Elizabeth Stone is Netflix’s chief technology officer, overseeing a global team of about 3,000 at the streaming giant. The technology group touches every part of Netflix — spanning not just the core product experience, but also advertising, games, livestreaming content and studio production organizations.
“The greatest complexity comes from the fact that our team supports all areas of the business,” she says in the latest episode of Variety’s “Strictly Business” podcast. “And it means we’ve got partnerships across all of Netflix.”
Stone first joined the company in 2020 and became VP of data and insights, before she was named CTO in October 2023, becoming the first Netflix exec to hold that title. She has a background in economics with a PhD from Stanford (and she once worked as a trader at Merrill Lynch), which is very unusual for a top-level tech exec.
“I feel like I use my economics background on almost a daily basis,” says Stone. As she notes, “We don’t have endless resources. So we want to spend our time and energy and dollars on things that are going to be most impactful for Netflix.”
Netflix has long used machine learning and artificial intelligence, which have powered the core of its personalized recommendations. In the last few years, generative AI — which creates text, images, videos or other data, based on a vast databases of source material — has exploded into the mainstream. Stone says the gen AI wave is “a step function in that technology” and that Netflix is exploring how to integrate it into the product to improve the member experience or how it could “enable creators and bring their visions to life in an even better way.”
One new AI project she says Netflix is working on now is an “interactive discovery experience.” Is it an AI chatbot, à la OpenAI’s ChatGPT? Not exactly. Without describing it in detail, Stone says it’s “a way to think about organizing the catalog, which is so big, into something that feels more tractable for members to help them discover things, and reshaping the moment or understanding of what a member is looking for. So we’re working on prototypes of that.”
When will it see the light of day? Possibly soon: “We’re still working on that internally to make sure that it’s a really good experience for members before we have members trying it themselves,” Stone says.
Netflix’s technology prowess has admirers across the industry — including Disney chief Bob Iger, who earlier this year acknowledged that the Mouse House needs “to be at their level in terms of technology capability.”
“I think Netflix’s superpower for a long time has been the way that technology can be so valuable for entertainment, and can bring an innovation to entertainment that’s really appealing to consumers,” Stone says. “I agree with Bob Iger that Netflix has, I think, a strength that is very important that we maintain.”
Stone says part of the culture at Netflix, especially in the technology team, is to think about what’s best for the business. “And that’s a motivator for the team, versus feeling like, you know, we’ve got people nipping at our heels, and we feel the pressure to stay ahead. But you know, we’re also a business and we’re hoping to be successful, which means you do have to have some real drive to do an even better job than what the competition’s doing. So I hope we keep that drive.”
One of the top priorities for Stone and the Netflix tech team is improving its capabilities to deliver live content — particularly with its biggest move yet into live sports later this year: two NFL games on Christmas Day 2024.
Netflix has learned a lot since the “Love Is Blind” live reunion special in April 2023 failed to launch. It’s a “distant memory, thankfully, because it’s a painful one for many of us on the team,” Stone says. “I think the thing about ‘Love Is Blind’ is that it was a good reminder of how complicated it really is to deliver live well at scale. And it can seem like it should be an easy thing, because broadcasters around the world do this every day.” But, she says, “being able to adapt the way Netflix has optimized streaming video-on-demand for streaming live content is complex… We’ve gained a ton of amazing learnings around just how to ensure greater reliability and stability for members who are watching and even operational aspects of things.” Netflix has applied those learnings to more recent live events, like the Tom Brady roast this past May, “so that gives us some preparation for NFL but it’s still a big challenge ahead of us that the team has to be really focused on.”
On the podcast, Stone also talks about Netflix’s famous corporate culture, the “no rules” philosophy that co-founder Reed Hastings established in its early days. As spelled out in Netflix’s culture memo, which the company updated last month, the framework includes the “keeper test,” which encourages managers to part ways with employees if the answer is “no” to the question, “If X wanted to leave, would I fight to keep them?”
“It’s not difficult to adapt to when everyone’s doing it,” Stone says. “So what I find about Netflix is, if you find that your peers are being candid with you — what you’re doing well, where you could be doing better — you feel like you’re invested in each other’s success.” When Stone was interviewing at Netflix, she says, that radical honesty “sounded like a fascinating and great fit for me with what I was looking for.”
But Netflix has had to evolve its “no rules rules” to, well, add some kinds of process framework. Today, Netflix is a bigger company than even when Stone joined in April 2020. “We’ve had to change some of the operating practices just so we stay effective as a company,” she says. “So one of the things that’s evolved since I’ve been here is more leadership conversation and communication around, ‘Here’s what’s top-of-mind for us this year.’ And that provides some structure for how many, many teams think about, ‘Well, then this is what we should do to nest into these company priorities.’” That’s not a rule or mandate per se, Stone says, but “it’s guidance that I think allows people to feel more aligned across thousands of people.”
“Strictly Business” is Variety’s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut on Wednesdays and can be accessed via Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.
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