[jpalawaga]

From what I've heard, Netflix has really diluted the culture that people know of from the Patty McCord days.

In particular, they have been revising their compensation structure to issue RSUs, add in a bunch of annoying review process, add in a bunch of leveling and titles, begin hiring down market (e.g. non-sr employees), etc.

In addition to doing this, shuffling headcount, budgets, and title quotas around has in general made the company a lot more bureaucratic.

I think, as streaming matured as a solution space, this (what is equivalent to cost-cutting) was inevitable.

If Netflix was running the same team/culture as it was 10 years ago, I'd like to say that they would have been able to pull of streaming.

[neilv]

Were they not able to hire enough top-skilled people? If not, why not?

Or did they have a lot of needs that they decided didn't require top-skilled people?

Or was this a beancounter thing, of someone deciding that the company was paying more money on staffing than they needed to, without understanding it?

[jpalawaga]

Combination of 2 and 3. The business changed. Streaming was more or less a solved problem for Netflix. They needed money for content, not expensive engineers. Ted is co-ceo… you can see where the priority is.

[AtlasBarfed]

My observation is that Netflix is one of those places that brags about how they do so much with so little employees.

[dboreham]

Few. Little employees would be...small.