2 years ago

Category: Business, Infrastructure, Architecture

I recently had the opportunity to read the book “No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention” by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer of Netflix, and it dawned on me that while this book wasn’t at all focused on Netflix’s technology, the global company-wide culture had a significant impact on its technology choices. In this post, I’d like to take a look at how Netflix’s culture was the backbone that enabled its bleeding edge technology decisions — and specifically microservices.

It was so complex and vast and no one really understood all of it, that I learned how truly difficult it is to break up a monolith that is the beating heart of a business.

To support their innovative approach to expense reporting and vacation requests for example, Netflix built the proper checks and balances into the system in advance, to ensure on the one hand that it couldn’t be abused, but that it could also scale with them as they grow and maintain this critical piece of their culture.

With microservices, it is impossible to micromanage and therefore you have to provide the general vision and direction and trust that your teams will align to these shared goals.