Applied directly and the recruiter responded after about a month. They had a video chat with me where it was clear they were screening for culture fit. This is absolutely a step where you could get disqualified; it's a part of the interview.

After the recruiter approved me, they put me in touch with an internal "talent coordinator" or something similar, who scheduled my meeting with the team manager.

The 30-minute video screen with the manager was very pleasant. He mentioned that every manager at Netflix is pretty much given control over how they want to interview, so I would keep that in mind when you read other people's reviews here—it really matters who you're interviewing with.

He did say that the culture is not as cutthroat as a lot of people make it seem, or even as their culture memo makes it seem.

He did mention that they are still screening heavily for the "brilliant jerk" and trying to get them out. Generally, it seems like you will understand your performance, have a helping hand if any correction is needed, and really be set up for success. Autonomy is expected to an extent, but you have to get along with the team. You get fired if they missed a major fundamental in screening or if you don't get along, basically.

It ended here for me before the technical interview, despite really positive feedback. The manager just had people with extensive experience in more niche areas, so he is going with them for now but mentioned he could quite likely circle back to me in the future.

The manager did mention the third phase would have been a shared coding exercise with one of his engineers, but that it might be quite easy and to just start on it right away rather than overthinking it. For this particular manager, he said I should not expect a LeetCode-type question and that generally most managers there are moving away from that.

After that, which seems like it would have been easy, would be an on-site screener with many different engineers. This again did not seem like it would be LeetCode-style questions, but instead some pretty simple stuff to see how you communicate and work with others. I did get the impression that you would be screened reasonably heavily on systems design here, but again, it was stressed that even at this stage this is to see how you handle feedback, how you work with others, how you communicate, etc.

It was made very clear that this is a company that would be reasonably forgiving in technical interviews so long as they think you have what they need and can get along with the team.

Hiring manager screener questions:

• Why Netflix?
• Tell me about what you are currently working on.
• Tell me about challenges Java & Scala have presented to you.
• Tell me about how you handle feedback and how you give feedback.