All-Star Dev Teams vs. Farm Systems

Netflix calls their employees a "dream team."

They don't hire many engineers, but those they do hire are world-class. Until recently, they only hired senior engineers. Netflix wants to recruit the top 5-10% of engineers and is willing to offer top 5-10% salaries.

Management is reportedly encouraged to dismiss any employee who doesn't meet rigorous standards. The idea is that if a manager wouldn't fight to keep an employee on their team, it's probably better to let them go. For most people, that's a pretty radical stance.

They only want all-stars.

This mentality of hiring only the best extends even to interns. In other words, they don't have any. Someone on my Discord quoted a former Netflix employee regarding interns: "When I was at Netflix, I heard it put quite succinctly: if you don't get a puppy, you don't have to clean up its messes."

On the other hand, consider a company like Amazon.

Amazon still maintains a high hiring bar, though it's not quite as high as Netflix's. The difference is…