GP here: that doesn't explain it then. We've made offers to candidates that have been very comparable to that, but only if you include stock, which it looks like Netflix doesn't offer.
I wasn't involved in the salary negotiations of the Netflix candidates so I can't tell for sure whether they had similar offers, but I would have no reason to believe otherwise, because since then I've been involved with other candidates and I now know what our guidance is.
But this was a year ago. This was a guy that was at Netflix for a while, so my guess is his salary hasn't grown to keep pace with the "new hire salary inflation" the whole industry has been experiencing, so he went to his manager and asked for a raise, which is when this quasi-policy of theirs starts to kick in: "go interview some places, bring us your offers and we'll match it!" And that's what happened. In all likelihood we gave him an offer higher than he made (new-hire salary inflation and all that), he took that back to Netflix and lived happily ever after.
But after a couple times more of that happening, and you read stuff like this, you no longer take Netflix candidates seriously.
I think it's obvious you've won that argument, but I just wanted to chime in so you hear it from someone else.
1) Netflix has confirmed they recommend this "non-serious interview" approach, and
2) The candidates are just going silent after an offer. If you were simply not offering enough, or the wrong kind of compensation, you would expect to hear back something from some of them.
Really scummy of Netflix to encourage this. Why not just ask an internal recruiter about expected compensation packages? There seem to be a lot better options than just burning up their time like that.
I wasn't involved in the salary negotiations of the Netflix candidates so I can't tell for sure whether they had similar offers, but I would have no reason to believe otherwise, because since then I've been involved with other candidates and I now know what our guidance is.
But this was a year ago. This was a guy that was at Netflix for a while, so my guess is his salary hasn't grown to keep pace with the "new hire salary inflation" the whole industry has been experiencing, so he went to his manager and asked for a raise, which is when this quasi-policy of theirs starts to kick in: "go interview some places, bring us your offers and we'll match it!" And that's what happened. In all likelihood we gave him an offer higher than he made (new-hire salary inflation and all that), he took that back to Netflix and lived happily ever after.
But after a couple times more of that happening, and you read stuff like this, you no longer take Netflix candidates seriously.