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by phd514 2417 days ago
On the engineering compensation factor, I interviewed with BAMTech (the successor to MLB [Major League Baseball] Advanced Media and the underlying video streaming platform for Disney) a few years ago. Their comp was considerably lower than Netflix. I got the impression they expected you to be willing to work for less because you were working on something related to MLB.
2 comments

> willing to work for less because you were working on something related to MLB

This part I don't get. The intersection of people who love MLB but are the best talent you're looking for, may not be aligned. If you want great engineers, you shouldn't care whether or not they particularly like MLB. It's a weird hiring funnel. Not all projects demand the best talent, but if Disney Plus wants 60 million subscribers, they should be poaching Netflix, or at least hiring that level of talent.

There's plenty of engineers available, especially outside of the valley where there aren't a thousand companies competing for the same pool of people.
Yeah, BAMTech is in NYC, where there are only 500 or so.
Importantly, they also worked a lot fewer hours than the Netflix engineers did and probably got to go home every night and weekend.

Netflix pays very well but also works its tech workers hard.

I'm sure this depends on the team, but I've actually heard from someone who works there that Netflix views working overtime consistently as a red flag? As in, everyone is supposed to be a superstar engineer, and not being able to finish your work in 9-5 makes you look bad?
I can't speak for everyone at Netflix, and as you mention it may depend on the team, but in my team I don't think anyone cares. Why should it matter how many hours someone works a week, as long as they do a good job overall?
> I got the impression they expected you to be willing to work for less because you were working on something related to MLB.

this is how Blizzard pays as well. their engineering compensation is just sad. but hey, it's Blizzard!