I’ve sat through a few Netflix talks and they’re all the same flavor of “look what you can achieve with millions of dollars and hundreds of engineers.” They’re somewhat interesting from an architectural perspective, but even scaled down versions aren’t feasible in most environments and it leaves a taste in your mouth that you just sat through a recruiting pitch.
Until a few years ago most projects at Netflix were done with a handful of engineers ( <= 6 ). A dozen people working on something would have been considered very large. Four dozen would have been considered a company wide effort.
isn't the TCO for those engineers also something like 400k each? not talking Principle Big-Dick Super-Staff Engineer, but like mid-level.
Netflix was famous for that, too -- no RSUs, just straight cash, and we'll fire you if we think you can't deliver.
100s of devs would essentially be their entire, company-wide, operating budget; it's gotta be like 10-15 people tops on these things.
Netflix is still pretty cash-heavy on average, though with a lot more compensation going towards stock options in recent years. They let the employee choose the ratio. They pay extremely well, but this comes along with very high hiring standards and a very difficult culture.
The culture was and still is as you have described, with massively high pressure, "radical candor" taken to arguably very unhealthy levels, and with no hesitation in firing you. This is a major reason why, despite the fact that I am a video engineer with a film background who lives walking distance to 2 of their campuses and has a great amount of respect for their technical achievements, I never apply there.