Also, why my resume has been circulating for several months.

I forget what area you're in. If you're in the Bay Area or are willing to move, and find something interesting at jobs.netflix.com, let me know. I also have contacts at Google and FB if you don't already have contacts there.

I would love that, unfortunately, I'm a Canadian in Canada. Based on conversations I've had with US contacts, the new immigration thing in the US has companies jumpy about hiring non-nationals without green-cards (that would be me).

I'll drop a line at Netflix anyway... all they can say is no (definitely willing to move).

I've been to regular interviews since making the decision, but am being very cautious at this point. Amusingly, the right to contribute to Open Source, or discuss practices on forums, is now a key discussion I have during the interview process.

I'm thinking whether to hire or not at Netflix won't have anything to do with greencard status. Definitely pass the resume through me. I don't get anything from it but your chances of getting an interview will be increased.

Will do. Thanks.

So I spent the weekend perusing the Netflix job site, and am suspicious only because it sounds too good to be true; and now have a serious case of Impostor Syndrome. Aside from the marketing literature, what are the drawbacks?

I notice a few positions on the board, but was wondering if you had any pointers on groups to send my resume to. In particular a Payment Gateway position stood out for me: https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/861465

I'm including a semi-standardized cover letter. It is honest, I've just applied for so many positions, that I can't think of anything else to say.

Please feel free to offer any advice or suggestions.


Cover Letter https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7-01GWEwOJcYWdMN2s1S1IxbE0/view?usp=sharing

Resume

One of my team members came from that area. Would you like to chat with him? If so, Taylor's email address is twicksell@netflix.com.

If you're still interested, I'll submit your resume and cover letter directly through our system.

Also, I wasn't sure so I figured I'd ask: Were you seeking for a review of your resume and cover letter? If so, I'd be happy to do it but it may take a few days. Just let me know either way.

BTW, I suspect Taylor will give you brutal honesty including the warts, etc. I'm hoping you take it for what it's worth rather than being scared away especially since other places may try to hide such downsides.

Actually, I was going to ask you about your take on Netflix. I'm sick of "Drinking the corporate Kool-aid", I appreciate realistic assessments.

If Taylor doesn't mind my reaching out to him... all the better.

If you are willing to review my resume, please do. If you aren't, please submit.

To be clear: I was assuming you would blindly submit; but I always appreciate an opinion.

I've already asked him if he would mind. He said he'd be happy to answer some questions.

I think I tend to drink the Kool-Aid whereever I work. Having said that, I'm much happier at Netflix than I was at Google. Freedom and Responsibility is real; it's not just lip service (BTW, have you gone through https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664?). There may sometimes be pockets that start practicing Freedom from Responsibility but I think those eventually get corrected.

Some random thoughts, observations, etc:

I've seen brilliant jerks be let go.

We take as much time off as we find reasonable.

We go to whatever conferences we find reasonable.

If a team whose mission statement would have them own responsibility for doing something and they're not prioritizing it, nothing prevents someone not in that team to take on that responsibility, at least to the extent that they need something.

I've seen outages happen due to someone circumventing some procedure. After some investigation, it was found that the procedure was often circumvented because people wanted to get their work done. Rather than blaming someone, the procedures and systems were fixed so that work can be done in a safer way.

We learn from failure. Rather than blaming Amazon for a huge outage some years ago (during our peak season) that took out an entire region, we engineered a solution that made Netflix more robust against region-wide outages from Amazon. This has proved useful in more than one occasion.

There's currently some politics between my team and another team. My manager tries to keep us away from it while still communicating to us that it exists.

360 Feedback is just that; it's not a review. Feedback, at least for the most part, isn't tied to compensation. We're paid top-of-market for what we bring to the table. This means that we don't worry about providing and receiving feedback that would actually help us improve ourselves in some way.

We get to choose how much of our base compensation goes towards buying discounted 10-year stock options -- 0% to 50% or 100% (it used to be 100%, then it got changed to 50%; it might've been changed back to 100%).

I'll submit your cover letter and resume tomorrow (assuming I don't see anything I think is glaring). If you have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them, too.

I appreciate it, that you have seen the culture deck being put into practice is the best reference I could hope for.

Take your time... That I am eager means this is a decision that should not be rushed.

FYI, I was gonna get around to doing this yesterday but my daughter broke her arm. Sorry for the delay. I'll get to it ASAP.

Broken bones take priority... hope she's OK.

+Jefferey Cave , in the cover letter, s/processes/practices/g. "Process" has a negative connotation at Netflix.

Also, the position you mentioned is looking for an Individual Contributor (as opposed to a manager). The cover letter reads more like one tailored for a management (whether people or project) position.

If you have distributed systems and/or big data (eg in terms of volume) experience, try to promote that a bit more, too.

Helpful, thank-you:
1. Process/Practice... easy fix
2. "tailored for a management" , extra thank-you... disconcerting, not what I intended
3. distributed/big data: honestly, that is one of the weaknesses I'm trying to overcome. I will emphasize what I've got, but this is where I start to feel imposterish.

Do what you can (obviously without lying). What I did was study up (eg read up on the CAP Theorem, common issues with distributed systems, etc) but I pretty much already had an interview lined up.

Trying again... let me know if that reads better.

Looks good. Will submit it later today or tomorrow.

One last comment: If you think I don't have a snow-ball's chance in hell, I'd rather hear it early (aka: from you)

How are you with the "Deep knowledge of concurrency, resiliency, and caching" part of the req?

So after a bit of self-assessment, I have to withdraw. I cannot justify the phrase "deep knowledge". While I appreciate your help, I think there are two things I need to consider:

0) I have a passing understand of the concepts in question, and push for them to be implemented daily.
1) Therefore, I'm not actively demonstrating or practicing knowledge of those concepts.
2) I haven't had a real engineering gig in years (which is probably why my cover letter read the way it did)

Adding up those points, I'm forced to accept that I'm going to have to change a few things before I can safely apply for these types of positions again.

Would you mind if I reached out to you again in a year?

+Jefferey Cave , thanks for being brutally honest. I don't mind at all if you reached out to me again in the future.