Say this because Netflix seems to have great luck attracting people that I respect personally and their culture building and HR practices are fairly lauded elsewhere . . .
The original "Netflix culture slide" were just an attempt to rationalize (and romanticize) their behavior, instead of "we will use you and throw you out if you are not to the exact fit", to "we want only the best people to work with us".
A lot of people in the start up community thought that those slides (and Netflix's culture) was really cool, but the reality seems very un-rosy. I think it is good too look beyond the PR.
As somebody mentioned on one of the comments, looks like their culture came from "Logan's Run".
As an engineer I have been contacted many times by Netflix recruiters, and that's why I started digging down a bit more into it. If you are an employer of Netflix, just consider yourself as a glorified contractor.
I found this link from this question on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Does-the-Netflix-work-culture-create-a-...
Are you sure you aren't basing your judgment on just a small handful of opinions?
Interesting is the personal differences we have with people that work there. Without naming names I know folks on customer acquisition side and analytics that boast about their jobs and have enough autonomy to kick ass - I actually bought stock when one of them was hired based on my previous interactions with the guy.
I will be curious if the mainstream tech press picks up on this thread - again with Netflix contrarians being the dish du jour.
Others want to come into the company with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer", work on something cool, and leave the company after they've done something interesting with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer". These people do not get upset when they are not promoted for doing nothing, and do not tend to write bad reviews. They also tend to be the better programmers.
(I realized this recently. To get a bump up in my title and salary at my current job, I basically have to "serve my time". The fact that I'm much better at programming than other people does not accelerate the process; promoting me now would make the "time" that others have put in less meaningful. If I was promoted, then they would all quit and write bitter reviews like the one linked in this thread. "This company sucks, all they do is hire long-haired hippies that tell me to write tests! I have 20 years of experience, why would they let this nobody have a minimally meaningful title!?", it would read. Now, if it was my company, I would want highly-paid people that can't program to leave. But I am not a highly-paid person that can't program, and they make the rules. Oh well, at least I get a good laugh.)
They have a lot of process tied to seniority. You can only get a title increase every few years and no more than one title at a time without a review all the way up to the VP. You can't ask for more vacation as it is formulaic and HR isn't interested in making exceptions.
This is definitely a company for those who like to keep their seat warm and then go home to their families in the evenings, all the while enjoying the job security and lack of autonomy.
Since my interview at Google didn't pan out, I'm working on a startup on the side to keep myself sane. In the mean time I reason it will be a good experience of what not to do.
It's OK, though, because I can write solid software faster than other people can write shitty software :)
For instance, think about hundreds of companies that need to manage financial data. They create solutions to take data from database A and put it into database B. People who maintain this code are usually 100% more critical to the company than an average "awesome programmer". And these people get promoted based on the years of service.
It really sucks, but for some reason, the most talented developers who are usually in their early 20s are seen as "less reliable" and more likely to jump ship taking a lot of product specific knowledge with them, so they are usually not trusted with positions of seniority.
Then, by the time we're in our 30s and have more important obligations like family, etc, we are promoted to positions where our 22 year old self would be more suited to the work load. Hopefully in the 15 years between these two phases we have gained some wisdom.
Meh, people have different experience. Yours might be like that because you _are_ in that position.
In my experience, most of these people tend to write quick hacky solutions numerous times. Get a pat in the back. And quickly run away when the said hacky solutions start to smell really bad.
These people do get away with the title "Awesome Excellent Programmer" and tend to continue leaving bad code trails. Unfortunately nobody bad mouth companies for having bad code because it's internal.
If I could short a company and then collapse its stock price by posting "wah this company sucks to work for" rants on glassdoor.com, I'd be very rich by now.
I wouldn't make it my sole data point if I were trying to understand what it's like to work at Netflix, either way.