How Netflix Was Different

David Ronca joined Netflix in 2007 and grew to an engineering director there. Later he joined Meta as a Director and transitioned to a Principal engineer working on video technologies. Now he's retired and was graciously willing to share his career story with us. I asked him for everything he learned in his 36 year career. 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: • Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/retired-netflix-engineering-director • Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2j1QJfp80sGHlJMnA5QL4x?si=pOw0SSQgSJ-2kokWrpb1BA • Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: • Netflix culture memo (2009) - https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/culture-1798664/1798664 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:40 - How Netflix was different 00:08:01 - The legendary Netflix culture memo 00:18:54 - How to hire engineers well 00:30:52 - The strongest engineer he's ever met 00:33:02 - Joining Meta 00:50:52 - Near death experience 00:59:04 - Where he learned the most 01:04:09 - Book that impacted his career most 01:11:33 - Advice for his younger self 01:18:32 - Outro 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗱: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidronca/ • Personal Website: https://www.roncatech.com/ 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻: • Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/ • X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ • Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman • TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman