Netflix reviews

4.1

80% would recommend to a friend

(2,515 total reviews)

Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters

85% approve of CEO

78% positive business outlook

Netflix has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 2,515 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The Netflix employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
1.0
Oct 3, 2014

Stay Away

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good "brand" for your resume, I guess. Outsiders will be impressed, if only because the PR machine has been in overdrive convincing people that this is still an innovative company. But a stock price bubble does not equal innovation.

Cons

Most of the honest reviews on here (meaning those not written by HR) have already covered it, but it's a terrible place to work - a pressure-cooker environment full of overpaid but insecure bosses who manage through fear and intimidation. Crazy high turnover in every group, lots of good people getting pushed out all the time by their managers. Then those people are blamed and insulted once they're gone and unable to defend themselves. The company also stopped innovating long ago. The salary, though substantial, is not worth it, especially when you see the C-level insiders routinely cashing out millions in shares like thieves in the night. Hmmm, what do they know that everyone else doesn't? Look elsewhere - there are many other more humane, ethical, and socially rewarding places to get paid well...like Wall Street.

5.0
Jan 22, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* "Freedom and Responsibility Culture" = Lots of individual control (Read Reed's slide deck) * If you're part of a well-run team, you'll love it - Excellent compensation - Unique stock option program with personal choice for $$$ allocated - Fast-paced environment with lots of challenges - It's the largest streaming movie service in the world and it's just getting better - Extremely open with corporate information sharing (no internal culture of secrecy like Apple) - Incredible execution over the last couple years - the methods can be controversial, but you can't argue with the quarterly/annual results

Cons

* "High Performance Culture" = You can hang yourself easily and get canned (Read Reed's slide deck) * If you join a mis-managed group, you'll be posting a negative review on here soon. :-) - Average benefits programs - Inexperienced managers can mis-apply the "high performance culture" philosophy and lead to the "culture of fear" some people have complained about in certain organizations - Double-standard for performance: VP/C-level staff appear immune from "high performance culture". Reed rocks, but some of the others are average/good, not exceptional.

1.0
Apr 16, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Netflix has nice, fancy offices in Los Gatos. They have good snacks. They pay a pretty high cash salary. You get to claim that you're in the movie business.

Cons

Netflix makes a big deal about their hiring policies. They claim that they regularly evaluate employee performance, and let the lowest performers go. To me, this sounded great! In contrast to many other companies where lazy and incompetent people hang around for years, Netflix tried to retain only the best and brightest people. Unfortunately, that's not what it was like in reality. A week after I started at Netflix, the recruiter who hired me was unceremoniously dismissed. Then the tech support guy in our office was released. Then an engineer on my team. In each of these cases, it wasn't clear what these folks had done wrong. They had all been technically competent, friendly and hard working. This promoted a culture of fear where no one felt that their job was secure. It turns out that there were several things going on. Managers were given incentives to regularly purge employees. So, managers developed antagonistic relationships with employees. In most normal companies, a key responsibility of a manager is to defend their team in front of senior management. At Netflix, this just doesn't happen. Additionally, Netflix doesn't have adequate mechanisms for providing feedback and review to employees. (In the year I spent at Netflix, I didn't receive a single review, positive or negative.) Without a formal system for employee evaluation, managers resort to picking favorites: they hire in their friends, and fire people who they aren't friends with. I saw this happen to many different people while I was at Netflix. It's allowable by law (everyone is an "at will" employee), but it does not lead Netflix to hire and retain the best people. Netflix has had the good fortune to be in an easy business. They moved early into online DVD rentals, and have large cost advantages over potential rivals. Their competitors (Blockbuster, Walmart, etc) took major missteps, and were not really able to compete. Netflix doesn't have to be the best at anything they do: operations, marketing, movie recommendations, etc. They just have to be OK at these things to run a profitable business, and they are only OK at them.

Viewing 52 - 54 of 2,515 Reviews

Glassdoor has 3,660 Netflix reviews submitted anonymously by Netflix employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Netflix is right for you.