"I made $450,000 a year (about Rs 3.5 crore), got free food daily, and had unlimited paid time off. It was the Big Tech dream."
Michael Lin joined Netflix as a Senior Software Engineer in 2017 after leaving his job at Amazon. "At the time, I thought I would stay with Netflix forever," he wrote on LinkedIn.
"I made $450,000 a year (about Rs 3.5 crore), got free food daily, and had unlimited paid time off. It was the Big Tech dream."
That's why, when Lin quit in May 2021, and everyone thought he was crazy.
Lin stated that his parents were the first to object. For them, him quitting the job was like throwing away their hard work of immigrating to the US. My mentor was the second to object, he added.
Lin said that he learned a lot on the job during his initial years but after Covid struck, almost everything that Lin liked about the job - the socializing, the coworkers, the perks - came to an end. "The only thing left was the work itself, and I didn't enjoy it anymore," he said.
Lin revealed that working at Netflix was like getting paid to work on case studies one learns about in MBA programs. They made the memos for every product decision available for all employees to read, and I learned so much every day”.
Lin was afraid that the move would affect his career and social life, but the opposite happened. "I've met more people through starting my own business - other entrepreneurs, writers, and creators," he stated.
He added that he felt a deep calm and a sense of relief inside +and believed everything would eventually work out.
"It's been eight months since I quit my job at Netflix, and I've decided to commit fully to working for myself," Lin said. "Although I'm just starting and don't have any dependable streams of income yet, I am going to trust the process that if I do work that energizes me, good things will happen", Lin believes.
