I did my first two years of college at a community college because my family couldn't afford university. Transferred to a state school, graduated with a 3.2 GPA in CS.

Started my career at a small consultancy doing Django web apps. Moved to Hulu after 2 years where I worked on the streaming infrastructure team. That experience was invaluable for the Netflix interview.

Netflix's culture is unique. They don't do traditional leetcode-style interviews. Instead, they focus on past experience and how you've handled real engineering challenges. The interview felt more like a technical conversation than a test.

I had 4 rounds in one day. Two were deep dives into projects I'd worked on, one was system design (designing a CDN for video streaming), and one was about cultural fit.

For the system design round, my experience at Hulu gave me an unfair advantage. I could talk about actual challenges with video encoding, adaptive bitrate streaming, and CDN edge caching from first-hand experience.

The feedback culture at Netflix is intense. During the interview, they asked me how I give and receive feedback, and about times I've had difficult conversations with teammates. They weren't looking for perfect answers, they were looking for self-awareness.

The "keeper test" philosophy was discussed openly. They asked how I'd feel working somewhere that regularly evaluates if you're the best person for the role. I appreciated the transparency.

Comp was top of market. Netflix pays mostly in cash which I prefer over equity-heavy packages.

1. Netflix cares about your actual engineering experience more than puzzle-solving ability.
2. Be prepared to discuss past projects in extreme detail. They'll ask follow-up questions.
3. The culture fit round is real. Read the Netflix culture memo before interviewing.
4. Domain knowledge in streaming/media is a big advantage but not required.
5. Don't undersell yourself because of your educational background. Nobody at Netflix asked about mine.