Kara Kovalchik
The Secret Inner Workings of Netflix
by Kara Kovalchik - August 6, 2009 - 12:30 PM

netflixThe economy is stagnant and many businesses are struggling to stay afloat, yet Netflix consistently shows a profit. Well, what better way to temporarily take your mind off of job hunting and bill paying than to watch a movie? And if that movie is delivered right to your mailbox so that you don’t even have to get dressed to retrieve it, that’s just icing on the cake. But where exactly do those Netflix DVDs come from? How do they get to your home so quickly? These questions and more are answered below, but keep it quiet, please; the Netflix folks are very big on secrecy.

Netflix has 58 warehouses nationwide, and each one is non-descript and unremarkable. There is no outside signage or even a corporate color scheme to give the slightest hint to the rest of the industrial park what lurks inside those concrete walls. The company has good reason to keep its presence on the down low: each warehouse contains not only millions of DVDs, but also some very sophisticated and expensive sorting and processing equipment. Aside for the theft potential, Netflix is also trying to avoid having customers showing up on their doorstep trying to return or rent discs.

netfUnmarked Netflix trucks are dispatched to the local main post office at 3:00AM six days per week to pick up cartons of returned DVDs. (Thus, getting your disc in the post early in the day doesn’t mean you’ll get your next movie any faster; there is only one pick-up per day.) The incoming cartons are handed off to employees who open each box and then spend their entire eight-hour shift taking a disc out of the box, removing it from the envelope, making sure that the title matches the sleeve, wiping it down in one motion and inspecting it for scratches or cracks, and then placing it in one of two bins (one for good discs, one for rejects). Seasoned employees perform this sequence about 650 times per hour, which makes them susceptible to repetitive stress injuries. As a precaution, there is a mandatory stretching/callisthenics break every 65 minutes. [Photo credit: Matthew J. Lee]

Discs that pass inspection are loaded into a machine that scans them (at the rate of 30,000 bar codes per hour) and generates an email confirmation to the sender that the disc has been received. The discs are then scanned a second time, during which process the system checks to see if the DVD has been requested and, if it has, it is automatically sorted by ZIP code. A separate machine inserts and seals the discs into envelopes and a laser printer zaps the address onto the front of the mailer. The machine stuffs and seals about 3,200 envelopes each hour, which are then packed into cartons. Come 5:00PM, the cartons are loaded into trucks and hauled back to the post office, completing that final curve in the Netflix circle.

twitterbanner.jpg

shirts-555.jpg

tshirtsubad_static-11.jpg

« Previous Post   -   Next Post »
Click here to get a Risk-Free issue of mental_floss magazine
Comments (24)

  1. awesome. i *heart* Netflix.

    posted by Erica on 8-6-2009 at 12:38 pm

  2. Wow, that’s so crazy. I’ve always wondered how Netflix works behind the scenes. Now I wish I didn’t know…I feel bad for the people sitting there eight hours a day doing this repetitive work.

    posted by Mikel on 8-6-2009 at 12:58 pm

  3. Whodathunkit? What a great operation they have going on. I’m glad they give calisthenic breaks. Otherwise, it would look a bit like a sweat shop.
    (p.s. I have never used Netflix or any other DVD by mail service, rarely rent DVDs from anywhere. Occasionally, I will buy an On Demand or Pay per View… but less than 6 times a year.)

    posted by Hyacinth on 8-6-2009 at 12:58 pm

  4. There was a neat article about this in the Tribune the other day: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-0804-netflixaug04,0,6424990.story

    I would have guessed that the process was more automated. Huh.

    posted by Jonelle on 8-6-2009 at 1:12 pm

  5. Same deal. If i rented more movies, it would seem like a good idea for me too, but at most i’m watching about 5 or six movies annually that aren’t mine at my house.

    It makes my job look slightly more entertaining, as there are things to do other than the same repetative task for hours at a time. I can guarantee that i would be making friends with my deskmates and talking about some crazy, thought-inducing subjects to keep every day lively if i worked there.

    posted by Steven on 8-6-2009 at 1:16 pm

  6. This is as opposed to Gamefly, which seemingly has 4 employees working 3 days a week, filling out each order by hand, and addressing in crayola.

    posted by Fredd in Harlem on 8-6-2009 at 1:24 pm

  7. @Fredd hahahaha

    This is facinating. I have Netflix and love them.

    posted by Janternet on 8-6-2009 at 1:37 pm

  8. That is interesting. Now can ou find out who’s sitting there monitoring my rental history and making those wacky recommendations? “Under the Tuscan Sun”? Seriously?

    posted by Dwayne on 8-6-2009 at 2:04 pm

  9. I’ve had Netflix for about 2 months and I love it! It can be addictive to sit and look at their recommendations and rate films I’ve seen. I agree, some of the recommendations are way off base!

    recaptcha: his wrangles

    posted by vegebrarian on 8-6-2009 at 2:28 pm

  10. Great article – now I know why we we receive new discs so quickly. Won’t stop me from saying my usual comment of, “The new movies arrived already?!”, whenever we get new Netflix in the mail!

    posted by EL on 8-6-2009 at 3:52 pm

  11. I adore Netflix. My city just a few months ago got its own processing facility and I was curious why I hadn’t seen where it’s located. Now I know. They didn’t want us to know.

    posted by Melissa on 8-6-2009 at 4:37 pm

  12. I think Netflix is really helped by the rise of TV shows on DVD. My local Hollywood video (well, before it went out of business) charged full rental price ($4) for one disc of a TV series. At Netflix, I can probably do a whole season in less than a month for a little more than twice that.

    posted by Evan3000 on 8-6-2009 at 5:01 pm

  13. @evan3k: yup man. i wouldn’t have watched a lot of tv shows if it wasnt for netflix. all hail netflix!!!

    posted by kevin on 8-6-2009 at 6:09 pm

  14. My wife worked there for 2 weeks. She said it was the closest thing to a sweat shop she has ever seen. They are watched closely for their stats and get rid of people who don’t keep up. You are checked when you leave the facility to make sure you don’t take any DVDs with you.

    posted by Steve M on 8-6-2009 at 7:18 pm

  15. Wouldn’t one of those jobs suck?

    I like Netflix: They’ve got more than the video store, the price is reasonable, and it’s one less errand to run.

    posted by BassMan on 8-6-2009 at 7:22 pm

  16. The information from this article sounds a lot like the Tribune article from 2 days earlier. Was this article based on that one, or did this author also interview Netflix?

    posted by Albert on 8-6-2009 at 9:42 pm

  17. I know people who rave about Netflix, but as long as they keep using pop-under ads (that somehow defeat pop-up blockers), I won’t be a customer.

    posted by PartiallyDeflected on 8-7-2009 at 12:14 am

  18. @Albert, I agree…isn’t there some sort of citation requirement for journalists?

    posted by hj on 8-7-2009 at 12:54 am

  19. Albert, we didn’t visit Netflix personally, since we don’t live near one of the distribution centers. But we didn’t “rip” anything from the Tribune. We began research on this article more than a week ago using several sources. Some of the online sources we used include:

    http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2009/07/hacking-a-netflix-shipping-center.html

    http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/08/23/the_vast_picture_show_in_a_warehouse_near_you/

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5420692

    http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2007/10/04/butte/hjjcijjfjiibjc.txt

    posted by Sandy Wood on 8-7-2009 at 9:18 am

  20. PartiallyDeflected – Firefox with Adblock Plus is your friend. :)

    posted by bryn on 8-7-2009 at 9:24 am

  21. Now after reading the comments, especially the one from the guy whose wife worked there, it kind of bothers me that because we are a society of instant gratification, people are being returned to essentially sweatshops (albeit legal ones) just so we can have our movies a couple days faster. Really? This is what’s important? I know that Netflix users by and large have no idea of what’s going on behind the scenes, so maybe that we do know we should reconsider our memberships. You wouldn’t buy clothes with Kathy Lee’s name on them once you found out how they were made would you? (Oh wait, we didn’t buy them before that either!)

    posted by Hyacinth on 8-8-2009 at 8:57 am

  22. I love Netflix I have been a customer from the get go years ago! As for the people who work there. I wouldn’t really say sweat shop. For 1 I assume there would be AC and it would be their choice to work there unlike some other places. Also I am sure they get paid enough or they would simply choose another job. This is America we have more choices and more rights than other countries. I was going to say we are a free country but that part would be debatable!

    posted by Tygerluv on 8-8-2009 at 10:53 pm

  23. Every low-level job involved in manufacturing or production involves repetitive tasks with quotas that workers have to average to keep the entire industrial machine from falling apart. Without these unskilled assembly line jobs, a lot of people would not have work because, let’s face it, not everyone can be doctors.

    Unfortunately, people filling these positions are the most likely to be “abused” and pushed harder by management because they are more easily filled by the thousands of unemployed. This is why we need unions to “defend” workers in these types of jobs. Sure, unions have their own problems but anyone 100% against unions truly do not care about people who do the real work in this country.

    posted by Anonymous on 8-30-2009 at 8:41 pm

  24. It is a sweatshop!

    posted by ren on 6-19-2010 at 11:54 pm

Comment

commenting policy