I've worked at netflix for about three years. I'm a software engineer and work on personalization. In the time I've been there, not one of the 40 or so people that I know well or work with have been fired. One person I was acquainted with was fired - no one found it surprising. Note that IT was a hellhole with firing about a year ago. Two really good people got dropped. I know more people that have quit - 3, but 1 has come back.
re: pay I make far more than I've made at any of the 4 FT jobs I've had in 15 years. I'm paid a bit less on an hourly basis than my highest rate charged when I did consulting. I'm good. I was expensive.
re: benefits. Netflix matches 401k, they have an ESOP, they have a unique option plan, free (decent) lunches, snacks & drinks, etc.
re: health care. I'm single, my very good insurance program came out to less than $30 per paycheck since I've worked there. Next year they're changing the way insurance is done - every employee got $10k extra pay. This is intended to be used to cover the full cost of insurance, using my current benefits as a baseline it's a bit less that $8000 per year. People with dependents will almost certainly pay more. Many might be unhappy, I personally think it's fair.
re: fear. I have failed many times. I have succeeded more. Perhaps I'm just an smug asshole, but I've never once felt fear for my job.
re: innovation. I've personally spent more time innovating than at any other job I've had, including my last in a corporate research "lab".
However, you noted that the IT department (assuming IT and engineering are separate at Netflix) was overboard with firing. If the manager on Glassdoor worked there, do you think his review is more justified?
Netflix's pronounced strategy is great if you have judicious and fair managers all the way up the ranks in your department, but it seems that it only takes one bad manager to spoil a large bunch of good apples; overall performance is a pretty subjective metric after all, and if you get a particularly closed-minded or prejudiced manager (and such people are plentiful in the IT and engineering sectors; those of us who work with absolutist machines all the time seem to inherit a bit more of their habits than might be desirable) and he gets annoyed at something about you or your work, I doubt it's a very long walk from "awesome excellent performer" to "adequate performer" and a severance package for your average employee.
Does Netflix have guards in place to protect against that? Do you think that the situation the reviewer described could have occurred in the same company because his department had a more difficult manager on the loop? Do you think that you've stuck around because you share the views or preferred styles of the other managers, which thereby makes you "super great performer"? Do you think that the Netflix policies have a tendency to create a useless feedback loop of yes-men and groupthink?
The problem with running a programming team like a sports team is the difference in transparent metrics. There's a few simple measurements for the value of an athlete, depending on perspective: if he has good name recognition, he is a valuable business asset, even if he's not really a high-scorer; if he scores a lot of points and puts your team over the top often, he's a good asset because he increases the value of your franchise by making it win more often, and so on.
The metrics in engineering, especially the day-to-day engineering of going into work, working on programs, and then coming home, are much less clear.
IT fits under the operations umbrella. Engineering fits under the product development umbrella. We're very separate - cost center vs. profit center.
Assuming the reviewer came from IT or another operations group, some of what was written is more understandable, but much of it is not.
Our number one guard against a capricious manager causing trouble is the culture of openness - we're encouraged/expected to say what we think (even if it's controversial). We also have a 360 review process that is unique in that anyone can review anyone else. I could write a review for Reed if I so chose.
I've stuck around because:
- I love working with the people I work with - they're smart, call out bullshit, write good code, value quality, and share knowledge freely.
- I think the management is very competent - as a whole (from exec's down to engineering managers) are at least as smart as any I've interacted with, but they are they are more ethical than any. Every last manager I've interacted with has earned my respect, I don't give it easily.
- The environment is as a-political as I've seen. The meritocracy I expected to find in academia.
I absolutely love working at netflix, they've spoiled me for any other job.
So how does the 360° review process help people who are on the chopping block? Can they request an appeal or re-evaluation? What if someone at an obstructed angle files a review? Just what happened in IT that caused those "two really good people" to be fired? Good sports teams don't let their really good people go. Why didn't you file a review for the two really good people in IT?
Who has final authority to determine that someone is adequate or extraordinary? Again, the idea is subjective, and can be biased toward not performance but individual compatibility, socially or professionally.
Yes. Netflix's IT group (Sysadmin's, NOC people, Helpdesk, etc) went through a reorg about a year and a half ago. Lots of change. Not all of it good at the time, but in the end it did work out quite well.
Thanks for the perspective. I got the impression that the employee writing the review was actually a poor performer that was disgruntled. I saw the slides on Netflix culture a couple years ago and was personally inspired by them. I've spent too many years working in corporate America, where poor performers are rarely if ever managed out of the workforce. Instead, they are put on PIPs (personal improvement plans) and everything possible is done to prevent the dreaded "lawyering up" and lawsuit for wrongful termination.
Corporate America has become so risk-adverse that they would rather keep poor performers around indefinitely, drawing a paycheck, than risk a single wrongful termination lawsuit. Also, those poor performers are masterful at avoiding work. For example, they keep printouts of every email "just in case," and play games like "you didn't ask me to do that in writing, so that's why I didn't do it."
If the glassdoor review in the article was really correct, don't you think Netflix would have been sued into oblivion already? That's why I don't think the reviewer is being honest about the reasons why he was terminated.
The final summation I have gotten from this + other things from this thread = Glassdoor is a place to review companies. Netflix may be slightly on the reputation decline from this (for most), but for me, I can, ultimately, only appreciate the brand recognition that came for a website I had previously never heard of.
With that said - yes, Netflix does chew up people and spit them out pretty quickly. I know a number of people who are moderately successful other places that didn't do so well in Netflix's rather meritocratic environment.
It's almost cliche now, but it bears repeating, at "Netflix they reward adequate performance with a generous severance."
The pay is actually pretty good over there. Network Engineers (the ones that can manage to hang onto their jobs) make about $30K more than Radford 50th percentile for the Bay Area.
Well - I'm not sure if it means anything to say that I've spoken with network engineers from Netflix who make from $130K - $185K, but there you go. Those numbers, by themselves, don't actually mean anything. $185K is undervalued for a Sr. Network Architect. $130K might be good, bad, great, or average - depending on what your responsibilities are.
A better way of looking at it, is if you have two job opportunities, one at Netflix, and one at a bog-standard Radord 50th percentile silicon valley company, my anecdotes (four) indicate that that you would be looking at about $30K/year more at Netflix.
With that said - Netflix isn't so much interested in 9-5 employees, as it is in entrepreneurs who can navigate the company, show leadership, and get results. It's a challenging environment for an employee that looks for hands-on management.
These are all full time roles. If we wanted to compare with a contractor, we'd have to fold in Netflix Actuals for Bonuses + Equity + PTO and Benefits. But, you make a good point - the less and less security you have as an employee, the more closely that position resembles that of a contractor in which case you should be targeting about a 30-50% hourly increase (Taking into account the Benefits package). Hint: To get the 50% increase, remit your hours through friendly "Contracting Agency" instead of doing so personally - for numerous reasons, a contractor who would make $100/hour contracting individually, can somehow be charged out at $120/hour by their contracting firm.
How about a Sr Developer "informal" team lead ~$160,000?
As a Tech recruiter, I gained him a new job (at lower pay), and his complaint with Netflix were two fold.
Work-balance (family) and, he couldn't move up into a formal Lead role (though was acting as such, this could be a variable of the candidate itself). The new job handled both of these concerns. Otherwise, as a Tech recruiter, it was very hard to "head hunt" Sr/ Mgr / VP anything at Netflix...interesting article and discussion.
The part about "fear", or the high pay and low benefits, shouldn't be surprising if you are familiar with Netflix's values. They place employee performance above all else and strive to create a place where high performers want to work - which means getting rid of anyone who isn't one. Their values are to give employees huge amounts of freedom and responsibility and to let the individual's decide what to do with that, for the good of the company.
As for the validity of this review, I find it hard to believe that even all the way back in May 2010 someone could think that Netflix's streaming business wasn't already a success:
So you guys did one thing well, a long time ago, and you've been marginally improving that business (DVD rental) ever since. Your astoundingly high turnover rate worked in that world, because all the processes were in place. But now you are trying to get into the streaming business, and that business only runs with knowledge workers at the helm.
edit: I think it's certainly possible to mistake "a culture of high demand for high performance" for "a culture of fear" if your only experience at the company is one in which you were deemed to not be a performer. But as an outsider, I can see why Netflix values and wants to create this culture and I admire them for striving and sticking to it.
I'd also like to point out that of the majority of reviews posted with the word "software" in the title, the majority seem to rate working at Netflix a 4 or a 5, although with a few 1's and 2's in there.
Agreed. Purely from my experience as a heavy user of their streaming product I would not have guessed that the programmers are afraid to innovate or spend all their time watching their rear. They have in my opinion one of the best if not the best streaming product on the market. They must be doing something right.
I've been a Netflix customer since 2005.
Last time I tried to use their "streaming service," it demanded that I use IE instead of Firefox to watch a movie.
I never tried it ever since.
Yet I'm still renting DVDs from them.
The culture slides on Netflix's job site do make it seem like a scary place to work but at least they are transparent about what it's like to be employed there..
Right, that was the point I was trying to make - how can anyone be surprised at what you find there when they advertise it so well?
Personally I wouldn't expect "a culture of fear" going in but I'd at least have a pretty good idea that I need to perform, and produce high quality stuff, to survive there.
Yeah, I don't really see the complaint here. Netflix is pretty transparent about how things work on some level, so if you're let go at some point you should be prepared for the possibility.
I mean, company culture is never really the problem for jobs I've signed up for as long as the company is honest about the situation. If I'm told it's a 9-5 and I find myself pulling 60-70 hour weeks (or the reverse scenario where I'm it's inferred that my Type A personality is going to fit in and I can make a big impact and it turns out to be a boring 9-5) that's when I get upset and start looking for new opportunities.
They place employee performance above all else and strive to create a place where high performers want to work
If that was actually true, then they wouldn't fire people automatically based on two mistakes -- because high performers make mistakes. And then they learn a lot from those mistakes and become even higher performers. Apparently not at Netflix, however.
I work at Netflix and I cannot say that my experience reflects this particular review. I like working here because my coworkers are intelligent and I get to work on exciting projects. The slides we have on the jobs page are fairly accurate.
That said, I can't completely discount other people's experience since I only have my own experience to go on. It would seem that folks are let go because their skills are no longer relevant or they don't perform to par. This does not necessarily indicate that the person is a poor employee, but that he/she was not able to deliver given a particular context.
Cynic in me wonders if this post is tied to the recent frenzy around traders shorting Netflix? Even a few of the supporting comments feel scripted.
Say this because Netflix seems to have great luck attracting people that I respect personally and their culture building and HR practices are fairly lauded elsewhere . . .
I did post this (the link of the review) because I have heard from multiple people (in person) about their culture. Netflix seems to have the sports team philosophy "Put the best guy in place for the job", and if that job changes and that person is not the best fit they will fire that person and find somebody else instead of some retraining.
The original "Netflix culture slide" were just an attempt to rationalize (and romanticize) their behavior, instead of "we will use you and throw you out if you are not to the exact fit", to "we want only the best people to work with us".
A lot of people in the start up community thought that those slides (and Netflix's culture) was really cool, but the reality seems very un-rosy. I think it is good too look beyond the PR.
As somebody mentioned on one of the comments, looks like their culture came from "Logan's Run".
As an engineer I have been contacted many times by Netflix recruiters, and that's why I started digging down a bit more into it. If you are an employer of Netflix, just consider yourself as a glorified contractor.
Just for the record i'm glad you posted this - if it's legit it really illustrates a stark difference from the PR line and is hugely relevant.
Interesting is the personal differences we have with people that work there. Without naming names I know folks on customer acquisition side and analytics that boast about their jobs and have enough autonomy to kick ass - I actually bought stock when one of them was hired based on my previous interactions with the guy.
I will be curious if the mainstream tech press picks up on this thread - again with Netflix contrarians being the dish du jour.
Sorry, but this comment is a bit of an ad hominem. I am an old member of the HN community, and pretty in tune with the startup community (been to one before my current job)
Lets just say that my day to day job has nothing to do with me posting this. At the end of the day I am just an engineer as most people in here.
Then perhaps I'm missing something. Clarify for me, were you ever an employee there? The reason I ask is because it's on a website for employees to review their own company -- which is how most people interpret those reviews. Moreover, the review says it's from a Netflix employee -- specifically a Netflix Manager. I guess it's fine if you have an opinion and want to post it, but if none of the above is true, why not be honest in your review that it isn't based on experience?
If that were the case, then working in any sort of technical field disqualifies you from commenting on any company working on anything technically related.
I think some people have different "career goals" than other people. Some people want to show up and keep their chair warm from 9-5 every day for 4 years, to get their small pay increase and title bump.
Others want to come into the company with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer", work on something cool, and leave the company after they've done something interesting with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer". These people do not get upset when they are not promoted for doing nothing, and do not tend to write bad reviews. They also tend to be the better programmers.
(I realized this recently. To get a bump up in my title and salary at my current job, I basically have to "serve my time". The fact that I'm much better at programming than other people does not accelerate the process; promoting me now would make the "time" that others have put in less meaningful. If I was promoted, then they would all quit and write bitter reviews like the one linked in this thread. "This company sucks, all they do is hire long-haired hippies that tell me to write tests! I have 20 years of experience, why would they let this nobody have a minimally meaningful title!?", it would read. Now, if it was my company, I would want highly-paid people that can't program to leave. But I am not a highly-paid person that can't program, and they make the rules. Oh well, at least I get a good laugh.)
I realized this is how it is at my current employer too. They have very strict processes around this to manage seniority. For example, I am currently at a lower title (level 2) than another developer on my team (level 3) who I spend at least half an hour a day managing and coaching. We have to be very diligent with code reviews for this person because there is a lot of stuff they miss. I feel like they would be a good fit for a junior (level 1). However, they've put in their five years and received their promotions and pay raises.
They have a lot of process tied to seniority. You can only get a title increase every few years and no more than one title at a time without a review all the way up to the VP. You can't ask for more vacation as it is formulaic and HR isn't interested in making exceptions.
This is definitely a company for those who like to keep their seat warm and then go home to their families in the evenings, all the while enjoying the job security and lack of autonomy.
Since my interview at Google didn't pan out, I'm working on a startup on the side to keep myself sane. In the mean time I reason it will be a good experience of what not to do.
I think every company is like this, which is what's depressing. Solid and reliable software is not in demand, and where it is, it's assumed that process (not creativity) is what gets it.
It's OK, though, because I can write solid software faster than other people can write shitty software :)
I think the companies in general are better than in your one-sided opinion.
For instance, think about hundreds of companies that need to manage financial data. They create solutions to take data from database A and put it into database B. People who maintain this code are usually 100% more critical to the company than an average "awesome programmer". And these people get promoted based on the years of service.
This. Although I've found in my career that at companies like that, once you reach your mid 30s and are married, or have a family, for some reason they feel you are more stable and reliable and are more likely to promote you to some position like team lead or architect.
It really sucks, but for some reason, the most talented developers who are usually in their early 20s are seen as "less reliable" and more likely to jump ship taking a lot of product specific knowledge with them, so they are usually not trusted with positions of seniority.
Then, by the time we're in our 30s and have more important obligations like family, etc, we are promoted to positions where our 22 year old self would be more suited to the work load. Hopefully in the 15 years between these two phases we have gained some wisdom.
Meh, people have different experience. Yours might be like that because you _are_ in that position.
In my experience, most of these people tend to write quick hacky solutions numerous times. Get a pat in the back. And quickly run away when the said hacky solutions start to smell really bad.
These people do get away with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer" and tend to continue leaving bad code trails. Unfortunately nobody bad mouth companies for having bad code because it's internal.
The cynic in me is cynical of your attempts to find grand conspiracies where "standard-ass disgruntled ex-employee" would suffice.
If I could short a company and then collapse its stock price by posting "wah this company sucks to work for" rants on glassdoor.com, I'd be very rich by now.
Oh, I don't think it's the same point. Under one scenario it's a completely made-up review invented by somebody with a somewhat odd strategy towards stock price manipulation. Under my scenario, it's of some value, because it tells you what exactly it is about Netflix which people who hate working at Netflix hate about working at Netflix.
I wouldn't make it my sole data point if I were trying to understand what it's like to work at Netflix, either way.
> Sure, if I fired all the employees every few years I'd stay away from process too.
I think I'd do the opposite - if employee churn was high I'd want to be damn sure that well documented processes were in place so replacements could get up to speed quickly.
It feels like the author of this is an corporate lifer who isn't comfortable with being actually responsible for product performance, or without being able to shelter behind hide-bound processes.
Some process is needed, sure, but large companies are far more likely to be held back by overly rigid processes and lack of agility than lack of process. If anything, this makes me more impressed with Netflix, that they've managed to maintain a more startup-like culture despite being a huge company.
It's not for all employees, sure, and it's absolutely within this guy's rights to find a position more comfortable for him. But after reading this I'm even more inclined to invest in Netflix. Once a company solidifies its processes and acquires parasitic employees, it's well past middle age and is unlikely to do anything remarkable.
It feels like you didn't critically read the review, and are just trying to impose your own interpretation on top of it.
Processes and lack of agility come into place in a mature company as risk-aversion. If the company is scared to fuck up, they introduce processes to prevent fuckups, even though those processes also dampen remarkable innovations.
Judging from the Glassdoor review, Netflix's firing strategy has the same effect--individual employees don't want to fuck up, so individual employees adopt a risk-averse cover-your-ass strategy, which also happens to dampen remarkable innovations. A culture like that has the same lack of agility and infestation from parasitic lifers, they just happen to add heaps of politics, stress, and unhappiness on top of it.
Except that everything I've read about Netflix indicates that they're not risk-averse. They seem to be innovating in just the right areas.
And yeah, I may be reading into it, since I have some frustration with large, process ridden organizations right now. I'm just saying, this is only one guy's take.
Netflix's executives are probably not risk-averse (on account of not necessarily being subject to the same culture of fear), so the company's strategy isn't risk-averse. Everyday operations could easily be another question.
Of course, for Netflix's business model, they don't actually need risk-taking and innovation at the lower levels, just the ability to fill a defined role as well as possible. Netflix mails and streams video content to people, and if they want to do something else, it'll only be because the executives decide to do it. They seem to hire specialists rather than generalists, fire people when their specialties aren't needed anymore, and so forth. It's categorically different from something like Microsoft or Google, where they hire generalists and have ways (although, to be fair, often politicized ones) to generate multiple product lines in parallel and where creative initiative and risk-taking at the lower levels is a part of that process. Netflix is way more top-down than that.
It's not only just one guys take, but there is nothing there but pretty vague generalities. I didn't see a single specific claim, everything was about "processes" in general. And a 20% annual turnover actually isn't unusual for a large, public facing company.
There are many other negative reviews of Netflix on Glassdoor. I am sure that some people are happy to work there, but I don't think someone would take the time to write such a lengthy and well-worded review if there was no truth to it.
Of course they would. There are an infinite number of scenarios that could lead to somebody posting an entirely fabricated review, regardless of its length or well-wordedness.
However, I agree that there is probably at least some truth to this.
This review doesn't jive with the apparent performance of the company in the market. They're the front-runner in an extremely tough space with hostile partners, and even more amazingly, they did this while starting as a company that ships physical goods around the country. There aren't too many things that are harder than moving away from a successful business model, but they've done it really well.
They don't appear to be afraid to innovate at all. Hell, they even started making their own hardware (Roku).
Many tech companies perform well despite the (poor) treatment they give their employees. Amazon is not particularly well rated on Glassdoor, and I've heard plenty of horror stories about EA (and other game companies) from people I trust.
You're right, but I wasn't saying they don't treat people badly, just that it doesn't seem likely that his characterization of the company's attitude towards innovation was accurate.
Not at all. Think of it this way, you're a small company with a limited budget. You have a very difficult problem and your existing engineers haven't been able to figure it out. Hiring another engineer could help but it's no guarantee and you can't keep hiring indefinitely until it's solved. Why not have a contest with a known payout (ie the prize). That way you're not paying for all the work that is a non-winning idea. You get the solution, for a fixed amount and are able to spread the time and effort across a vastly greater resource pool without having to pay for it.
It is rare to see a truly performance-based employment system at a company because, as this post (and the comments) show, in order to execute well you have to continuously cull the low performers from the herd. This creates a culture of fear, especially in those likeliest to be culled. This is not unique to Netflix -- each year General Electric culls the bottom percentile of its management. The trick is to have performance criteria that are clearly understood so that the process is not arbitrary and capricious. Companies that do not cull low performers tend to attract low-performers who ultimately ensure that the company itself gets culled. It's a tough world out there.
Sounds awful until you click on the Reviews link at the top and find many mixed opinions on the same subject. (I stopped clicking through the reviews when it made me log in to keep looking at them though.)
A bunch seem to agree on the high turnover thing, but some don't seem terribly bothered by that, citing it as a great experience nonetheless (and I haven't seen any others claiming the same stressful don't-screw-up-a-single-time-or-you're-fired attitude).
Just in case you're living under a startup-free rock, here's Netflix's culture deck from last year which could potentially jive with the Glassdoor-er's view.
Any company culture is going to have it's controversies. Personally I think too many companies hang on to ineffectual employees for too long.
I read the Netflix slide deck and didn't see anything I didn't immediately agree with. I would not hold their culture against them when looking for a job there.
The one thing I thought was a bit off was "you should ask your manager if they would fight for you to stay". IMO - if the employee is having a performance issue, the manager should bring it up not the employee.
Unrelated, but it's also kind of frustrating to put time and thought into a comment and then to be drive by down voted.
If you disagree with my comment (which in and of itself is not really a good reason to down vote), then please reply with words. I am happy to have a discussion and talk about it. We both might learn something.
Essentially them complaining it will take a year to implement closed-captioning because silverlight can't process SAMI files automatically (basically glorified text bolding/syncing)
After I read that I guessed there was something wholly wrong with their corporate culture and management.
I'm not sure what your point is regarding something being wrong with their management.
Are you suggesting they should migrate away from Silverlight? That they should choose a different data format? That they are probably lying about implementation time, and just don't want to do it?
The latter or incompetence or they just don't care enough about it to really investigate a viable solution (most probable.) Their technical reasons are invalid after all, so something is wrong, how much is the question.
From this post, it sounds like they only took the stick from the Jack Welch approach (firing the bottom 10%) and not the carrot (rewarding the top 20% for doing well and coaching the middle 70% to improve).
I don't know if the culture at Netflix is to blame but I've been noticing more and more how poorly designed their consumer-facing interfaces were. The UI "feel" on the web site strikes me as aged where there's so much that could be done to make me want spend the extra $15/month to upgrade my membership.
I won't even mention the iPhone/iPad apps that are nothing more than a very weak implementation of an HTML iFrame.
The fear prevents innovation? They just started a streaming only plan and have clients on many mobile devices, dvd/blu-ray players, and gaming systems. They went from owning the movie rental space to the movie streaming space. I think they're doing alright.
You might discover why there might be a "culture of fear" among the average performing employees, and why they might throw off a good bit of negativity in their hiring/firing cycle.
Not true. You can opt for family coverage but there are more out-of-pocket costs for the employee. I don't know how this compares with other companies though.
Is it really 20% turnover for knowledge workers or across the whole company? I am sure that turnover rate for the envelope stuffing must be very high. Those types of jobs always have high turnover.
Every time I read about netflix's culture, I'm reminded of the old saying about the Model T: "you can get it in any color you want as long as it's black". The impression I get about Netflix seems to have an underlying theme of: "we give you unlimited freedom as long as you're doing the things we want you to do".
It seemed to me that a lot of the reviews were from people who worked in the call center, not developers, network engineers, etc. No doubt that it is quite a different experience between the two groups.
See Topgrading[1]: "Simply put, topgrading is the practice of packing the team with A players and clearing out the C players," Smart writes. "'A players' is defined as the top 10 percent of talent available at all salary levels--best of class. With this radical definition, you are not a topgrader until your team consists of all A players. Period."
Does this glassdoor post apply to engineering/creative roles too? I don't think that destroying morale is productive, but I could at least understand what they were trying to do if this only applies to their warehouse/fulfillment/etc operations: if you don't stuff enough envelopes fast enough, or encode and annotate movies fast enough, or deal with customer service calls efficiently enough, it can make sense to replace you with someone who does.
I've read exactly the same thing about Netflix hundreds of times on Glassdoor ------ almost every review says the same thing: fear for your job. My partner was offered a job there and decided against it after reading some of those reviews.
Not cool for any company --- especially a supposedly cool tech co --- to fire people as their employees say they do. When you read the details of these Glassdoor posts, you'll see just how rough some Netflix employees have it.
re: pay I make far more than I've made at any of the 4 FT jobs I've had in 15 years. I'm paid a bit less on an hourly basis than my highest rate charged when I did consulting. I'm good. I was expensive.
re: benefits. Netflix matches 401k, they have an ESOP, they have a unique option plan, free (decent) lunches, snacks & drinks, etc.
re: health care. I'm single, my very good insurance program came out to less than $30 per paycheck since I've worked there. Next year they're changing the way insurance is done - every employee got $10k extra pay. This is intended to be used to cover the full cost of insurance, using my current benefits as a baseline it's a bit less that $8000 per year. People with dependents will almost certainly pay more. Many might be unhappy, I personally think it's fair.
re: fear. I have failed many times. I have succeeded more. Perhaps I'm just an smug asshole, but I've never once felt fear for my job.
re: innovation. I've personally spent more time innovating than at any other job I've had, including my last in a corporate research "lab".
The glassdoor review that I wrote after 6 months - http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Netflix-RVW...