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gcanyonlast Tuesday at 2:58 AM10 repliesview on HN

I read through that whole article thinking,

   - I wonder what the UI looks like compared to tools I use now
   - I wonder if there will be a free tier, since my video needs are modest
It never occurred to me until I reached the end that this wasn't a "enjoy this tool we made" post, but instead a "look how awesome we are" post. :-/

Replies

dkhlast Tuesday at 7:43 AM

For people in within the industry or the tech side of it, Netflix’s engineering blog has always been fascinating and extremely useful because of the insane amount of stuff in this space they have solved or reworked. They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else, and it's not even close. In a technical/workflow sense, working on a Netflix show is unlike working on any other. I have my issues with Netflix in other respects, but with respect to technology and workflow, they are awesome.

If you’re unable to appreciate a behind-the-scenes look at their engineering because the technology isn't for you or available to you, that's totally valid! But it's a you're not interested thing, not a Netflix is boasting about something that doesn't matter thing. Only a few thousand teams in the world need most of what they do over there, but that doesn't mean they aren't massive technical achievements. Most of them are. The scale, complexity, and cadence of modern production has given rise to some of the biggest technical challenges I’ve ever seen. And for anyone close to that world, this kind of content is of great interest — if not genuinely valuable.

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penultimatenamelast Tuesday at 4:02 AM

I’ve sat through a few Netflix talks and they’re all the same flavor of “look what you can achieve with millions of dollars and hundreds of engineers.” They’re somewhat interesting from an architectural perspective, but even scaled down versions aren’t feasible in most environments and it leaves a taste in your mouth that you just sat through a recruiting pitch.

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Gshaheenlast Tuesday at 3:16 AM

Ha! Yes sure, but it does make sense that they’d keep something like this to themselves.

Creating massive amounts of high quality content efficiently, on a global scale, with seamless global distribution is an incredible competitive advantage.

I don’t see why they would provide it to anyone outside of their ecosystem.

It’ll be interesting to see if they translate this to games as well.

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barrkellast Tuesday at 9:44 AM

The purpose of these articles is to promote the brand among engineers, help hire engineers, and help the careers of the authors both internally ("I'm helping the company hire") and externally (you can point at what you built because it's now public).

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VWWHFSfQlast Tuesday at 3:31 AM

I've worked at a few different FAANG's (including this one). I've participated in some of these engineering blog posts.

They will never tell you anything that is real-world relevant for you.

At best, you might get some kind of _theoretical_ insight. It's because they're operating at a scale that just isn't realistic for hobby developers.

But they're still engineers just the same as you and me. So they write blogs like this. And it's interesting! I love to read them.

dagmxlast Tuesday at 5:21 AM

I know quite a few people who worked on this and unfortunately this is effectively the product.

It’s a company that prioritizes micro services and enterprise style crud apps internally. I’ve seen so many of their presentations and it’s like an IBM demo.

It’s data , data, data. That’s their approach to everything.

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oDotlast Tuesday at 6:48 AM

Hi there, I'm a fellow filmmaker building my own tools and would love to hear your thoughts and needs. If you'd like (and anyone reading this), please email

Studios at weedonandscott dot com

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MarceliusKlast Tuesday at 6:30 AM

Yeah, I had the same feeling. The tech itself sounds genuinely impressive, but the article reads more like an internal case study than something aimed at engaging the wider community

pestslast Tuesday at 3:41 PM

For your first point, you can see it in the videos they have embedded.

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