New Yorker Article Takes Us Inside a Netflix Warehouse
If you have ever wondered what goes on inside a Netflix warehouse, then you may want to take a look at Susan Sheehan’s recent article in the New Yorker. I’ve always pictured the inside of a Netflix warehouse (a new one of which just opened in Portland, Maine) to be a lot like the inside of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. I’ve heard that, much like Wonka’s factory, Netflix warehouses have intentionally non-descript exteriors because the company doesn’t want people showing up to drop off movies. These bland facades must hide something fantastic.
No warehouse or factory, of course, is anything like Wonka’s, with happy little elves singing and dancing their ways through the day. A Netflix warehouse is no exception. But the efficiency of a Netflix shipping operation is amazing in a different sort of way.
According to Sheehan’s story, 40 workers start at 6:30 am and, by lunch, have finished processing all of the returned disks that came in earlier that morning (and yes, they do actually check the comments you scribble on the back of the envelope). After lunch, the workers stuff the envelopes with disks to be shipped out (a good “stuffer” can finish about 1,000 disks per hour). The disks then go to a machine to be electronically addressed and sorted by zip code (which is a major reason why it enjoys cheap shipping rates) before being sent to the post office by 8 that evening. The warehouse workers are generally finished by 5:30 pm (the machines keep working till around 7) and put in around 40 hours a week. The result is the absolute model of efficiency that Netflix subscribers have come to enjoy.