Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 8:13 pm Amazon is doing either a 1 to 10 split or 1 to 20 split. Which I'd get in on if they didn't murder all those employees of theirs during the tornados.

Casual Observer wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 8:29 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 6:29 pm"Unlimited PTO" is anti-employee and stupid, it exists only to not have that PTO "on the books", and it is stupid that anyone cares about PTO "on the books."

It's worse than that, it's a scam and hard dollar grift by the employers, a loophole Netflix sorta admitted in your quote, I've gotten many likes on linkedin for this opinion. When a company with regular PTO fires someone or lays them off, they have to pay them for all the days off they didn't use, almost like it's the severance that they don't want to pay anymore. If a company with "unlimited pto" fires someone, what do they get? Squat. Combine this with the fact that ALL tech companies shame and threaten you for taking vacation in practice no matter what their "people first handbook" or whatever they call it now says. I've seen more tech folks fired after a vacation then any other time.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 6:29 pm"Unlimited PTO" is anti-employee and stupid, it exists only to not have that PTO "on the books", and it is stupid that anyone cares about PTO "on the books."

People find the Netflix approach to talent and culture compelling for a few reasons. The most obvious one is that Netflix has been really successful

One day I was talking with one of our best engineers, an employee I’ll call John. Before the layoffs, he’d managed three engineers, but now he was a one-man department working very long hours. I told John I hoped to hire some help for him soon. His response surprised me. “There’s no rush—I’m happier now,” he said. It turned out that the engineers we’d laid off weren’t spectacular—they were merely adequate. John realized that he’d spent too much time riding herd on them and fixing their mistakes. “I’ve learned that I’d rather work by myself than with subpar performers,” he said. His words echo in my mind whenever I describe the most basic element of Netflix’s talent philosophy: The best thing you can do for employees—a perk better than foosball or free sushi—is hire only “A” players to work alongside them. Excellent colleagues trump everything else.

When Netflix launched, we had a standard paid-time-off policy: People got 10 vacation days, 10 holidays, and a few sick days. We used an honor system—employees kept track of the days they took off and let their managers know when they’d be out. After we went public, our auditors freaked. They said Sarbanes-Oxley mandated that we account for time off. We considered instituting a formal tracking system. But then Reed asked, “Are companies required to give time off? If not, can’t we just handle it informally and skip the accounting rigmarole?” I did some research and found that, indeed, no California law governed vacation time.

So instead of shifting to a formal system, we went in the opposite direction: Salaried employees were told to take whatever time they felt was appropriate. Bosses and employees were asked to work it out with one another.

We model ourselves on being a team, not a family. A family is about unconditional love, despite, say, your siblings’ bad behavior. A dream team is about pushing yourself to be the best teammate you can be, caring intensely about your teammates, and knowing that you may not be on the team forever.

We have no bell curves or rankings or quotas such as “cut the bottom 10% every year.” That would be detrimental to fostering collaboration, and is a simplistic, rules-based approach we would never support. We focus on managers’ judgment through the “keeper test” for each of their people: if one of the members of the team was thinking of leaving for another firm, would the manager try hard to keep them from leaving? Those who do not pass the keeper test (i.e. their manager would not fight to keep them) are promptly and respectfully given a generous severance package so we can find someone for that position that makes us an even better dream team. Getting cut from our team is very disappointing, but there is no shame. Being on a dream team can be the thrill of a professional lifetime.

Casual Observer wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 7:36 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Thu Jan 27, 2022 7:37 am I only have one share, so who cares, but man did I ruin things with Netflix, haha.

Bought it at 660. (Actually put my request in at 650 but my piece of shit stock website takes days to make a trade go through.)

It's down to 373 now. On the other hand I should be buying.

Remind me not to ask you for investment advice.

Seriously though, when did you buy? I bet the fact that there are a gazillion streaming channels now including the networks who pulled most of their shit off Netflix is what happened. Sorry to hear about your share, sad.

Tdarcos wrote: Wed Mar 09, 2022 1:46 pmThere's another reason, and for that you have to be tuned into the industry. I watched a presentation on YouTube, given at a technical conference, where the former lead developer at Netflix described the architecture and operation of a streaming service that serves millions of requests. You have to build a robust network, and make sure it's fault-tolerant. This means you need good people to design and code your systems. Next is deployment, how do you get your video to the customer? Well, you have two choices: (1) rent cloud service provisioning from Amazon, Microsoft, IBM or someone else, or (2) build out your own network. The first gives you flexibility for quick and easy options to spin up more servers as demand rises, but after a while the costs become astronomical, Building your own server farm is crucial if you get above a certain size because there is a point where your costs for renting cloud support will become much more than if you built it yourself. But any way you look at it, either you have a huge cost for cloud leasing, or a large capital expenditure to install equipment.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Mar 08, 2022 8:02 pm Also this is a pretty bad year for stocks so far!!

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Thu Jan 27, 2022 7:37 am I only have one share, so who cares, but man did I ruin things with Netflix, haha.

Bought it at 660. (Actually put my request in at 650 but my piece of shit stock website takes days to make a trade go through.)

It's down to 373 now. On the other hand I should be buying.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 5:17 pm you owe me an apology for being wrong about bitcoins.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 5:17 pm

odyssia76 wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 2:44 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 9:42 am I'm letting go of the rent vs own thing because some people here don't have a choice, but owning is the better option in 95 percent of all cases.

I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Owning a home is definitely a lot better than Tdarcos makes it out to be, and in plenty of cases it's the smart choice. But 95%? Nah.

It's 95%, not a single percentage point more or less and...

odyssia76 wrote: Wed Nov 24, 2021 2:44 pm

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 9:42 am I'm letting go of the rent vs own thing because some people here don't have a choice, but owning is the better option in 95 percent of all cases.

I'm sorry, but that's just not true. Owning a home is definitely a lot better than Tdarcos makes it out to be, and in plenty of cases it's the smart choice. But 95%? Nah. There are lots of cases where it's not a good idea, depending on age, lifestyle, finances, etc. Buy one when you're pretty sure you're done bouncing around life as a young person, maybe starting a family, and are pretty sure you're going to live in the same place for a good long time.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 9:42 am I'm letting go of the rent vs own thing because some people here don't have a choice, but owning is the better option in 95 percent of all cases.