Uncanny Valley | WIRED BIG INTV: CTO Elizabeth Stone On The Future of Netflix: “Personalized, Interactive, Immersive”
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Dec 23, 2025 
Elizabeth Stone, the Chief Technology Officer of Netflix, shares her unique journey from a PhD in economics to leading tech innovations at the streaming giant. She delves into the importance of failure and genuine curiosity in tech. Discussing Netflix's future, she envisions a landscape rich in personalization and interactive experiences. Stone also reflects on the balance of data and intuition in content decisions, the challenges of scaling live programming, and the role of AI as a supportive tool for creators, not a replacement.
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Optimize With Constraints
- Define clear objectives and the constraints you're operating under when making decisions.
- Optimize the levers you control to best deliver the desired member or business outcome.
Lead By Translating Not Coding
- Ask engineers to explain their work, challenges, and decision processes to build mutual understanding.
- Use curiosity to translate between technical strategy and business goals rather than pretending to be the top engineer.
From Lone Trader To Confident Leader
- Elizabeth Stone recalled being the only female trader on a Merrill Lynch desk and feeling out of place as a young professional.
- She learned to stop overfitting to others' styles and now advises people not to lose what they personally add.