The engineering culture at Netflix exists within the larger Netflix Culture. Cultural principles like context over control, dream teams, and freedom+responsibility (F+R) create an environment where engineering teams can thrive. Within PES, our key cultural anchors are:
We believe a focused and diverse small team (e.g., 4-8 developers from varying backgrounds) can accomplish amazing things together. We favor hiring individuals that understand and desire to work within Netflix's F+R culture, where decision making power is distributed to each team along with enough context to enable wise decisions. Effectiveness in this environment tends to be correlated with having the maturity to deal with ambiguity, act selflessly, and be self-driven; many times we find that comes with having achieved senior/staff+ level at other companies, but not always. We have stunning colleagues who came to Netflix with fewer years of industry experience but sufficient maturity to thrive in our environment.
Back-end engineering teams are responsible for the full software lifecycle, from development through deployment and operations. In our experience, this breadth of focus areas builds a wider set of engineering muscles and creates rapid feedback loops that improve the quality and effectiveness of each team's systems and practices.
Netflix's loose coupling means that teams can run fast to solve their local problem. This enables rapid experimentation, which is healthy for fostering innovation. Unmetered, though, loose coupling can trend towards chaos; staying highly aligned is the necessary counter-balance to stabilize our environment. We favor starting together, even if we go fast alone for part of our journey. As the time horizon lengthens, what's best for the broader groups at Netflix takes priority over a local team's goals.
