Autonomy and engineer-driven innovation

Elizabeth describes Netflix's culture of team autonomy, local judgment, and engineers building systems rather than top-down design.

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What’s it like to work as a software engineer inside one of the world’s biggest streaming companies?

In this special episode recorded at Netflix’s headquarters in Los Gatos, I sit down with Elizabeth Stone, Netflix’s Chief Technology Officer. Before becoming CTO, Elizabeth led data and insights at Netflix and was VP of Science at Lyft. She brings a rare mix of technical depth, product thinking, and people leadership.

We discuss what it means to be “unusually responsible” at Netflix, how engineers make decisions without layers of approval, and how the company balances autonomy with guardrails for high-stakes projects like Netflix Live. Elizabeth shares how teams self-reflect and learn from outages and failures, why Netflix doesn’t do formal performance reviews, and what new grads bring to a company known for hiring experienced engineers.

This episode offers a rare inside look at how Netflix engineers build, learn, and lead at a global scale.

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Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(01:44) The scale of Netflix

(03:31) Production software stack

(05:20) Engineering challenges in production

(06:38) How the Open Connect delivery network works

(08:30) From pitch to play

(11:31) How Netflix enables engineers to make decisions

(13:26) Building Netflix Live for global sports

(16:25) Learnings from Paul vs. Tyson for NFL Live