Netflix, behind the scenes
We have been Netflix customers for a while now and have no complaints about the service whatsoever. The wife and I have discussed it before noting that package design and the timeliness of each order must be due to the fact that they are automated in some way or another. Boy was I off.
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/08/23/netflix/
46 warehouses with approximately 50 employees in each. At an average of 700 DVD’s an hour the sum total of DVD’s sorted and delivered daily is about 1.6 million. Wow. I’m not all for cutting those jobs but surely someone could help them with a better system.
Slightly related:
The Netflix DVD sorter/re-packager job reminds me slightly of a story my buddy Rob told me a while ago.
When he was a kid, he moved to a small Texas town and attempted to make friends. On one occasion he asked a local boy what his father did and the response was something along the following…
Rob: What does your dad do?
Kid: You know how some nails are silver?
Rob: Yeah
Kid: Well, you know how some nails are gold?
Rob: Yeah
Kid: My dad paints the silver ones gold
Umm, as much as I hate having students loans still, I am slightly thankful for them just in the fact that I’m not painting nails for a living.