I’m a former Netflix employee who made $450,000 a year before I quit, but I have no regrets

WHEN Michael Lin left his job at Netflix, where he made $450,000 a year and had unlimited paid time off, everyone around him thought he was crazy.

But now, eight months later, he believes he made the right decision in the end.

4

4

Michael started working at Netflix in 2017 after quitting his job at Amazon.

“I was happy to get a promotion and return home to the Bay Area,” he told Business Insider.

“At the time, I thought I would stay with Netflix forever. I was making $450,000 a year, getting free food every day, and unlimited paid time off. It was the big tech dream.”

But nearly four years later, Michael left Netflix in May 2021. He said his parents didn’t take the news well because they believed he was “thrown away their hard work of immigrating to the United States.”

His colleagues told him it wasn’t a good idea to quit without finding another job.

“Your comments made me pause for a full three days before speaking to my manager about the departure.

In Michael’s early days at Netflix, he said he learned so much every day. However, in his first two years with the company, he claims that the “gloss faded”.

“The projects and meetings mixed up and after a while felt like little variations on each other,” he said. “The design work started to feel like copy and paste.”

NEW PERSPECTIVE

But all the perks Michael loved about his job disappeared when the Covid-19 pandemic happened. The only thing left was the work that Michael realized he wasn’t enjoying anymore.

This prompted him to network within Netflix and apply for several product manager jobs, but none of his efforts came to fruition. Michael found that the company had no processes to support horizontal role changes.

“When I started at Netflix, I was making money and learning new things all the time. Now I was just making money with no career progression.”

When Michael found out about this, he said that his motivation decreased and it had a negative impact on his job performance. His manager noticed this, leading to a heated performance review in April 2021.

“He said I needed to get more involved in the team’s technical migration and be more communicative. In his words, I had to improve in these areas “if I wanted to stay in the team.”

Despite working for a prestigious company and making a good living, Michael still feels unfulfilled. Covid-19 also put his life into perspective as people had lost their lives during the pandemic.

“I put off my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and Covid-19 has been a constant reminder that tomorrow I may not be here to pursue them.”

Two weeks after his performance review, Michael spoke to his manager and proposed a “preventive severance package” on his way out of the company.

After Michael left Netflix, he says there’s a “deep calm” and an “unshakeable belief that everything will be okay, even though future success isn’t guaranteed right now.”

“It’s been eight months since I quit my job at Netflix and I’ve decided to fully focus on working for myself,” he said.

“Even though I’m just starting out and don’t have any reliable sources of income yet, I have faith in the process that good things will happen when I do work that drives me.”

4

4