They used to allow crawlers and Twitter and some other links through, but they're almost entirely behind a paywall now.links through Facebook or Twitter may still work, but they definitely do not work through Google anymore.
I’ve seen other sites that do the same, it’s as if they just have a paywall permanently now and only say you can get a few free articles rather than mean it.
You can never seem to trick it even if you want to...
Please don't do this. There's nothing new to say, so the discussions are tedious and therefore off topic. Also, the question has been decided on HN for many years and is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
No one likes the current solution, it's just that the alternatives would suck worse.
As a small publisher, strongly disagree with your stance. I regularly find articles of ours that have been re-published years ago without our consent. Unfortunately, the time it takes to file DMCA complaints is onerous, and this is for our relatively small publication. Despite attempts to deal with this, I still find republished articles that have been around for years. These republished articles do cause actual harm to our business, as they sometimes rank higher in search engine results than the original article.
Larger publications, such as the WSJ would probably need several people working full time to deal with this situation, and still fail at catching many instances of infringement. In the case of an infringing article appearing on the front page of HN, that infringement leads to widespread unauthorized distribution.
You wrote in a different comment "HN would suck worse without NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc."
That argument is effectively: It is better to allow infringement, because the articles are worth reading.
Just because something is worth stealing does not mean it should be stolen.
Maybe if HN wants to contribute to supporting journalism – or at least finding a solution to the "problem" – you'll allow the "pain" of not supporting copyright infringement. Pain, after all, can be motivating.
No one will feel that “pain” except submitters. No one is not going to sub to WSJ because they can just lurk around on HN until the article they want to read is posted. That just doesn’t make sense.
Maybe it is copyright infringement, maybe it’s fair use. Either way it is unsurprising. When I got the physical paper it was easy to share it with a coworker (I just handed him the newspaper) or I taped it up in the office kitchen to show everyone, or I clipped an article and sent it to a friend (you know in an envelope with a stamp,) If it was time sensitive I could call someone and tell the to buy today’s paper... They didn’t have to subscribe to read one day’s paper, much less a single article. *For the record, I’m a paid WSJ subscriber.
As a former wsj subscriber I wish I could pay a la cart for the article. Perhaps $1-2?
$37/month is high for a news source I usually read less than 5 articles per month. I already pay for Bloomberg/Economist/NYT/New Yorker but that’s because I regularly read double digit number of articles from them per month.
At the same time when social media (like hn) sends me to wsj I would gladly contribute proportionally to my utilization.
I didn't know about this, I'll give it a go! Thanks!
Edit: this is kind of interesting. I looked at Bloomberg and a few others and the subscriptions were comparable to their normal digital options. But WSJ is much cheaper on Apple News, why is this so? Is there some catch (like 2nd year is expensive)?
> But WSJ is much cheaper on Apple News, why is this so? Is there some catch (like 2nd year is expensive)?
I have no idea. I mostly got a News+ subscription for the magazines. It has Scientific American, Consumer Reports, National Geographic, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian, Wired, some Mac, Windows, and Linux magazines, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Readers Digest, The New Republic, National Review, The Advocate, and a whole bunch more in a whole bunch of categories.
I only regularly read a few of those, which is enough on its own to justify the subscription. Having all the rest there for when I occasionally want something different is a nice bonus.
This was recently justified to me in an interesting way. Back in the heyday of print newspapers, you had your subscribers, who had the paper delivered every day. Then you had your casual readers who would pick it up at a newsstand if they saw an interesting article.
And then you had your "freeloaders" -- the people who would read the paper at the library or fish it out of the trash or would ask to borrow it from the person on train next to them.
These links are basically for the freeloaders who would never have paid anyway.
Interestingly enough, most US libraries actually offer way to read these things for free by going through the library website, it's just not as easy as using an archive link.
I give WashP as an example because they are extremely anti adblock and most subscribers see ads too. They also have very hard ways to opt out of third party tracking.
I've mentioned this before, but WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (or organization).
-- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior person who takes an interest in your idea?
-- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.
-- For the middle manager who can coast along and not need to move greatly in his/her career, WFH might be great.
-- For the developer who works by tickets on very concrete things and this is nothing new, WFH might be great.
-- For the small company CEO who relies on force of personality and everyone in the same room urgently working to get something done, WFH might be terrible.
There's a huge variability in what WFH means, depending on what you want from the situation.
For some people, remote working is really not good.
And that's aside from the point that, when everyone is remote, you're also competing with the world who is also remote. Jobs and job qualifications (and competition) may change...
I’d like to propose a reframing of your scenarios for objectivity:
WFH is horrible for some people in some scenarios.
WFO (work from office) is also equally terrible for some people in some scenarios. It’s just that people have generally normalized and accepted that these horrible WFO situations are required to feed yourself.
Barring jobs where you cannot function without physical presence, I’d say we need to fundamentally rethink why WFO is a default. And why we think a baseline of suffering for some people is generally OK.
I feel like it's an all or nothing proposition. If you have some WFH and some in the office over time the office folks will out politic the WFH folks. It's also hard to be a remote attendee of a meeting that's happening with some in person. Definitely feel like a third wheel.
IMHO, if you mix WFH and office the WFH folks will end up like internal contractors that don't have the same advancement potential as their office colleagues.
Many larger companies already are coordinating across multiple locations and timezones. One of the teams I work with has people on Eastern US time (though not all in the same office even before this) and Europe.
Another group is in two geographically separated offices in Eastern Time.
Just going to guess that whichever location the team has the most people and wherever manager works from become the places where big decisions are made and promotions come from.
I've worked remote when the rest of the team is in an office, and it's definitely not for all positions/teams.
I agree that situations where N-1 of the team is physically located in an office and one person isn't tend to be difficult. But we're mostly now often talking about significant distribution/WFH.
The groups I'm involved with were already distributed with not much in terms of a "home base."
Yeah, I am early thirties, working in consulting, strong resume including faang member companies... and you will have to drag me back to an office screaming. I simply don't care enough about my career trajectory to have my entire lifestyle dictated by where my office happens to be.
More companies would adopt WFH if they see the success (primarily economically) of other companies who adopt it. Its really as simple as that. Why would any company want to rent expensive commercial real-estate and other overhead if the end result was _worse_ for their bottom line.
Personally, I believe that WFO is still the better way to function. Human collaboration is tied in closely with pre-existing conventions, using multiple modes of communication, and building camaraderie. I think its clear that conventions and ritualistic practices help a ton with social cohesion. Also we use multiple methods to communicate our ideas and feelings - verbal, non-verbal, physical, non-physical, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. Someone punching the air when they've solved a hard problem, or some co-worker who isn't on your team that you only occasionally meet, excitedly telling you a fun story about their vacation or whatever. There is tons of communication that happens between humans in an office that is difficult if not impossible to replicate in a WFH environment. As a society, I think we'd be poorer for that if we lose it.
Commuting sucks is enough! Commuting wastes 52 minutes a day, not counting gas station and maintenance trips. It is expensive, dangerous, and uses around 6-7% of your waking hours while polluting the environment.
Past that:
-If you have kids, you often can't easily get them if they have an emergency at school, or appointments
-WFO encourages buts-in-seats management vs. productivity based management
-Background noise
-Interruptions to your workflow that break creative "flow"
-Time spent packing lunch
-Money spent on cafeteria food
Whatever benefits WFO has, it needs to cover commuting costs, loss of life (car accidents), loss of time, loss of concentration, and for the company, the expense of renting and maintaining office space before it can break even in cost-benefit.
WFO nickels and dimes you on equipment. I can bill out 300k in hours a year but getting a company to spend $1,000 on monitors, chair, keyboard, etc. is like pulling teeth. They expect me to work on a 14" laptop and maybe an external monitor. At home I can use my setup.
If I'm WFH why should I spend my money and use my equipment to work? I have a large gaming monitor, why should my company expect everyone to make similar purchases to be able to work properly? In office even though companies are miserly, they do provide a baseline of equipment that is good enough for most people.
Commuting, (mostly) fixed hours, noise levels, personal space.
To expand a bit on the fixed hours, early-birds tend to be fine with getting to the office early, but night owls will either get kicked out or have to deal with people vacuuming floors around them.
Our workplace has a nice solution for this. Office timings are 8 to 5. Early birds can arrive at 8 and leave by 5. But this is not enforced. Many night owls only arrive by 11 or 12 and leave later or leave by 3 or 4 and continue work from home at their time. Leadership just needs to be flexible enough.
I've just gone back to WFO and here are the reasons it sucks for me:
- an extra hour per day getting ready and travelling which increases stress and is ~250 hours per year simply wasted - many people have to waste much more.
- my office has terrible facilities. there is no natural light, heating is inconsistent and it's dusty.
- my office is attached to a factory so i have to listen to lathes running for a full 8 hours per day while i'm trying to solve problems.
- no eating area so i pretty much sit in my car for my lunch break
- people are constantly interrupting me with trivial issues that have absolutely no priority
- i don't really socialise at work much anyway so what's the point? i'm the only developer so there's no benefit from being near a team
Instead I could sit in my office at home with a superior set up, superior comfort, relaxing environment. I can go and have a lie down whenver I want. I can start and finish work at odd times if necessary. I can go to the gym on my lunch break.
It's just no contest for me personally although I must admit the quality of my office environment is certainly below average.
You get sick more often, especially with an open office setup. Even pre-COVID, it was kinda common during flu and cold season to have a big chunk of your team sniffling or wheezing. Someone who should stay home inevitably shows up because of an important meeting or they don't want to use a sick day or whatever, and then half the office ends up sick.
I agree. I was seated next to a guy with a small kid, so naturally he got sick all the time. And then I got sick as well
I usually tell people to go home if they are sick, but some of them are too proud and say "I'm fine". Since I'm not the manager, I can't force them, but I think I'll switch to home office when those scenarios happen again
Any other suggestions how to deal with those situations?
I think the biggest issue is that you need to live near your office. This usually means you have to spend a lot more on housing than you would otherwise. This is why I went remote - we couldn't afford any houses near my workplace.
- Being tethered to a physical location means limited options for where you can live. You live where you have to, not necessarily where you want to.
- Commuting sucks, unless you live in a nice neighborhood and can walk to work or take a leisurely ride. This doesn't exist for most people. It's especially bad in the bay area if you need to take BART. Who wants to be packed inside a train like sardines with people smoking crack. Seriously, have you ever seen a train station during commuting hours? They're 10 rows deep of people waiting to get on. That's assuming it isn't shut down for some random reasons. I should also mention wasting around 2 hours a day that you could spend on more sleep or hobbies.
- Open offices suck and are a poor excuse that they increase collaboration. Constant disruptions (both sound and visual noise), can't have any personal conversations and need to find a meeting room or hide in the hallways. Not to mention, I don't need/want to see my coworkers on facebook all day while they complain that they don't have enough time to finish their tasks.
- WFH can contribute to a more flexible schedule. Most people cannot focus non-stop for hours on end. It's healthy to take breaks but you can't do much beyond walking around your office (if it's in a safe location) if you're tied to the office.
I'm a working parent, with ADHD and only just recovering form depression and stress, and the increased WFH during 2020 has been the only thing that kept me from breaking.
I've been able to spend significantly less energy on work, while being more productive. The commute, the open office and the useless meetings, really are murder.
So I think it's hard to say anything like you're trying to. We actually did research on it, because we're a 10,000 employee organisation, and the only groups who have reported a negative effect are managers. Productivity is up as well. That's still too general to say anything though.
The real trick will be figuring out how to create an environment where some people work more from home than others. Which isn't actually easy, because you kind of gotta schedule it so that people don't take turns being alone in the office.
>Which isn't actually easy, because you kind of gotta schedule it so that people don't take turns being alone in the office.
This is going to be one of the problems. Some people who desperately want to come back to the office do so and discover that most of their co-workers haven't. And some of those co-workers have, with management blessing, moved outside the easy "drop in for one day a week" radius.
I expect office/remote workstyles are going to be popular questions in interviews over at least the next few years.
Maybe WeWork will make a comeback. People that need to have others around or need a commute so they can listen to pod casts can go to a shared workspace.
I’m not a parent but I have adhd and working from home is extremely hard for me, much harder than I want to admit. I just can’t concentrate at home and always end up distracted and doing something else.
I can’t for the sake of it focus on work in my apartment.
>-- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.
Yeah, this is one of the things that keeps coming up in this discussion that bugs me. There's working from home, and then there's working from home during a global pandemic that has shut down large swathes of the economy.
I wish everyone writing these articles or trying to analyze wfh performance data would acknowledge that "not being in the office" isn't the high-impact change: "having to take care of children while doing my full time job" is.
If we brought everybody working from home back into the office, but also had them bring their kids along and try to help them through zoom class and make their lunches and stuff, it would be chaos.
Exactly! It’s very, very difficult to focus for extended periods of time when your kid gets up and tries to walk away from their class every 10 minutes. Or wants a snack, to talk or play, because you now encompass the entirety of their social life.
> For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior person who takes an interest in your idea?
This doesn’t match my experience joining a fully distributed company straight out of college. I think, as always, this has much more to do with company culture.
In distributed companies with strong communication cultures, it isn’t difficult to prove yourself a go-getter. There are easy avenues for asking lots of questions, and there are always lots of unsolved problems. In a culture which promotes learning and helpfulness, it’s easy to get an answer from a more experienced individual by pinging them directly.
I would even suggest that if you have a strong async communication system on top of something like Slack, it is even easier to prove yourself than in person. Anyone and everyone has the ability to create posts and spark discussions which are very visible. You can, for example, write a post about a deep dive you did into X system, and post it for all devs to read internally. People will notice your efforts!
This depends on having a great culture and good systems in place, of course. Many places don’t, which is why I think the focus ought to be more on remote culture and practices for distributed work.
* a post-standup, periodic “coffee time” meeting my team has
* multiple random channels my team and also company has, with such topics as ‘allow developers to yell, all messages here must be in all-caps-rage’ as well as a literal regular random channel that has lots of memes
* an open, inclusive and encouraging culture where people promoting ideas at a team or department and possibly even company level is commonplace and encouraged.
We haven’t had much of a lack of culture and idea generation. I’m sorry you’re suggesting you’re not experiencing this.
> -- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior person who takes an interest in your idea?
Isn't this the worst case outcome? How are those young go-getters supposed to turn into the senior engineer who can actually thrive in the work-from-home world?
Oh, one of my junior players has this as an issue now. And it manifest as scope creep for everything we assign. They just see other things that could be added, or add work to other layers of the stack. It's easier to keep folk on track when they are closer.
It's why we use an always on RTC thing so it's easy for crew to ping me ad-hoc for guidance.
You've focused on the employee and not the employer.
Of course, the employer's wishes for the (hard to measure) productivity of the employees lead to->Employers profitability->Employee salaries+opportunities.
I think in your list of types of roles, the only one who may be helped by WFH is the developer who works on concrete tickets. The lack of cohesion, creativity, etc by these all remote teams is palpable to me.
In the article he says he'd be up for 4 days in the office and 1 day work from home after covid. These CEOs just can't let go of the 5 day work week. It's so frustrating. 5 day work weeks don't leave enough time for employees to take care of their personal lives, in my opinion. This results in employees taking more sick days and not concentrating at work because they have to deal with their personal business while at work. I think we need to move to a 30 hour work week. Four 7.5 hour work days would vastly improve working in my opinion, whether it is remote or in the office.
Either that or provide humane vacation time. In the USA you accrue like 11 days of vacation per year. Contrast with many places in Europe such as Sweden where you are entitled to at least 25 days. Not to mention the cultural differences where most jobs in the US will shame you for enjoying your meager time off.
Don't even get me started with "unlimited" vacation policies which are a joke. When I used to interview with companies and they told me they had unlimited vacation, I let them know immediately that I respect their time and dont want to waste it any further because I can already tell I dont want to work with them.
This is why I ONLY do contract work now. Truly unlimited vacation and however many workdays per week I want.
>>Contrast with many places in Europe such as Sweden where you are entitled to at least 25 days.
As far as I know, that's a minimum required in all EU countries. Nowadays I think that companies that don't provide at least 30 paid days off a year are not worth working for. 25 is like the bare minimum.
Netflix has unlimited vacation. It works well because they encourage people to take vacation, starting at the top. The CEO always makes a big deal about how he's taking 1-2 weeks off at a time, and encourages all the VPs to do the same.
Not all unlimited vacation cultures are bad. The best way to find out is to ask how much vacation the CxOs took and how much vacation the hiring manager took. If they can't answer that, then be concerned.
In the USA, since the standard vacation is two weeks total a year if you have a good job, no one takes more than a week off at once usually. The fact that he's taking two is significant.
OMG you poor buggers.. I'm in Australia and admitidly in a job that has very good worker relations but legally it's a minimum of 20 days per year. I've rarely had less that 4 weeks off per year (mostly in one of two blocks) and as we can bank our leave, it is possible to take a batch of 6 or 8 weeks if you plan ahead.
How is it possible that you don't all end up in the mad house with work absolutely dominating your entire lives?
Even at salaries far below Netflix-tier offers, many people depend on consumption to stay sane. Media, food, buying unnecessary items, seeking the next sale, etc.
I'm not buying that they're doing it out of the generosity of the business. Otherwise why not just offer a generous number of days vacation in the benefits package? They're making it unlimited because they're counting on people using less than average vacation time so the business can save money while maintaining a good image.
I worked at an unlimited-vacation-time company for years, and I loved it. I would easily take 5-6 weeks off per year. I worked my ass off when I was there, and so there was no issue.
In the same way you count on your employer to provide you pay every two weeks, you should be able to count on them to provide you with the amount of vacation time you need to be both happy and productive. If they fail in either of these duties, it's time to quit.
Yes, I'm sure some companies "hope you take less time off than would otherwise happen" but that's really short-sighted of them, as the question isn't how long you're in the office, it's how much are you getting done relative to your goals. A company that can't see that likely has other issues IMO.
More likely, they would rather avoid paying you out accrued PTO on your last day.
I think the "unlimited" thing started as just trying to get the vacation time off the books as a liability, and treating it as "no time off" happened for cultural reasons.
Ugly and hostile reasons, but still cultural -- I don't think there was ever an evil cabal of CEO's rubbing their hands over the thought of engineers working 50 weeks a year.
That's how a lot of these things work: There's (almost) never an actual conspiracy of people meeting in secret to orchestrate the terrible things that have been done to our society. It's just that given the way our version of capitalism has been set up for the last few decades, the incentives are structured such that already-rich people can get themselves even more money by finding more and more legal-if-shady ways to squeeze everyone else.
It's mostly for exerting peer pressure and having to pay nothing out if someone leaves (versus paying out their PTO). Unlimited vacation is a scam, next time a company tries that, mark off the entire calendar for the rest of the year.
I thought Netflix was the company that, in another thread, it was mentioned that 2 years later, anyone below “above average performance” was let go.
How many long vacations can a small subset of the company continue to take while still delivering ‘above average performance’ relative to other employees they experience the regular fears of taking vacation that come with unlimited vacation?
We either need entrepreneurs who are willing to test this as a way to get better talent, or engineers willing to take a pay cut. Either way, it won’t happen at big companies.
I agree. I think four 5 or 6 hour days would be the best and would actually be very productive, probably even more productive than the current 40 hour week. I think it's realistic for an employee to put in a solid five hours of focused work for four days in a row, which is way better than an unfocused 40 hours.
This doesn't surprise me. Netflix was always very anti-WFH. When I was there I know of only one team that did it, and that was the OpenConnect team (Netflix's custom CDN). And the main reason that was allowed was because the team was spread all over the world.
The Netflix culture is very strongly built around in-person collaboration.
One interesting way this manifested itself was when the new HQ was built, it had a ton of 2-4 person meeting rooms, more than I've seen at any other big tech company. This was a reflection of the many 2-4 person meetings that were scheduled every day. In the old building, you'd often see a 10 person room being used by two or three people because there were no small rooms left.
Sure you can replicate this on zoom, but it's just not quite the same as sitting across from someone reading their body language.
Had about 30 of these small meetings rooms on each floor at my last company. I find that most people use them to isolate themselves from all the interupts in the office.
There were "phone booths" for isolating oneself from the office, but it was generally frowned upon to use a 2/3 person room for oneself, unless it was just a quick phone call.
The trick is to book them with a couple of like minded people. Nice quiet private office basically and your calendar looks like it’s already full so people don’t book you into useless meetings.
I agree that many meetings of 4+ people can probably be done more efficiently via email or wiki or whatever, but I've found 2-3 person meetings far more effective than any other means for information transfer and decision making.
In my experience, it also depends a lot on the type of information being transferred. There's a lot of information that is much off being expressed in a chat program, where the person can take the time to formulate the best way to express the idea. If the same thing was being discussed in a meeting, it would take the time of everyone there while the person went back and forth coming up with the right wording.
Propose a "memo culture". That was how we managed larger meetings at Netflix (and I'm pretty sure we stole it from Amazon).
Before the meeting, everyone who has a stake in what's being discussed contributes to a memo outlining their thoughts on it. Then everyone reads it ahead of the meeting.
The meeting is then just to hash out what's in the doc and agree on which already proposed solution will be adopted.
I'd caution against memo culture, actually. I only have a sample size of 2, but in two organizations I've been in that tried to adopt something similar, this is what happened:
In the first org, there was a lot of pressure that any such memos had to be highly researched and data driven (also borrowed from Amazon, I imagine). In reality what this meant is that drafting a memo even for the smallest decisions or ideas became a large laborious effort, which nobody wanted to do and/or didn't have time to do it. The result was that everyone procrastinated on decision making, if they even participated in it in the first place, and I knew a fair share of colleagues who didn't even bother to pitch their ideas because of hating the memo system.
In the second org, it was the opposite problem: in an attempt to make memos "painless", there was much less pressure on making the memos "high quality". The result: every "memo" was a hastily scrawled together draft of random notes that didn't make much sense, and we had to spend most time in meetings going over the "memo" to decipher it and have the author explain it anyway.
No one is in charge forever, lead by example and if you’re doing things right eventually people will follow. You are as much a part of the culture as the current “boss”
If you hold a meeting, suggest using a memo? Or just ask your manager if they'd consider it? There are many ways to affect change within an organization.
I'll add to that one very important component: meetings where everyone comes prepared. Even when people are essential and/or required, if they don't want to be there then it lowers the bar for the entire meeting. Inefficiency (and laziness) can be contagious. But when everyone arrives with military precision, pen in hand and phone in pocket, you'd be amazed at difference.
Also, the fewer attendees the better, in my experience. 3-5 is a good size. 1-2 "higher ups" and 1-3 with "boots on the ground". More than that and it risks devolving into chit-chat and speculation instead of bullet-pointed queries and actions.
I haven't seen any downsides to having these smaller meetings via zoom though. Sure if someone has kids running around that would be less than ideal, but that's not so much a WFH problem as it is a pandemic problem which will eventually go away.
Big thing I miss with in person meetings is the ability to start sketching on the board. Sure you have virtual whiteboards and stuff but it’s not the same. The bandwidth of idea transmission is just lower online.
Last year I tried a recent digital whiteboard (basically a fast 55" touch screen), and it felt really good. If those things had real-time syncing - connected to meeting software, of course - and were affordable enough, I could see them really taking off.
Can you not just use it with Zoom's whiteboard feature? A quick search online showed a few touch displays in the range of 1500 - 2500 for mid 30" to mid 50" in size. Although not sure how responsive they are.
That doesn't match my observations over the last few years where every company I worked at was open office. Usually there are either nooks, rooms or just hallways away from the desks with big whiteboards.
From what I've noticed, the overall pace of zoom is meetings is slower. When in-person, the one talking can pick up subtle indications that other's get the point or that someone else wants to talk. Over zoom I've seen more tendency for people to go on unnecessarily.
I've also personally noticed an interesting subtle difference: in-person there seems to be a tendency to contribute if someone is present in the meeting and hasn't said anything. With zoom the general tendency seems to be the opposite (the longer someone is on mute, the more likely they are to stay on mute).
> Sure you can replicate this on zoom, but it's just not quite the same as sitting across from someone reading their body language.
I see this as a positive, no need to read body language for most tech company meetings - while troubleshooting a network issue, doing code review or talking through a new feature. It may be different for HR or a law firm, where its about "judging your opponent" or similar double speak but 99% of tech meetings can easily be replicated over zoom and are better of without any of that anyway.
This is a very engineering way to look at things. But it's definitely wrong. Even in a code review it's important to see their body language. How are they receiving your feedback? Are they uncomfortable? Do you need to change they way you address your concerns so they can be heard better?
Not everyone communicates like you do. If you want to be an effective communicator, you have have to tailor your output to the recipient. Body language is an important part of that.
I agree with this counterview. I manage a small dev team, I've found many inexperienced developers are less willing to admit an issue in understanding a tasks requirements (or how to complete a task) during a zoom call, especially when there is an audience (even +1 additional person).
I try to read body language to gauge if I need to explain further without putting people on the spot. I can usually can get by with video-on Zoom calls, but that's still a bit different... I can't make eye contact with a specific person and judge the reaction since they don't know who I'm looking at
I'm guessing we'll have that feature in the near future. iOS already "fixes" your eyes so that it appears you're looking at the camera despite looking at the screen. From there to detecting who you are looking at, and adjusting the image just for that person, seems quite feasible.
All I'd say is; Netflix have a pretty extreme culture[1]. From the outside it looks pretty solid, but I understand the reality is that if you are not above average for two performance cycles in a row they let you go. There is an expectation of drive, and constant commitment (no judgement; it works for them, though I'd never work there!)
WFH naturally allows more flex into your real life. This will not vibe well with Netflix's culture IMO.
I have a friend that works there. He doesn't have "drive" in the sense that he works a lot, but he is good at what he does, likes software development, and thrives there.
One week he might work 60 hours and the next he might work 20. But he is the best developer in my group of friends. And he makes in a year what I make in 10.
Question about your last statement (I may need this clarification because English is not my first language). The statement might mean that he makes 10x more money than you, or that his output is 10x greater than yours (or both!). Based on the context of your reply, I think it means his output is 10x greater than yours. Is that correct?
One of my friends who worked there as an engineer made $500k cash and my other friend who works there makes $3M/yr. The latter is pretty high up, but those are serious numbers.
Netflix famously doesn't offer stock based compensation as part of their comp arrangements. They offer you a non-trivial cash salary though, that would easily be the sum of cash and equity at a similarly situated company. At least, that's my understanding, anyways.
Now, if they opted into the ESPP and stock options programs with a $1M TC, remember NFLX has 5-6X'd in the last 3 years. Someone who allocated a lot of their TC towards equity could easily be making $3M/yr today.
Probably not. The SWEs top out around $600K a year. $3M/yr is on the high end for a VP.
Unless they're counting stock gains. In which case that could easily be a SWE. Netflix lets you choose your stock/cash ratio in your comp, and if you went stock heavy you could be at $3M a year if you've been there a while.
Usually if you're making that much, you're fairly mid to late career. That means you probably have kids. Which means you probably want a house in an area with good schools.
That house will cost $2M at least if you want to be near the office, which means, assuming you can collect the $400,000 down payment, will leave with a mortgage/tax/insurance payment of about $9,000 a month, or $108,000 a year. The tax man will also take about 1/2 of your earnings.
That leaves you with less than $200,000 a year. You'll spend probably at least $50,000 on food, clothes, activities, etc for the kids and yourself.
So now you're saving $150,000 a year, if you're super frugal.
Let's assume you're ok with retiring out of the Bay Area. You'll still need a couple million to retire on. At that rate, it will still take you decade to do it.
All that being said, I have a friend who did exactly that. He worked as a senior/principal engineer for about a decade, was single the whole time, lived super frugal, and retired back to Kansas. I hear he just sits at home working on open source, going to the bars every night.
a large amount of this is taxed away. California's top tax bracket is an additional 13.3% per year. High cost of living here also. Although I generally agree with your sentiment, it may not work out to as much money as you think in the end.
Your confusion is understandable especially if English isn't your first language. That leads me to believe you don't live in the Bay Area. But no, the parent is really saying that the friend makes ten times more money. That's not literally true but Netflix is known for paying extremely generously. The tradeoff is that you give your lifeblood in return.
No, OP means that their friend at Netflix has a salary that is 10 times greater than their own. This is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but with the stock compensation, probably not much of an exaggeration.
> The stock program was based on options you purchased with a strike price 2x the current price.
Unless they changed it, the option price was 40% of the strike and the strike was the current price on purchase day, which was monthly. Gave a nice dollar cost average. But you could only put in up to 50% of your salary, plus you got an automatic 5% of your salary put into the stock program.
When I worked there the price was 20% of the strike and you could do 100% of your salary. I had friends who did 100% of their salary, which are now worth tens of millions.
> but I understand the reality is that if you are not above average for two performance cycles in a row they let you go.
Not sure where you heard that, but it's not true. There is no such thing as a "performance cycle" at Netflix. Performance is evaluated continuously by your manager. There is a once a year process where anyone can give feedback to anyone else, and it's expected that your manager give you feedback, but nothing in that feedback should be a surprise.
I heard it from them [1], slide 23/24. Caveats; that is an old deck and it is a passing reference. I did a lot more research last year as part of exploring other company cultures and found out more - my understanding was 2 adequates in a row = severance. Unfortunately I don't have the other references to hand (which is not great, sorry).
That deck is accurate, but I'm not sure where you're getting the "two in a row" part. There are no performance evaluations, therefore there is no "two in a row".
Risky projects were fine, because your manager understood the risk. Long term was fine too, because presumably you had intermediate goals that could show progress towards the goal, or at least progress towards disproving the thesis.
> All I'd say is; Netflix have a pretty extreme culture[1]
> 1. https://jobs.netflix.com/culture
Scary. From some extracts, it seems more a cult than a company:
> You question actions inconsistent with our values
> You seek what is best for Netflix, rather than what is best for yourself or your group
> You accomplish amazing amounts of important work
They're taken out of context, but could be interpreted as hints to how the company really works.
If it is, I'm leaving my FAANG role for Netflix - it's very refreshing to hear people might be motivated by larger causes.
Most of my last week was spent trying to avoid fallout from our team's massively skewed performance reviews: our first promotion case in 2 years is the colleague who performatively did no work for months while the manager was out, bullied me for continuing to schedule and work with our partner teams, and encouraged another co-worker to have a meltdown about it that cost them significantly.
> If it is, I'm leaving my FAANG role for Netflix - it's very refreshing to hear people might be motivated by larger causes.
I don't get it. What's the larger cause here? Netflix is not doing anything special for the society. If you talk about engineering, they certainly have an excellent engineering culture, but I don't think they're implicitly more talented than many other companies.
I actually see it (but obviously, it's my opionion) as a very skilfull marketing targeted at outstanding but naive engineers (that is, people who sacrifice their work/life balance for the company). In a cynical way, it's like the nigerian scam, but oriented at intelligent people.
> Most of my last week was spent trying to avoid fallout from our team's massively skewed performance reviews
A company like Alphabet is more than 10x the size of Netflix. Politics and inefficiency is pretty much inevitable at those magnitudes.
“If you talk about engineering, they certainly have an excellent engineering culture, but I don't think they're implicitly more talented than many other companies.”
If we took a random sample of Netflix engineers and compared them to a company with weak engineering cultures, like Blockbuster, I’m sure we could agree that Netflix engineers are more talented.
But we aren't comparing them to a random company, we are comparing them to the rest of FAANG. Do they have a much stronger engineering culture than Google/etc?
Delivering high-quality entertainment people enjoy watching, and doing it in a way that "just works?"
I don't know if that's the larger cause as they pitch it to engineers but as a Netflix subscriber, it sure seems like they care a lot about that cause; and as a cinephile I think it's definitely doing something special for society. Not unique, but special: these production-and-streaming companies are revolutionizing film art, and happen to also employ a lot of my friends.
But... I probably wouldn't work there as a techie.
I strongly disagree. It doesn't "just work"; it has a very specific target, for whom I don't doubt it works, but it costs a lot to the rest.
Until a short time ago, you couldn't even directly remove entries from the "Continue watching" row, unless you used the sledgehammer approach of marking a series as never watched (which, conceptually, doesn't make sense - I may want to stop watching a movie, but still retain the information that I've watched it).
Row categories don't have a fixed position; sometimes I have to scroll to find the "Continue Watching".
It's impossible to remove movies/series already seen from the interface. Not only that, but the interface has a row with movies already watched.
There's no management concept, I mean, even very basic functionality (the only concept is starring).
Searching movies requires navigating through undesirable entries (in particular, already watched ones), rather than helping the user finding new content.
This is a intentional design, and a clever one. However, it's shoved-in-the-throat fast-food rather than slow food. It's not random that they've introduced the speedup functionality. I believe that Netflix is meaningful to society as much as McDonald is; it's fast and cheap, but I wouldn't classify this as a benefit to the food culture.
Even if all the above was false, the movies catalogue is relatively small. I can tolerate the above (although I don't, really), but as a cinema lover, I need a very large catalogue.
I have worked for Netflix for over 5 years, and its the best place I've ever worked. It has the no-bullshit feel of a small company combined with the advantages (pay, benefits) of a big company. Almost everybody I've worked with is amazing.
I admit that the culture was daunting, and even after going through an L5 -> L6 promo at Google, I was worried about not being able to cut it at Netflix. I was very nervous about this the first year, until the first performance cycle, after which time nobody I knew had been let go. There is honestly much less turn over around me than at Google, for example. To me, this means most people are pretty happy here.
I'm not aware of any stack ranking. If there was, then 95% of my group must have been above average for the last 5 years since almost nobody has been let go. To be clear, yes, people in my group have been let go. However, I was seldom surprised when somebody was let go.
You might not be able to answer this, but what’s the QA culture there? How do project timelines work there? Are there project managers for all projects?
I ask because I can’t remember the last bug, visual artifact, or non-intuitive UI design from anything Netflix related, even in my awful Roku TV. What I don’t understand is how it’s possible for management to exist that understands how much of an achievement that is, and how much man time that takes (assuming here).
Not everyone's a good fit for their job, and dealing well with low performers is critical to building and maintaining a well-oiled organization. I've worked at a company that consistently failed to "deal well with poor performers" and man, it took a village to get poor or toxic folks walked. All the meanwhile they were crapping up the place.
The only surprises I have had is for people that have run into socially, but are in other groups that I don't work with, and hence have no personal knowledge of their performance.
Alright, that's fair then. It doesn't detract from my overall impression though; Netflix is a company that tries to bulldoze it's way to the top, using the tried and tested tools of rewarding high performers richly while getting rid of 'looser' quickly, which always walks a thin ethical line. It works for a while in my experience (I have worked in such organizations) - but it turns toxic when the defeats inevitably pile up.
These sound like things most companies claim to have.
Most companies have a set of values. Some, like Amazon, actively encourage questioning things that go against those values. In my company, we haven't as deeply enshrined the notion of questioning things that go against the claimed company values. As a result, no one cares for the values, and people tend to ignore any org/department leader espousing any value (company or otherwise). The common refrain is "That's just talk, and few follow it." A company where you can actively question people's actions when they are inconsistent with the claimed values would be quite refreshing.
> You seek what is best for Netflix, rather than what is best for yourself or your group
First, to clarify different interpretations: They're likely saying to avoid decisions that will benefit you/your team/your department at the expense of the company as a whole. If that's the case, I understand the sentiment, and most companies claim the same. Mine definitely does. However, again, it's rarely practiced and the company is full of folks who do things to benefit themselves while hurting their team/department/company. If Netflix's culture solves this, then this is great! In any case, even if they fail at this, the statement is in line with most companies.
> You accomplish amazing amounts of important work
Well, a lot of companies want that. Probably few actually follow through like Netflix. I agree I probably wouldn't want to work there because of this, but I also don't think there is anything wrong with it. They're up front about it, pay a lot, and from what I hear they pay generous severance pay - the idea being that you're getting fired is not meant to be a statement about your abilities.
What's the difference between culture and cult? Is it a cult to say that everyone is responsible for holding each other accountable to do the job they are paid to do?
>if you are not above average for two performance cycles in a row they let you go.
that naturally results in what i anecdotally heard - anytime some corporate BS (which basically means anything not helping delivery as delivery is the most important thing at Netflix - again according to what i heard) is being pushed onto the employees there, the employees upon quickly mentally weighting "rejecting the BS vs. suffering performance hit and failing the delivery and loosing the half-million (or frequently even more) cash comp as the result" forcefully and successfully reject the BS most of the times :)
It seems like an awesome way to run a business, with some pretty nasty caveats.
And those caveats are that (a) you have a substantial and enforced amount of employee empowerment (ability to push back on poor tasking from above) & (b) you have an incredibly objective and ungameable performance evaluation system.
If you're going to all in on measuring people by performance, then you'd better be really good at actually measuring performance (and preventing managers from influencing measurements).
to me it was told mostly in terms of delivery not "performance" per.se., ie. basically the only thing what matters is failing the delivery vs. successfully delivering . The employee empowerment comes naturally as they are going to lose that great job if they don't push back on anything what impacts delivery.
> The employee empowerment comes naturally as they are going to lose that great job if they don't push back on anything what impacts delivery.
That's not employee empowerment, that's an employee incentive. To the extent that the person doing the tasking remains a the company and the IC doesn't when this happens, that's not empowerment.
Empowerment is an ICs ability to effect change, not whether they're sufficiently motivated to.
Reading the absolute claim in the title ("no benefits at all") makes me dismiss his opinion instantly.
You can claim it's net negative, but not seeing anything positive probably just means you are a workaholic with no life and can't fruit a good debate about it.
Yeah, in my company we are seeing a lot of positive impacts, especially for those who live far from the offices, and are saving 10~15 hours a week from commuting. People can focus more on work, than spend time and energy commuting, and dreading the long commute home
- no water cooler talk and lunchs > bad for team spirit/work friendships
- heated discussions going stale and ending up in resentment > easier to resolve in person when you get a good feeling for how the other feels (and interact about non-problematic things, e.g. the mentioned lunch together)
- grabbing a busy person when you feel the time is right
- harder to motivate yourself when you are on low-energy or stuck
In the end, everything depends on the team and the person right?
I would like going back to the office. I miss the espresso machine, the snacks, seeing people, playing boardgames after work. But that's because it's a 10 min. walk for me to go there.
For some coworkers, it's a 1 hour drive each way, having to pay for parking, and needing to leave work no later than X because otherwise they have to pay extra.
Also, I can concentrate more at home. In my previous job, I ended up moving to a small cubicle that was not being used, because I couldn't stand the noise of other people talking around me (had some loud speakers there).
The “principle of charity” would suggest interpreting the title as “no net benefit”.
FWIW I personally think that remote work is hugely beneficial to the employees - but I don’t have enough data to figure out what the net impact is on the employer
I think it’s only a matter of time until people with opinions like his look like dinosaurs. I’ve seen companies where overall productivity has increased and management still want to get everyone back in the office. I’ve noticed there are a few types of people who want to go back:
1. People in more social roles (e.g. marketing) who spend the day working together, joking/laughing/being loud and disruptive.
2. Some management who don’t like spending entire days on zoom (understandable).
3. People who spend most of their time using company money on first class flights all around the world networking/visiting other offices.
4. Older people (50+) who will always believe in the magic benefits of being in the office and don’t want a huge lifestyle change this late in their careers.
I think people either want to or don’t want to WFH for selfish reasons. Just like there have also always been people who don’t want to work from an office for selfish reasons. One option is not going to work for everyone and doing it halfway will not be good either. Do what’s best for the company. Execs need to look at the data - how is output? Morale? Finances? Employee turnover? If it’s improved move to full WFH if not, full office (with a little more flexibility now you know you can trust people).
As long as Netflix continues paying top-of-market they'll have no problem attracting talent regardless of whether they allow WFH. It's the companies that don't pay top-of-market that have to think longer and harder about WFH.
If you consider ability to work flex hours or WFH as part of your employment package, they don't offer WFH but they do offer more money. Overall comp is still high. What additional data do you need? Relative value of WFH vs cash to various demographics?
What’s best for the company doesn’t mean it’s best for the individual employees. People need to focus on what’s best for them because we’ve probably all learned at this point that the company puts their needs above your own.
Is team netflix really afraid that if they made quality instead of quality that people wouldn't subscribe? $4/week for 1 excellent movie and 2 good TV shows week, for the whole household/freeloaders, including offline and HD, is a pretty darn good deal and everyone gets to sleep.
I’m so pleased that someone isn’t afraid to reject the WFH kool aid.
Just because certain personality types work better in solitude doesn’t mean it’s one-size-fits-all.
Others are suffering loneliness, marginalisation, are struggling inside their own heads, are stuck in tiny apartments or don’t have access to outdoor space. If you hate the office that badly, you’re probably working at the wrong place.
And yeah, a truly creative collaborative working environment can’t be replicated over video call.
Before you refer to "WFH kool aid", it's critical to realize that the vast majority of jobs have been office-bound and that WFH wasn't even an option for most people who wanted it.
I know I'd rather be coding from a beach than in a fluorescent-lit cubicle (and I do). Even if it's more productive for Bill to barge into my cubicle than wait for me to respond to his Slack message.
Let's at least let our work culture hit a nice 50/50 split between office jobs and remote jobs before we damn the WFH movement too much.
Btw, the "kool aid" you're seeing is companies grappling with a pandemic. It's not like fanatical WFHers have spontaneously become ascendent in our society.
> If you hate the office that badly, you’re probably working at the wrong place.
That's quite a departure from "WFH isn't one-size-fits-all". If working from home isn't for everyone, why do you assume the office is?
> And yeah, a truly creative collaborative working environment can’t be replicated over video call.
Strongly disagree. I don't think you even real-time communication, much less video is required to have strong collaboration. There are certainly times when it helps, but even in those times I've never felt held back by jumping on a quick call vs an in-person meeting, and we almost never do video.
I hear you, but at least for me and my team we haven't found it to be an issue. FWIW we're all IT. Programmers, sysadmins etc.
As a manager, there are certainly conversations where I find in-person to be beneficial, and for those video calls are a poor substitute. Reviews, raise negotiations, disciplinary conversations, etc, but these are all discussions where an accurate emotional read is critical for both sides.
On the other hand for discussing algorithms, software architecture, network layouts, server specifications, etc, these can certainly be topics with lots of disagreement, requiring lots of conversation, but if your relying on emotional nuance for or other non-verbal cues for communication I think you've got an unacknowledged problem, where people are communicating clearly enough with their words.
I hate everything about WFH. I like travelling to a different environment each day, interacting with my colleagues, being in a space designed for work (proper seating and desks, aircon), looking someone in the eye when I'm talking to them, feeling the bustle of the city centre when I go for a stroll at lunch. Working from home makes me feel like a widget at the end of an internet connection.
Then again I don't have children and I cycle to work so maybe that's the difference.
You are pretty much describing a coworking space or a good library. I don’t know if you own a house, but you might change your opinion once you’ll be on the search.
> being in a space designed for work (proper seating and desks, aircon)
I haven’t seen a corporate space “designed for work” in years thanks to the cult of the open plan office.
Meanwhile at home I have a nice electrically-adjustable standing desk, an Aeron, an air conditioner set to the precise temperature I alone want it to be, and I can go to the coffee house downstairs if I want to hear people bleat about blockchain.
And yeah, a truly creative collaborative working environment can’t be replicated over video call.
Replicating a truly creative collaborative working environment is impossible everywhere.
Truly creative environments are grown from the resources and people available. You can't copy something that worked elsewhere with different people and expect it to work again.
Also, entirely anecdotally, the band The Postal Service are so called because they created their album by sending each other tapes through the post. They were very creative, and living in different cities, so creative remote work has been achieved at least once.
There is very rarely a one size fit all solution, I don’t think many advocates of WFH support everyone doing it.
Also comparing Covid wfh with normal wfh is vastly different and incomparable. Many of us are stuck inside, whereas normal work from home you could go to a coworking space, or a coffee shop, are the beach. Being forced inside is totally different.
Extroverts have subjected introverts to the in-person office for ages. Suddenly the tables have turned and now there's a problem with "one-size-fits-all"? Give me a break.
It depends entirely what you're working on. If it's just talking with people in a meeting room, that can be entirely replicated. The issue there is that we have bad teleconferencing tools and slow devices/networks such that there is 200ms+ of unnecessary latency on top of the propagation delay, bad quality overcompressed sound, feedback or noise cancelling issues, and so on. Video teleconferencing is in its infancy, engineering wise. Zoom and friends are mediocre at best.
It goes both ways, just because certain personality types work better in a social environment doesn't mean it's a one-size-fits-all. If you hate your living condition that badly, you probably should move somewhere else.
What we should be advocating for is an inclusive policy that allows employees to choose how they want to work.
> If you hate the office that badly, you’re probably working at the wrong place.
I couldn't agree more with this, and from a lot of comments from the past months, this is something that seems to be a big issue with people wanting to work from home.
How does someone in such a high position see things so black and white?
Either way, this world wide work from home experiment isn't even a good one because there's a massive pandemic going on that... Judge wfh after the world is vaccinated.
>How does someone in such a high position see things so black and white?
The CEO of Netflix is a brand in itself. The guy is selling a message, a vision (and a book!) My guess is, deep down inside, he sees several positives of WFH, but that doesn't vibe with his overall message or the culture he's trying to cultivate.
Exactly. I've been working from home for years. I thought this was finally the tipping point for WFH but I now starting to realize people are forming bad opinions about it but due to the circumstances, this is not really a proper "clean" WFH experiment due to the pandemic
Reed Hastings just released a management book (written before the pandemic) which is heavy on traditional, in-person management styles. I think the statements in the book make it difficult for him to suddenly welcome remote work on a permanent basis.
In addition, certain (but not all) aspects of the media business such as creating media do work better in person. This is true of many industries, not just media, and may explain some of his thinking.
What I've noticed at my company is, the people who were massive fans of working from home are now the people who are missing the office the most, except for one or two people. Working from home has it's benefits but it's really not for everyone. I, personally, am looking forward to going back to the office full time. I can go to the office just now but without other people there it just seems pointless to go.
I think we need to understand that everyone is in different situations and not force personal preferences on others.
I think allowing people to work however they want should be the way forward.
I personally don't plan on ever going back into an office. For me, WFH is the best thing that has ever happened. No commute, no open office bullshit, more sleep, more focus, more time for personal hobbies, no working in a filthy neighborhood in downtown SF, options for better accommodations (due to no commute), no waiting for people to finally clear a meeting room, no need to stand in line to go to a smelly restroom, etc. etc.
> no working in a filthy neighborhood in downtown SF
One of the things I miss most about the office is that I live in “ a filthy neighborhood in downtown SF” and the office was wonderful. I also miss the commute, which was on one of the tech busses, so I could sit back and take in the scenery.
I am upgrading neigborhoods though, so that’s something.
I'm in that camp, but for other reasons. I live close to work, but others are doing 1.5-2 hour round-trip commutes. I was pushing for more WFH to keep them sane.
It also helps with recruitment: Your catchment area is bigger if someone only has to come in the office 3x/week vs. 5x.
I guess we need to differentiate between 100% remote, and partial WFH. Just about everyone will be in favour of the latter, but pushing everyone into the former has its consequences.
I wish people would stop thinking about remote working as a binary thing. Everyone's situation is different.
I live a 15 minute walk from my office, so for me going to the office has loads of benefits and few downsides. My brother-in-law pays £100/week to spend 2-3 hours a day commuting in and out of London. For him WFH has been a massive quality of life improvement, especially as there are few benefits to him being in the studio (he's a video editor).
We are split between two offices, one in SF and one in the UK (with everyone wfh at the mometn), and our entire front-end team is remote, it all works pretty well. Sure, there are jobs where being in the office will be prefereable, but we need to start being more flexible in both space and time.
I never liked WFH, but even I didn't realize how much I enjoy working from office. It has made me absolutely resolute not to EVER consider remote work as an option ever again.
Probably. As long as there is one other person in the office, and maybe even without. Having the separation between work and home area is fairly important to me.
There is one guy at my company that goes to the office every day. He is often the only person in the IT department. Considering that even before Corona because was had a distributed team it's not so much different except for lunch.
I can’t imagine anything more “pure negative” than a business culture with stack racking and firing people who aren’t “keepers”. Netflix’s success is from being first to market, pure and simple, and has nothing to do with a toxic management structure that, from all accounts, is abusive to its workforce.
Stack ranking and the "keepers" test are not the same things. There is no stack ranking at Netflix. i.e. they don't let go of the bottom x percent.
In practice every company does a version of the "keepers" test. The difference is where the bar is for keeping. At the very least companies will fire people that are just plain incompetent. That is deciding the keep line is basic competence.
Why do you think they are abusive to their workforce? They are clear about their culture and pay top dollar for engineering talent. There are no surprises when you join.
Remote working has positive and negative effects. First come the positive, over long term the negatives become self evident.
Hopefully Covid-19 exposed people to the positive effects and there will be more remote work opportunities than before. People frequently working 1-3 days a week from home in many professions might become accepted norm.
> I think there are immediate negatives, like collaboration, synchronous decision-making.
This hits companies with teams who sit in the same office. Companies that are more spread out didn't suffer as much. My team of four people is spread of four cities, so we were always remote to each other.
The negatives come from equipment and socialisation:
- most homes are not equipped to be offices (anything from lack of proper chairs to lack of proper quiet places at home, especially if kids are on vacation)
- you do miss interactions with other people at the office even if they are not on your team: lunches together, coffee breaks etc. This can be mitigated (just ask freelancers how they cope), but it will eventually affect most people
- You often end up working more at the detriment of your work-life balance due to some routines just not being there. No one asks you to join them for lunch? You end up skipping lunch because you're working. People are not leaving for home en masse, you end up staying way beyond work hours hacking at "just one more bug and PR, and I'm done".
Work-life balance is really hard to maintain long term when you're WFH; and you don't have the "sniff the air" kind of awareness of politics/power-struggles/etc taking place in the office, which can easily cap your mobility, which anyway is pretty limited; you can end up stuck in one job if your lifestyle depends on WFH; and finally, it's difficult to power through when your motivation is low.
Of course that's from the employee's point of view.
From the company's point of view, I think the only long-term negative that's not already evident in the short term is that you miss chances to develop and promote your top remote talent to maximize their contribution. WFH folks tend to get stuck in a role or at least a very narrow silo. (Remote-first companies try to solve that of course, but I've never seen one up close so I have no comment.)
Source: I'm WFH for about 11 years on the current gig, which I guess counts as "long-term."
Culture and team camaraderie are likely long-term negatives. The existing team relationships can hold things for awhile but it's tough as people join+leave.
I mean its sort of a blanket statement. Do I believe remote work is harder for c suite and writers? Absolutely. Is it harder for engineers? Probably less so.
So glad remote work is simply a bigger undeniable phenomenon that the suits can’t wish away.
Even a four day work week with one day remote for most white collar jobs was a foreign concept until this year. The quality of life improvement for everyone is insane. People have more time to spend with family, cut entire commutes a few times a week, getting that extra hour of sleep, or have that extra hour or two after work, it’s about as close to the mythical European quality of life Americans hear rumors about.
Talking of Netflix, genuinely curious about something...
I know that they have a leadership position today and supposedly hire great engineers, pay them very well and are doing very well in the stock market.
But, in view of numerous other streaming services, purely in today’s context, do they have an engineering edge that is a key strength that will help them keep their leadership position or is that engineering edge no longer relevant and leadership in streaming services would simply be determined by who has the content.
It's no longer the question of "engineering edge". People will subscribe to Disney+ even if it only offers 720p streams with long buffering times. Even now in some countries (I'm writing this from Sweden) Netflix is 70% Netflix content, 5% a small number of fairly recent movies, and 25% a hodgepodge of movies not more recent than 2005. For the sole reason that the main content hoarders, ahem, rights holders have stopped their broad licensing deals with Netflix (Disney, WB etc.) and are openly hostile towards Netflix.
If you don't have content, your technical edge means nothing. Netflix understood this the moment Disney (or was it WB?) announced they would cancel their licensing deal with Netflix a few years back, and Netflix started pumping billions of dollars into producing its own content.
Netflix has plenty of content. Just enjoy what's there.
And I'm really enjoying punishing Disney for taking their ball home.
My budget for entertainment is already 100% allocated to to Netflix, and Disney has lost my entire family (2 adults, 3 kids), both now and possibly into the next generation as well.
Outside the US Netflix was pretty bad even before WB and Disney left the platform. Now it's bordering on ridiculous. Same with Amazon Prime, see my other comment [1]
I would "just enjoy what's there" if there was sufficient content. There's enough to go back to it once every two or three months, maybe.
I (partly) agree with you on that. As an user, I want:
1 - speed and quality - 1080p, no buffer
2 - Good interface - netflix has great interface, Prime video is ok-ish, Crunchyroll is so damn hard to navigate
3 - just works, everywhere - Netflix has an app for most devices, works on any browser, and streams to chromecast and smart tvs. Prime doesn't cast to chromecast, doesn't work between android and smart tv app (I can't control TV on my phone). Crunchyroll... well... nope. Pirate websites have a better player than crunchyroll...
Prime and Crunchyroll have the same problem as Netflix: they don't own (much) of the content they offer. And are entirely at the mercy of the content hoarders like Disney and Warner Brothers.
Just checked. In Sweden the featured videos in Amazon Prime are: Shrek (2001), Red (2010), Twilight (2008), Top Gun (1986), Life of Pi (2012) etc. with a hodgepodge of Amazon's own content and recent-ish movies ranging from Madea's Farewell Tour to Amazon's Chemical Hearts to SCOOB!
Although with crunchyroll, what I want is exactly content that they don't own. People subscribe to crunchyroll to see seasonal anime produced in Japan.
But I agree with you on that, and this is a bummer for Amazon here in Canada. They have: old movies/shows, Indian movies, old Indian movies.
I still like Prime because of a few originals, and because I personally like old shows and movies. But I can't really recommend to a lot of people
I realised that it's probably more cost-effective for many people to just rent movies from iTunes than to pay for streaming services. The situation is more dire with series though.
I would say engineering edge is still extremely relevant, in the form of the recommendation engine, especially as content increases.
Netflix doesn't just have to have enough content, it has to surface that content to the viewers that find it interesting. The streaming service that does this best will likely keep the most engagement.
My company has been WFH since mid-March. I've loved being able to just start working instantly after waking up and finishing my morning routine, but one thing I've really missed is the 30minute drive home after work. That period of time was effective in resetting my brain from "work-mode" to "home-mode".
It's been hard going from shutting down my laptop straight to playing with my kids, it seems like I'm part-zombie at first and not as lively as I would be later in the night with them.
I'm going to go against the vibe on this site and agree with him. The next Apple or Google definitely will not come from a remote working startup, and there's undoubtedly a lot of value from in-person collaboration. In a bigger company like Netflix this might be less important. A big part of this is the transfer of knowledge, which isn't as easy over Zoom calls.
The current deficiencies in remote work will create opportunities for new products to fill those gaps.
I find it nonsensical for people to commute 1 hour only to sit in front of a computer that is connected to the Internet. And, lately, that computer happens to be the same you could use at home: a laptop, making it even more nonsensical.
Saturating streets with 5 seat cars with one occupant in them, cars that do not even need to be there anyways, creates a miserable urban experience for everyone.
Working from home also makes people focus on deliverables rather than superficial aspects of work: clothes, haircut, fitness, etc.
Plus, I don't think "I want to see face muscles moving" (something you can do using a camera anyways) is a proper justification for ruining the environment. The #1 challenge of the 21st century is how to make each human have a lower carbon footprint, and working from home fits well into that narrative.
Unless you seek a physical intimacy or violence with your coworkers I don't see the need for being in the same room.
I have been remotely working for years, and had thought about applying to Netflix, but if they don't have plans for remote work to continue, then I'll consider other jobs.
"Politics is tough because in many ways people elect people who lie a lot. In business, we really try to avoid that. The skills to succeed in politics are really quite different than in business."
I disagree with this on multiple fronts, but certainly lots of business is built around lies and perception.
I'm noticing a theme in this thread, which is the literal interpretation of the CEO's comment, paraphrased as "WFH has no benefits".
Try to understand that this guy is cargo-culting. He's selling a vision (and a book) -- that the Netflix way of doing things is superior to the average way of doing things. I'm sure deep down inside he knows WFH has benefits, but acknowledging them would go against the culture he believes is required to keep Netflix at the top.
Many times he used sports as an analogy, and I will too -- the greatest coaches in history say and do odd things to inspire greatness. You might not agree with them, but you can't deny the results.
i’ve read articles that suggest the line between work and life is actually more blurred due to WFH and people just end up working longer. logically it makes sense when it’s all happening in your home.
You just need to ask any PhD grad student why work from home is harmful for work-life balance. Once the boundary between home and work gets blurred, stress from work starts seeping into your personal life. Burn out rates among software engineers will be through the roof if WFH continues for a few more months.
> Once the boundary between home and work gets blurred, stress from work starts seeping into your personal life.
For me the fact that the line between work and home gets blurred reduces stress by a huge amount. No longer do I have to do all my work in a specific 8-hour window. I don’t have to be ‘on’ for 8 consecutive hours anymore. I can do a few hours of work, do some mindless chores around the house, then go back to work. If I’m stuck on a problem, I can just take a break instead of sitting at my desk going in circles. I’m more productive and more relaxed since the start of the lockdown.
In addition, just the fact that I have access to a fully equipped kitchen makes a world of difference when it comes to breakfast and lunch.
For some maybe, but some people have no problem separating work and personal life. My guess it that the people that have the most trouble with this are the ones that have no hobbies outside of work, so they just end up working more since they have nothing else to do.
I sorta had the impression that they were going to be WFH for the duration of the pandemic, so unless the boss is trying to prepare the ground for a change, I guess he's just complaining?
"Debating ideas is harder now... I don’t see any positives. Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative."
Some of this might be personality differences, but it sounds like how Reed Hastings experiences work is very, very different from how I experience work.
And the layers and layers and layers between Netflix' CEO and non executives probably mean he has almost no idea what he's talking about wrt general employees.
Ya, I suspect this very fact is going to keep wfh from becoming a broad reality. There is a lot of upper middle management that have nothing to do but meet with people. If talking and collaborating is all you do then you are going to push for in person.
Eh. It’s a pretty flat org - not a lot of layers between Reed and most employees. He was pretty approachable too - could often be found mingling with employees on campus at lunch, for instance.
Some things are working for some companies some not. I work from home/remote most of my life. But honestly most of companies I’ve worked was never effective as it can be. I must admit, that many companies can be more effective when people work face to face. But they never try to be productive on any reasonable level. And I’m not talking about sacrificing all time, life and energy to boss. I’m about not wasting time on visibility of work.
Yeah, I mean I assume most anyone with younger kids is going to have trouble being productive (kids stuck at home, no childcare, no babysitters, no older relatives to help, etc.) which says little about WFH in general.
Yeah. I have two kids. Now that the older is back at school and the yonger is in nursery or with her childminder when my wife is working, it is significantly better working from home. After five months of working a weird split shift pattern it's really nice to be back to a more regular pattern.
(This is in the UK, where our infection rate is pretty low now, how long that lasts remains to be seen)
Yes this nullified his argument to me. Do I think WFH is some magical solution to everything? Hell no. But to claim it has "no positive effects" is disingenuous.
What do work do people at Netflix do anymore besides writing blank checks for D-tier Hollywood garbage that no real studio wanted? Their app has been stagnant for the past 5+ years and the delivery issues seem to have been solved some time ago.
From their Culture Slides and overall stories about Netflix, it seems they are a bit different from most companies, read: move more slowly but more predictably.
Yes, as a lot of people I've been feeling negative effects of prolonged WFH however this talk of WFH "makes debating ideas harder" just makes me roll my eyes. I don't think there was anything I didn't manage to do over a quick zoom call compared to what's doable in person.
my take on wfh trend is that it turns the workers office into a gig economy and by 2021 having a job with an actual office in the same metro will be a perk. Then the start of a new cycle will begin.
Their recommendation engine is beyond terrible. It sucks so bad that a flat list of all movies in alphabetical order would be much, much better.
I would say that I am able to find something I want to watch on Netflix about one out of every five attempts. The other four end with me giving up in frustration after 20-30 minutes of looking.
I wouldn't pay even a single dime for the service, myself. My partner does, and every now and then I get bored enough to give it another shot. Usually I regret it.
I suspect that they have an overengineering vision. This could originate from a culture very strongly (excessively, in this perspective) centered on engineering.
They have a very positive view of their recommendations, like they have of their customized thumbnails.
Yet I, and all of my friends, find the recommendations nearly useless, and I also find the thumbnails mostly ugly.
Yeah it's really bizarre just how bad the recommendations are, even after all of these years of development and data collection. Offsite lists and personal recs are the only ways I've found new Netflix shows I like.
Your confusion is because that you represent a niche use case, while Netflix optimizes for the masses who use Netflix so they can think less, not more.
Fully agree. Working from home is pure hell. I can't wait to go back to in-person office, once the vaccine is out. And if my employer mandates WFH policy even after vaccine, I'll look into renting a personal office space at least 2-3 miles away from my home. Just so I can get my commute and structure back into my life.
Lack of clear boundary between work and home, mainly due to lack of commute but also due to spending all day at home. Lack of in-person social interactions at work. More procrastination leading to less productivity and having to work longer hours to make up for it. Etc etc.
Because the commute worked as a great buffer to get into "work mode" in the morning and then transition back into "home mode" in the afternoon. Without this well-defined separation, I never get the productivity boost for work in the morning, and nor do I get the "work done for the day" feeling at the end of the day. Commute and getting out of my home is absolutely essential for me to remain productive and happy.
One trick I learned a long time ago is take a walk around the block in the morning before walk, and do the same walk in reverse in the afternoon.
It tricks your brain into saying "this is my commute". Ideally you have a work laptop or some such that you can take out in the morning after your walk and put away at night before your second walk.
One of my co-workers setup and office in his garage for this purpose. Even though he had an "office" of sorts in his house with his computer and all, it didn't provide enough separation to switch his head-space, especially because he'd potentially be in there on his computer for reasons besides work. So he setup a separate office with separate equipment for work. When done, he just leaves the garage. The point being the commute might not need to be that long. Just a signal to your brain your done.
I've moved from using geographical boundaries to separate work from non-work to using time as the fence. Work starts at a given time and ends at a given time, very few exceptions. Laptop lid opens, laptop lid closes.
It's worked out well for me, but I can understand it not working as well for others.
This is a very interesting comment so will add some thoughts to this
WFH has a huge difference in result depending on who you are, when you are (in your career), and where you are in a company (or organization).
* agreed 100%
-- For the budding young developer who can't wait to show ideas to teammates and demonstrate being a go-getter by asking random questions and finding unaddressed issues to innovate on, WFH might be terrible. You're going to schedule time to fortuitously run into the senior person who takes an interest in your idea?
* yes, for people who don't know how stuff works, company culture, how to get things done
this is very bad
-- For the working parent whose productivity has been slashed by 50% and stress has gone up by 50% due to parenting obligations, WFH might be terrible.
* pretty sure there are more parents who wish they could WFO than want to work from home and also homeschool their kids
-- For the middle manager who can coast along and not need to move greatly in his/her career, WFH might be great.
* depending on company 'coasters' can be 20% to 70%. For all of them WFH is superb because no one knows whether they are working hard or coasting. All their tricks like having certain things set up and certain screens on their monitors etc. - not needed any more
-- For the developer who works by tickets on very concrete things and this is nothing new, WFH might be great.
highly focused developers who like to shut off everything. WFH is great
Except the PM/Project Manager/Tech Lead goes crazy because then developers start making what they find interesting and there is no way to keep them on track
-- For the small company CEO who relies on force of personality and everyone in the same room urgently working to get something done, WFH might be terrible.
* yea, this is absolutely terrible for anyone who has a leadership role
much of the work you get done is by leadership, and sometimes by leadership by force of personality or by 'created' consensus
good luck getting that in a WFH scenario
*
The real test of WFH will be when we see how companies that choose WFH after Coronoavirus, do compared to companies that go back to WFO
lots of tech companies are slobbering at the thought of cutting out office costs and paying employees less
my money is on such companies getting trounced by teams that work together and interact in an office environment
Right now we are in the honeymoon phase of work from home and very few (if any) real products are being launched that were started after coronavirus forced work from home
let's see how people feel in a year or two
It just takes 1 or 2 lazy people to bring down an entire product launch. WFH makes it very hard to figure out who these slackers are, and even harder to cover up their mistakes/flaws
Mythical Man Month is even more dangerous when WFH scenarios are involved
One of the big downsides I’ve found with my company being remote for about 6 months now is the nearly constant issues with tone and attitude in communication channels like video calls and Slack.
I listened to one coworker tell another that they had no sense of humor and were too “by the book” and it was disrupting the ability to communicate.
When a fraction of people worked remotely, this virtually never happened, because with only a small set of people working remotely, people had the mental bandwidth to devote a little extra time being sure to interpret their tone charitably, check for assumptions and follow up more often with them to fill in communication gaps that in-person gestures and signals would avoid.
But when everyone is remote, it’s like taking the attention and time budget you have and dividing it by a much larger pool of people. It’s simply intractable for a human to spread their attention like that and remain diligent and focused on communication metadata about every pairwise colleague interaction channel. It spreads you too thin and you run into extremely exhausting ego depletion and decision fatigue from all these little micro communication assessments you have to make that our brains are just not setup or wired to handle because we’re so adapted to analog facial and voice analysis with gestures and cues.
I despise loud, distracting open floor plans deeply, but the pandemic time period has made me deeply question whether fully remote work would actually be better. I feel way more tired and mentally exhausted from remote work, and casually I’ve noticed many, many more arguments and short fuse communication issues with everyone in my company.
I think it speaks to the evidence that the most cost effective office environments for knowledge workers, even in dense urban centers, from the point of view of pure short term cost savings to the company, are environments where every individual knowledge worker has a private office with a door that shuts, combined with separate communal workspaces for the extreme minority of people who either need a mix or need more extraverted / social work environments instead of quiet / private workspaces.
That way meetings naturally happen in person and it’s low-cost to setup meetings, grab coffee together, grab lunch, etc., while still preserving the remote work benefits of privacy and quiet.
Unfortunately though my experience working remotely has taught me that avoiding a commute is deeply not a good reason to be remote, because the costs in terms of worse work experiences and worse communication are way too high.
Wasn’t there a story awhile back about how Netflix does like ritualized firings, guided by all kinds of weird dark, internal politics? Probably harder to do over Zoom.
It's amusing reading all of the HN comments that insist that any attempts to not work remote must be some ploy by "the suits" and act like remote work is some panacea for all the problems in the world.
My very large tech company did a survey this summer about remote working conditions. Out of tens of thousands of respondents, less than one third said they wanted to continue working 100% remote. Nearly half said that their work/life balance was worse when working remotely. Over one third said they are less productive.
HN lives in a bubble of pro-remote talking points. In reality, most of the tech workforce (to say nothing of the non-tech workforce, which I assure you is much more anti-remote) does not enjoy it.
Please don't frame comments like this as sneers at the community. Perceptions of the community are extremely subject to bias (see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) and it detracts from the substance of your argument. The community here is simply divided on divisive topics—reality is that tautological.
It's disingenuous to frame my comment as a "sneer", and censoring (via pushing this comment down, when it was previously the top comment of this thread) mentions of community self-introspection is doing this community a disservice. If it truly is not a bubble, then my post would not have been upvoted to the top comment of the thread. Clearly it was something that people wanted to discuss prior to your intervention. Living within an echo chamber is a bad thing, both for the community and for society in general, and HN should be able to discuss that without your intervention.
Your comment was previously near the top because newer comments always start near the top. It's gone down because it has failed to attract enough upvotes and newer comments have taken its place. It doesn't take a moderator shadowban for a negative comment to lose ground on HN.
I know how HN works, but thanks for explaining it. New comments are only given the top spot for a small time period. My comment was at the top long after said time period, because it previously had more than enough upvotes to stay at the top (in fact, it actually had been knocked down to middle-ish of the thread, and then garnered enough upvotes to again be the top). As soon as dang commented, it suddenly was at the bottom.
>HN lives in a bubble of pro-remote talking points. In reality, most of the tech workforce (to say nothing of the non-tech workforce, which I assure you is much more anti-remote) does not enjoy it.
Absoultely. I think there's a place for remote work, and a lot of people do manage to make it work really well for themselves and their organizations. I don't think it's broadly generalizable though. People's priorities are diverse. I'm a pretty well-established person in my field, and I would hate to do WFH 100% because I enjoy mentoring junior folks, and I just can't form connections with people unless I'm in the same space as them.
I really value the option of discretionary WFH, but in reality I'd exercise it fewer than two or three days a month. I find a ton of value in being present and attentive in meatspace.
Every article that I have seen on HN about remote work (including this one) has had people strongly expressing opinions that cover the full spectrum, from "remote is awful" to "it really depends" to "remote is a lifesaver". Far from being a bubble, I've learned a lot about what the pros and cons are for different types of people.
I would posit that a lot of those negative reactions to remote work is because the company culture has been sufficiently altered to support it.
Most negative experiences I've observed have come from split companies, where two classes of employee occur, or from companies who say they're "remote first" but have a culture that hasn't evolved past the office. With the right process changes and the right culture, remote work can be enjoyable, rewarding, and more productive. Not to mention the big advantage: no commute.
Nice hypothesis, but incorrect. This is at a company that has always had a large remote workforce, and if you do want to work remote, it's always been an option, and there is an actual culture to support it (and in fact, all of our internal tooling is built with remote work in mind. All meetings happen via Zoom even if you are in an office (partly because of lack of meeting rooms, but also because we don't want to disadvantage remote workers)). We've been trying to grow our remote work force because of lack of office space, but filling these remote roles has actually been hard. It turns out that there's a reason that most of our people choose to not be in those remote roles. They genuinely do not enjoy it.
Actually i think a lot of the arguing is because of people's conflicting interests. For example you will find that european workers are more warm to remote work, while a lot of SF workers are not. There is a large percentage of people who are invested in SF properties for example, and they are unconsciously biased against changes that will cause those values to drop.
What bubble? A large part of the world is working remote, and it seems like every company didn’t fall apart from the paradigm shift. Would this discussion even be entertained otherwise? Proof is in the pudding.
Bubble ad reductio, someone add that to the list of logical fallacies.
From my experience at some workplaces, Netflix was 'a pure negative' for office work. Every time there was a popular show, which was several times a month, productivity at the office noticeably took a toll.
I particularly remember some colleagues behaving like zombies for a couple of days after spending their night sleep hours binging on the platform.
I see a lot of comments about pro WFH (family, more relaxing work schedule, kids/pets around) and against WFH (less collaborative, can't read body language, a quick IM is slower then a simple live question for next chair) and while Netflix mainly talks about them - it actually boil down to one thing only -> SEX.
Humans are a social animal and we like crowds. And with less physical work required then in past centuries jobs became more a brain exercise and less muscle required and with that means our brain requires more stimuli. And what is the easiest way to entertain brain? SEX. It's way more easy to work with a beautiful colleague alongside, it's more easy to take a coffee break and stroll through HR area to "cleanse the eyes" over "Janet" there. That's all about for those who hate WFH and are missing office. They can say a crap load of reasons why they don't like WFH but it boils down to one reason that absolutely nobody will talk about and that's SEX.
Lol. You clearly missed my entire point altogether. Also if you even bothered to read any of my other comments you'll see I am WFH for a dozen years already, as freelancer. But this comment really shows your biased.
