Retired Netflix Engineering Director On Regrets, Video Engineering, Hiring Stories

David Ronca joined Netflix in 2007 and grew to an engineering director there. Later he joined Meta as a Director and transitioned to a Principal engineer working on video technologies. Now he's retired and was graciously willing to share his career story with us. I asked him for everything he learned in his 36 year career.
𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/retired-netflix-engineering-director
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/ApG9vjbHDCk
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:
• Netflix culture memo (2009) - https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/culture-1798664/1798664
𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:40 - How Netflix was different
00:08:01 - The legendary Netflix culture memo
00:18:54 - How to hire engineers well
00:30:52 - The strongest engineer he's ever met
00:33:02 - Joining Meta
00:50:52 - Near death experience
00:59:04 - Where he learned the most
01:04:09 - Book that impacted his career most
01:11:33 - Advice for his younger self
01:18:32 - Outro
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗱:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidronca/
• Personal Website: https://www.roncatech.com/
𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:
• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman