The interview process at Netflix was fun and incredibly efficient. I got an offer form them, but for personal reasons I had to reject it. I definitely recommend everyone to try and get into this amazing company.
I applied to several positions through their website and they got in touch with me. In less than one week I had the opportunity to talk to the recruiter and the hiring manager. I had great conversation with both of them and the position in the Build&Tolols team seemed a good match for me. They sent me a coding exercise which gave me the opportunity not only to show my coding skills but also to show how I would handle a real life project, with build and test code. At this point, I got an offer from Amazon and asked them if they could expedite the process. They were extremely efficient and flew me to Los Gatos in a couple days.
The onsite interview was amazing. I had three technical interviews where I could discuss the problems they were working on, my past experience and my open source projects. The people interviewing me were the people I would work with, including my hiring manager. I also had the opportunity to ask all I wanted about Netflix amazing and peculiar culture. It is a little bit frightening that they let people with adequate performance go, but after talking to them I realised that was the reason they got such an amazing team.
After having lunch with the team, which was composed by a bunch of nice and smart guys, I went back for one more round of interviews, this time with the Netflix directors. This was a very good sign since you only take this second round of interviews if you went well at the first round. We had very interesting conversations in which they seemed to be assessing me in terms of culture. It all went great and I got to learn more about the company.
After all interviews were over, my hiring manager showed me the area where my team worked. I even got a few stickers and a mini figure of Chaos Monkey! He told me that the team really loved me and he would get back to me soon. Because I had a pending offer from Amazon, they called me back the same day to tell me I had passed and to try to and get me to say no to Amazon :) They made an offer with flying colours! Given the fact I loved the team, the work I would do and the company culture, I said a very happy yes.
After a couple weeks, when I was already preparing for relocation, I got a call from Google. I had an interview with them some time ago and they also had an offer for me. Even though the opportunity at Google didn't sound as appealing as the one at Netflix, I wouldn't need to relocate to Los Gatos and that was very important to me and my family. I had to cancel with my team at Netflix, which made me feel really bad since I had such an amazing experience with the people there. Even though this was not the right time for me to join Netflix, I would be more than happy to get in touch with them in the future to explore more opportunities.