This Netflix Engineer Quits His Job Worth USD 450,000 A Year Because He Was Bored Of It!

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This Netflix Engineer Quits His Job Worth USD 450,000 A Year Because He Was Bored Of It!

When Michael Lin joined Netflix from Amazon in 2017 as a Senior Software Engineer, he thought that he would stay at the job forever. "I made USD 450,000 a year, got free food daily, and had unlimited paid time off. It was the Big Tech dream," he wrote in a Medium post.

As a resident of the Bay Area, he also got the opportunity to return home, and what made it even better was the fact that he got a promotion as well. Yet, when he left after 4 years, everyone was questioning his decision to leave Netflix.

"When I left almost four years later in May 2021, everyone thought I was crazy," he said in his post.

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Coming from an immigrant family in the US, life has not been easy for both Lin and his parents. In fact, Lin's parents were the first to object to his decision as it almost meant throwing away their hard work of immigrating to the US.

Even Lin's mentor objected to the idea of quitting as he would not be able to leverage his high salary while negotiating his pay at the next job.

All these factors made it hard for Lin to take the decision, but eventually, he did it. What was his motivation? It was simple: escaping boredom and enjoying work.

From Loving His Job To Losing Interest

"Working at Netflix was like getting paid to work on case studies you learn about in MBA programs," Lin said. "They made the memos for every product decision available for all employees to read, and I learned so much every day," he said.

However, as Lin noted, the attraction of the job started to fall apart for him within two years. The meetings and the projects were becoming more and more the same thing and Lin was not enjoying it. For him, the engineering work felt like 'copy and paste' and the only thing he was enjoying was socializing with coworkers.

But that would go on to become short-lived as the Covid 19 pandemic resulted in office closure. "The office shut down, and all my favorite parts of work - the socializing, the coworkers, the perks - disappeared," he said.

While this situation was a tipping point, Lin had more pressing issues at work that were bothering him. He wanted to make a transition, and there was no scope for it at Netflix.

Realizing His Dream Of Product Management

"I wanted to have a bigger effect. For me, deciding how to allocate engineering resources was more relevant to my career goals than the engineering work itself, and I wanted to transition into product management to lead these efforts," he said.

As a result, Lin tried to network within Netflix and started applying for every product management role he could find. However, his attempts did not work out and he was still stuck in the same job.

According to Lin, Netflix did not have any process in place to support the transition from an engineering role to product management. "I've never seen an engineer successfully transition to product management at the company," he added.

Eventually, he was frustrated by the search and was inching towards a decision where stepping out of Netflix would be inevitable.

Loss Of Motivation And Focus

When one works at a job where there is no enjoyment, even a high salary feels like a burden. "When I started at Netflix, I was making money and continuously learning new things. Now, I was just making money, with no career progression," Lin said.

For Lin, it felt like he was making the same career mistakes he had made at Amazon. He felt that he was staying at a job longer than he should have - the same mistake he made at Amazon.

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"My team's goal also started to diverge from my career goals. The work I was doing didn't help me learn the business skills I needed," Lin said. His motivation was waning very fast and his performance was dipping with every passing day.

Eventually, Lin’s manager started noticing the dip in performance and things got heated up in a performance review. After that, he was left with no other option but to explain to his manager that his goals diverge from his team’s and it was the reason behind the dip in his performance. He requested a pre-emptive severance package and got it from Netflix. The big-tech dream was officially over at this point.

What After Netflix?

“I was putting off my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur, and COVID-19 was a constant reminder that I might not be here tomorrow to pursue them. I was scared that my tombstone would read: ‘Here lies Michael. He spent his life doing work he never wanted to do. Rest in peace,’" he wrote.

“It's been eight months since I quit my job at Netflix, and I've decided to commit fully to working for myself. Although I'm just starting and don't have any dependable streams of income yet, I'm going to trust the process that if I do work that energizes me, good things will happen,” Lin added.

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Edited by

Shamik Banerjee

Associate, Content

I'm an avid reader and a football lover. When I'm not at work, you will probably find me invested in some football match. At Unstop, I dig out obscure facts and make them relevant through compelling stories.