At previous BigCo I got the feeling management’s approach to problem solving was to get the right organizational structure with the right job reqs and the rest would sort itself out.
At Netflix I felt the goal was to get the right people working on the right problems, and the rest would work itself out.
I never detected a sense of “fungibility” of engineers at Netflix the way I have at previous gigs. Job reqs weren’t job reqs, they were definitions of problem spaces and each team owned their own interview pipeline. Each team defined their own job postings, cultivated their own talent pipelines, and conducted their own interviews. At least from my experience, you don’t interview for Netflix. You interview for a specific team at Netflix. I’ve met at least one NFLX engineer that interviewed for a half dozen teams before getting to “yes.”
I agree with you that at Netflix we hired for specific roles and that worked out well.
But I think that has to do with the fact that we only hired senior engineers. At the other BigCos, they are hiring junior engineers right out of school who aren't specialized yet, so for all intents and purposes, they are fungible.
Even the BigCos hire for specific roles at the higher levels.
At Netflix I felt the goal was to get the right people working on the right problems, and the rest would work itself out.
I never detected a sense of “fungibility” of engineers at Netflix the way I have at previous gigs. Job reqs weren’t job reqs, they were definitions of problem spaces and each team owned their own interview pipeline. Each team defined their own job postings, cultivated their own talent pipelines, and conducted their own interviews. At least from my experience, you don’t interview for Netflix. You interview for a specific team at Netflix. I’ve met at least one NFLX engineer that interviewed for a half dozen teams before getting to “yes.”