Pros
The people all tend to be very bright, talented and hard working. There is almost no deadwood. Historically, everyone made decisions based on the good of the company as a whole instead of what is good for their own teams. The atmosphere was one of mutual respect. Everyone knew everyone. As the company grows it feels like that closeness, respect and shared purpose is getting lost. Still, it is a good place to work in many ways. The folks at the top are the best I've ever worked for. In the engineering departments, everyone in management all the way up to the CEO is very technical. You can explain anything to any of them without their eyes glazing over. The fast pace means that you never get bored. There is always some new, interesting challenge. In the nice to have category, they have free lunches. Many people complain about them, but I always thought they were pretty good. They'll all provided by the same vendor though, so it's easy to get tired of them. The buildings are nice enough. It is easy to get whatever hardware, software, or gadget you think you need. Top-end Mac or Thinkpad with a giant display? An extra desktop or two? Whatever, just put in a ticket and you'll have it in a couple of days or sooner. Need some nice servers for your project? A couple hundred cloud instances? It's all available with minimal fuss.
Cons
When it comes to people, Netflix is a throw away culture. Most people last somewhere around two years before they leave or quit. There seems to be no barriers to stop a manager from firing anyone that works for them. If your manager likes you, everything is peachy but if s/he doesn't like you for any reason at all, you're quickly out the door. A lot of time gets wasted by new people trying to figure out how a thing works, or (more often) just ripping it out and creating something new since whoever built it is long gone. Then these new people move on to the next company and the cycle starts again. The "high performance culture" in practice means that there are very few useless people. The downside is that you always know that your job is temporary and you're always worried that you'll be fired. It's a stressful way to live. Netflix prides itself on being a "nimble" company. It will occasionally do amazing things in a very short time period. Deadlines can be crazy and they often don't take into account other work that needs to be done. Projects don't replace the workload you already have, they just add to it. Many times you'll deliver on a deadline only to find out that the work was unnecessary as someone decided to completely change the architecture or cancel the project completely. Everyone is assumed to be available 24x7x365. Email is sent and replied to at all hours of all days and nights. You can never let go of work. Lastly, the company philosophy is to pay employees and let them decide what to do with the money, so there aren't a ton of perqs for working there. Benefits are okay but not great. No real gym membership, onsite masseuses or anything fancy. The whole company used to go to Sundance every year (payed for by Netflix) but they stopped that some years ago.
