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Bullcrap. The tech is good enough (but not that much better beyond that level). >90% of the success comes from the content creation/licensing strategy/execution and marketing. I.e. non-tech.

At this point it's a bit like arguing that Disney's great success in Bluray sales comes from their encoding/Bluray mastering expertise.

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You seem to stumbling into the distinction between functional and non-functional requirements. Netflix spends massively more on content then tech so that's consistent with what you're saying. To use you're Disney example though, yes it would effect their success if they weren't able to deliver their content because their Bluray mastering expertise was lacking.

Exactly. The tech division, while overfunded and overengineered is fulfilling its role in a good enough way.

Tech part was "good enough" for last 20+ years - it's why most companies call their tech teams "IT department".

There is however something about that last 5-10% where moving a few bits around the right way gives you business advantage, over places like Disney.

That said, it does seem like some of this Netflix stuff is overbuilt, although I don't need to run tens of 1000's of ec2, so maybe it's worth it.

Tens of thousands of ec2 instances, none of which served any customer, if you red the article carefully.

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