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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons, not because managers don’t like them

That's not true at all. The company fires people all the time because their skills just aren't necessary. I mean I guess technically it's a layoff, but a layoff and getting fired are functionally the same at Netflix as they both come with the same severance.

When we moved to AWS, there were plenty of folks who were let go because their expertise was in physical infrastructure and they had no desire to learn about the cloud.

They were stellar performers, their expertise just wasn't needed anymore.

I very much enjoyed working in a culture where both hiring and firing were easy to do, to make sure that the team was always the right people at the right time.

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> I very much enjoyed working in a culture where both hiring and firing were easy to do, to make sure that the team was always the right people at the right time.

I think you'll agree that your perspective may be something of an outlier, given that you 1.) are not the person who's going to be fired, 2.) are the person who is most empowered by a policy of ease of hiring and firing those under you, and 3.) don't need to work.

I don't like working in a culture where being fired is a thing anyone in my management chain might decide to do to me easily and suddenly for any reason at any time, and I don't think I'm unique in that.

It occurs to me that I like that sort of work environment as well, as an employee.

One of the reasons I always insist on working as a contractor is so that the company can end things whenever they want. Importantly, though, the risk of that happening is reflected in my rate.

Since from my perspective the risk of being let go as a 1099 vs. as a 1040 is roughly equal, and the compensation is roughly double, it seems like an easy trade-off.

And a fella can buy an awful lot of health insurance for 100% of his salary...

> to make sure that the team was always the right people at the right time.

That is what contractors are for.

Full-time employees are hired because they know/learn the business, get things done, and adapt to changing circumstances. You want them around to help you get through changes. If you are hiring full-time employees to fit a narrow niche need that will change in the future, with the intent of "easy" hiring and firing, you are just setting yourself up to have a bad reputation as an employer.

That seems like a no win. You hire employees and your mean for firing them when you don't need their skillset. You hire contractors and you look like you are stingy and don't want to pay as many benefits.

> but a layoff and getting fired are functionally the same at Netflix as they both come with the same severance.

I actually think that's a really great policy. I've seen layoffs done under the guise of "underperformance" (i.e. with no severance) and it's really shitty. Giving everyone severance is a just fairer way to say "the business has fundamentally changed".

That's really a third category and happens all the time when companies shift strategies or just evolve product lines over time. Sometimes there's a transition path to a new role but, even (or especially) if you're the world expert in X and there's no need for an expert in X any longer, there just isn't a place for you (especially at a salary commensurate with world expert status) any longer.

It doesn't need to be about not being willing to learn new things. It can be about having expertise and there still being a market for continuing to develop that expertise elsewhere.

I find it hard to believe that you "let go" of people with physical infrastructure expertise after you "moved to AWS." Netflix has a massive physical hardware project with Open Connect and runs one of the largest bandwidth networks in the world. The fact that everything suddenly collapsed under one individual probably had something to do with it. I don't mind said individual, but a lot of people don't like him. He's been known to do and say some pretty petty things.

Open connect didn't start until years after the move to AWS happened. All that bandwidth was served out of Akamai at the time.

And lots of people stayed through working on Open Connect while still using Akamai. It didn't happen overnight.

" and they had no desire to learn about the cloud."

Is that true? I have seen it quite a bit that people in similar situations were never asked if they would like to switch.

That would interfere with onboarding more H1-Bs. Look, we can't find anyone to do these jobs...

I don't think it works like that... The company doesn't ask you if you'd like to switch to the cloud, and then you give a yes/no answer.

In my experience, what happens is there is a technology shift -- the company leadership decides they want to use the cloud (or use containers, or start moving their codebase to ${LANG}, etc.) and there is a group of employees that will lead this effort by learning and working with the new technologies, and there is another group that will actively oppose taking responsibility to learn about the new technology, and may actively work to sabotage or slow down the process.

" and there is a group of employees that will lead this effort by learning and working with the new technologies, and there is another group that will actively oppose taking responsibility to learn about the new technology, and may actively work to sabotage or slow down the process. "

And I have seen groups that would like learn the new tech but never get involved by management.

True, I think it depends on the culture where the drivers of change come from, but in my experience that matters less than the fact that there is a change at all.

What is stopping a group from learning a new tech, regardless of whether change is organic or imposed by management? Or are you saying you have seen people get replaced with zero warning that new technology was being introduced? That's definitely not been my experience.

This was mainly in large companies where departments are quite large and the regular workers don't really see what's going on. I have seen people in one department being told to keep working on their current stuff while new people were hired for the new tech. Once the new people were up to speed the old department was laid off. There was no effort to get current employees involved.

The entire department? No one saw the writing on the wall and studied up on the new tech to stay relevant?

Consider our industries project failure rate. I've been on projects where it was the new team on the new tech stack that's let go and the guys maintaining the 20 year old system get a huge boost to their negotiating power.

When do you suggest that they find time to 'study up'? Most corporate environments in which I have worked have an assignment:time ratio greater than 1:1. Often there wasn't an opportunity to take the legal statutory lunch break nevermind study.

another group that will actively oppose taking responsibility to learn about the new technology, and may actively work to sabotage or slow down the process

Another perspective is that that group of employees was doing the unglamorous work of maintaining the legacy systems that kept the lights on and paid the bills while the lucky few got to play with new toys, and they were rewarded for their diligence with getting shafted. Been there, done that, lessons learned.

> "I mean I guess technically it's a layoff, but a layoff and getting fired are functionally the same at Netflix as they both come with the same severance."

hmm, but unemployment is a concern too, and you wouldn't get that if fired?

Honestly, that sounds utterly horrifying.

I'd much rather work at a company that practices Japanese-style lifetime employment.

Err no they are not, being fired is not the same as redundancy.

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