Impostor Syndrome
Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this? — Meryl Streep
Netflix is a company that has generated a lot of intrigue — from its David vs Goliath like battle vs Blockbuster, leadership and innovation in Streaming Video On Demand (SVOD), Qwikster debacle, foray into Original production, pioneering technical solutions like chaos engineering, to its one of a kind culture. Talking to friends and acquaintances, I always get asked — what is it like to really work at Netflix? Coming up on my 1 year anniversary at Netflix, I want to share my insights into the unique things that define working at Netflix. Through a series of blog posts I will delve into my personal experiences around the aspects of Netflix culture that have stood out for me, dealing with new hire anxiety and 5 unique things about interviewing at Netflix. Finally I will bring it together for those who are interested in pursuing opportunities at Netflix by giving interview preparation tips.
Part 2: Reflections on New Hire Anxiety @ Netflix
With much excitement and a little trepidation I accepted the Netflix offer and joined Netflix about a year ago as an Engineering Manager for Playback Data Systems. The team builds and operates high scale micro-services to collect, process and provide high quality data about playback experiences. This data is critical in enhancing playback experience via experimentation, improving discoverability of relevant content via personalized recommendations, assessing and improving system health as well as influencing business partnerships with Netflix device partners.
I was tremendously excited about the domain and how critical it was to the core Netflix experience. It aligned with my past experience and also provided me an opportunity to learn and push the boundaries in high scale stream processing, an area which is still in its infancy and which was new to me. At the same time, I had an higher level of anxiety coming in. I guess everyone has some level of anxiety taking up a new job in a different company and I felt that when I joined Microsoft and LinkedIn as well. However the level of anxiety joining Netflix was higher due to some of the unflattering Glassdoor reviews and the deep focus on excellence in the culture slides along with the statement — “adequate performance gets a generous severance package”. Add to the mix a very different culture (from what I was used to) and at the back of my mind I had the following questions:
- Will I be able to assimilate into the unique culture? Is it really what I have been told?
- Can I be a stunning colleague to others?
- Will I know if my performance is good or adequate?
At the same time, I was confident in what I brought to the table as well as in my adaptability and decided to focus on giving it my best shot. What greeted me right from the 1st day was a very supportive atmosphere. There was a recognition of the anxiety and in many cases impostor syndrome that is prevalent among new hires. My team, my peers and most importantly my management went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. They actively sought and encouraged me to highlight a fresh-eyed perspective on things that I found odd or inefficient. People were very open and patient to listen to new (and many times radical) ideas and willing to explain what they thought about them and why they may or may not work out that well at Netflix. I was never told “this is not how we do things here” (a surefire way to kill future ideas) even though it was apparent that my idea in its original form didn’t have much chance of success at Netflix. Instead, I was encouraged to zone in on the core concepts behind the idea and explore modifications to the implementation to be more suitable for the Netflix culture. This helped me get a better understanding of the Netflix culture while at the same time feel empowered to enhance it.
For example, at LinkedIn I had found the concept of clean escalation very useful in resolving conflicts in a timely and mature way. A few months into Netflix, it came to my attention that a couple of my peer teams had been engaged in a conflict for a while and were finding it difficult to make significant progress. I suggested clean escalation as a potential way to resolve the conflict. While it would probably have worked at LinkedIn, it most likely wouldn’t have worked at Netflix. At Netflix, escalations are extremely rare as people are expected to behave like mature adults and resolve issues on their own without needing to escalate. Most times it works but sometimes this takes more time than necessary or conflicts stay unresolved for a long time. The stakeholders were patient in explaining this to me as well as curious to understand the core concepts behind the clean escalation model — getting the involved parties to have a shared understanding of the conflict to an extent that each can fully represent each other’s stance (while disagreeing) and the associated trade-offs. These were things that the stakeholders found useful and something that they could work with to make progress without requiring shared escalation to their managers. Later on, when they couldn’t completely resolve the conflict even after attaining shared understanding of the trade-offs, they involved their management to provide clarity on long term vision which helped to resolve the conflict.
Within a few weeks of my joining, my manager gave me clarity on his short (1 month) and mid (3–6 months) term expectations from me. This helped me focus on things that I needed to make progress on immediately as well as identify things that I needed to make more gradual progress on. Given the large number of things that one needs to ramp up on after joining a new domain, leading a new team in a new company, this clarity helped me determine areas to focus on a weekly basis. The first few weekly 1on1s with my manager were critical in getting feedback on whether I was making progress in the right direction and whether I was making the right amount of progress. Over time I developed a sense of whether I have made sufficient progress on various initiatives and didn’t have to rely on my manager as much. My team consisted of seasoned engineers who had been operating without a dedicated manager for some months and were more than capable of handling the day to day execution. This also freed me up to focus on partnerships, ramping up on the technical domain and getting clarity on longer term initiatives.
I also got complete autonomy over all of my team initiatives. This was an expectation that was set the 1st week. For each initiative, I was given the context — why, what and how it is currently being run and then told to own it. This gave me freedom to make my own decisions and transferred the responsibility to me to own them. My team is a central team for playback data and we partner with many peer teams on various initiatives. Using the scaffolded learning model, I was initially given context on the current set of initiatives with each partner team and then told to own the periodic engagements. My manager attended one sync meeting with each partner team and then stepped away for me to lead the syncs going forward. I had to get the hang of how to effectively lead and contribute to the syncs very quickly. Throughout all this my manager was sufficiently invested in the details so that I could use him as a sounding board but not so involved for me use him as a crutch. This turned out to be the right balance for me — neither did I feel micro managed even in the initial phase nor did I feel the lack of support needed for me to thrive.
In summary, I was treated like a mature adult with the ability to make and own decision. This played a big part in helping me get over my initial anxiety. It also gave me the confidence that no matter what obstacles came my way, I could lean on my support structure and explore ways to overcome the obstacles.
I hope you find this post informative and useful. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with your comments/questions/suggestions.
