I met several Netflix employees at conference where I had a good chance to get to know them. The manager reached out to me a few times that he thought I would be a good fit for his team and I finally agreed to do a video screen with one of the engineers which went pretty well. They then flew me out to Los Gatos for an onsite which lasted about 5 hours. The technical part of the interview, while challenging, was all relevant to my experience and the position. My initial fear was that there'd be some sort of non-relevant engineering questions such as "explain the role of b-trees in modern databases" or some such nonsense that some companies like the ask but bear no relevance to the role. Refreshingly, all of the technical questions centered around the technologies and languages that I'd actually be using in a UI role (i.e. Javascript & CSS).
Once I made it through the technical portions of the interview, I met with various directors of departments that I would be working with if I were hired. This part of the interview was the most difficult as they ask questions that try to identify if you're a good culture fit and whether or not you'd be a good person to work with. Essentially, Netflix doesn't just care if you can code; They care if you're an all around intelligent and good natured person and as they mentioned several times, they will not hire "brilliant jerks."
A point of advice: you can't fake your way through this interview. While I was ready for standard culture questions (what are you greatest strengths, weaknesses, etc), almost all of the questions were ones you couldn't prepare for. For instance, "If you ran your own company, how would you align the objectives of perfect design and flawless engineering?" There were a lot of questions like that which really dug deep into who I was as an engineer and because all of the questions were open ended, there was no way to fake it and tell them the answer they were looking for. I realized that at the end of the day, it's not personal: either you're a culture fit or you're not. Netflix is a 60 billion dollar company with less than 2500 employees due to the fact that everyone is very intelligent and highly aligned so they have a good idea of what works and what doesn't.
Needless to say, at the end of the day my brain was mush. I had given open, honest answers but everyone was pretty poker-faced so I figured that I had failed the culture fit portion. But on the other hand, I had gotten through the technical portion so I was pretty proud of that. I was surprised by a phone call the next day stating that Netflix wanted to make me an offer but they wouldn't tell me compensation information as they didn't want it to influence my decision. Essentially, they determined that I was a good fit for Netflix but I needed to decide if Netflix was a good fit for me. In retrospect, I really appreciated them not being pushy and making sure it was the right choice for me. I was a little leery of accepting an offer with no salary information but in the end those fears were unfounded as the compensation package was very generous.
In conclusion, it was a fantastic interview process and the rumors of Netflix's compensation being top of market are absolutely true.
