell them they aren't getting real campaigns, only token media spends and creative budgets. - God help you if you work on a Season 2 or Sequel+. You're working with pocket lint and thoughts and prayers for resources. - The Culture. For a company famous for its Culture Deck, they've really let it fall by the wayside in most departments. Gone is critical, real time feedback. Gone is the pro sports team mentality. Gone is any real sense of Risk Taking or Innovation. It also is whatever anyone in Senior Leadership or HR says that it is to achieve whatever reorg or budget shortfall that's coming. - There's no upward mobility and very little that goes into training/development. Raises are non-existent unless you go get an offer from elsewhere, in which case you're playing Russian Roulette with the "Keeper Test." - Redundancy. There are 6, maybe 7 departments that output creative? It's inefficient and it causes a ton of duplicative work.

Explore other reviews about Netflix

5.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Career growth is excellent. Great benefits

Cons

Life work balance is not the best

3.0
Sep 20, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Paycheck - So many good people - Such a great service - Hope

Cons

I have been working for a year at Netflix. I've seen what was supposed to be very mature people, sharing absolutely almost no contact that anyone would qualify as "human". Sure, that sounds hyperbolic, let me develop (and maybe cherry-pick a little). Have you heard about our culture? The one about giving candid feedback? - I have seen people complaining of behavior they literally demonstrated themselves in the following days. But I have also seen these feedbacks resulting in tears both in the eyes of HR persons or fellow engineers. How human does that sound? Have you heard about our culture? The one about not tolerating brilliant jerks? I have nonetheless seen angriness and frustration, expressed in private, public and meeting. People rejecting new ideas by default, like, any ideas they wouldn't have worked themselves on for days wouldn't count. Even if those ideas are from the best examples in the industry or academics. How many publications/contributions have you seen from Netflix to computer science in general? How does it compare against any other company of that size in the Bay Area? Can you imagine either the real insecurity (x)or the lack of innovation that could lead to this situation? Except for a few managers, directors or VPs feeling free enough to behave at work in the same way than how they live, almost every engineer I have been interacting with, have shared as little as possible about their private life. The rare exceptions of interpersonal exchange ends up around some sort of competitive behavior: Who is the most geeky, sportive, owns the fastest car/biggest house/visited the strangest place. I've heard workaholic people complaining about ambitious peers who were over-managing, over-working to get even more work to do after. I feel like we're past workaholism at this point. Maybe there are a lot of shy people! Maybe there is a culture of fear, not only of being fired, but also a fear of interacting with people going to be fired. Maybe it's all in my head, maybe people giving 5 stars to their experience here don't care the human aspect of a company. And maybe they're right. What about your crush, your fears, your desires for the future, your appetite for life? I've been blessed to work in enough large companies to know that the behavior that I'm seeing in Netflix is not a healthy one. I've also been lucky enough to work in other industries more socializing than tech and I can tell that Netflix has a lot to do on that side, and off-sites or team meeting won't solve that problem. I am afraid about the tragic, but inevitable consequences of the ways people operate in this company: I guess that the day the worst will happen, it will be addressed in an impersonal memo by Reed; followed-up by 1 or 2 reminders during offsites. Possibly commented by HR in a Q&A document. And move on. This company seems as reactive in its management of people as it is proactive in its business operations. I still work at Netflix though, not only for the paycheck, but because I hope. I hope it will change. The needed change can't happen from a candid feedback, a Q&A, or only from inside. Change has to come from everyone, including people who take time to read comments like this one. Netflix has so many good people and offers such a great service. As a curious Netflix employee reading this review: think about your past, isn't there a big human thing that you would love to feel again in your current company that you've felt in the past? As a candidate: think about what would be a good question to ask to that HR partner once your package is almost here to be offered to you, think about that comment you make at the end of an interview when you're being asked by an engineer: "Do you have any question for me?" What Netflix needs is an inception, something that anyone and everyone would think about after leaving the call or the room they were sharing with you. Ask yourself, and then the others, the question you should ask if you think you want to spend a good amount of your life and energy in the place you're applying for. - Will I learn and contribute to the knowledge of other's? Even outside the company? - Will I see emotional responses from my peers? Will that be for other reasons than being fired or bluntly criticized? - Will I find a friendly environment that will nurture my appetite for life? - What is the amount of emotional interaction (celebrating, sharing, playing) to expect from a company whose service is the best to "entertain"? - Do androids dream of electric sheep?

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