It's really great to see a company's engineers given the time and resources to do some fun tech project like this. Sometimes it seems like unless a project is about directly increasing revenue, its incredibly difficult to get buy-in from management. These projects are great for culture.
For another perspective (perhaps a more nuanced/less flattering one), NPR's Planet Money recently did a great episode on Netflix's work culture [1]. I'm not so sure I'd want to work there, but I'm sure it is great for some.
When I listened to this before it made me wonder if Netflix's culture will get same sort of negative treatment and publicity that Amazon has been getting recently.
That was super interesting. Thank you for posting it. The DVD/Streaming split was an especially interesting period for Netflix. I didn't know the back story behind it. For anyone curious, it's at the end.
Indeed, this is a cool project. Netflix seems to have a great work culture. The button design is neat, it can be used for different projects. A button can do many things :)
Is it really just a fun project? Or is Netflix trying to use this as the nose of the camel to get into the house automation business?
I've always thought house automation was cool, but a lot of trouble and likely to wind up a waste of my time and effort once I stop using it in three years because whatever standard I was using became obsolete. But if Netflix can start automating my house one bit at a time and slowly sneak up on me...
It's so far from a scalable product, I would guess it's not even a good test for market fit. Only a small subset of hackers/makers will tackle this. And, there's nothing to even buy from Netflix here...it's all stuff from other vendors.
I'm not saying it isn't on their radar, but this particular project is clearly for fun.
I am sure it was a blast, but it was NOT done "for fun" to amuse the engineering staff. Nor is it an effort at "home automation".
This is part of a marketing campaign not unlike the office depot "easy" button, except they've designed an actual button that sort-of works.
The point is to get people excited about the idea of a Netflix marathon and create some buzz among geeky subscribers. It doesn't matter how many people actually create or use "the button".
Well, I'm sure that was an excuse, but seriously. Do you honestly think the kind of geeks that'd do this are really that important to a company like Netflix these days? Maybe at the beginning...
If I had to attribute anything, it's more of a recruiting move. They want clever hacker geeks working for them. Maybe they are moving into home automation and this will be an interview question? I dunno how effective that is, though. I think someone just said, yeah, screw it, let's do it!
A little viral-ness doesn't hurt either. If it makes a dozen or so blogs today and reinforces the idea that Netflix is a service you cuddle down with in your den, that's not such a bad thing.
