Netflix doesn’t hire the best engineers. They create them.
I hired in to a company that believed this and had the culture to back it. Over time as leaders left and MBAs took over creating the best engineers was deemed too expensive and with that the culture deteriorated to the point where today it is worse than non existent. Corporate America lots of managers making lots of money running corporations and very few true leaders.
For me the money quote is:
When speaking to engineer leaders we bring up the story about the Netflix engineer above. We do this to emphasize the importance of the environment they are creating. “Creating,” being the operative word here. Environments don’t just happen, they are created through action.
Action… not talk.