[sakarisson]

I do agree that the honesty is refreshing.

That said, I personally feel like the mentality of "We will fire you if you aren't doing an _exceptional_ job" reads as a serious red flag. The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else. Even then, we might still fire you.

Of course I'd rather have a company being open and upfront about their unsustainable expectations, but I'd still prefer a company that values work/live balance of their employees. Would I say that Netflix's approach is toxic? Honestly, yes. But I do understand that this is just my own opinion.

[tux3]

>The implication here is that you should expect to work overtime and prioritize your job over all else.

I don't think that's right. The slide says:

"""

Hard Work — Not Relevant

We don't measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office

[...]

Sustained B-level performance despite effort generates severance

Sustained A-level performance despite minimal effort is rewarded

"""

The message seems to be that you don't have to work hard. They seem to say they want lazy employees that have a good work life balance, because they finish work early.

Whether that's toxic or not, that's another question. But I don't think they value overtime at all.

[sdiupIGPWEfh]

What I've seen happen at other companies that state they value impact over effort, openly discouraging overtime, is that eventually certain individuals will attain higher impact by not recording their overtime, who then pressure others to do the same. No, no one is directly rewarded for overtime, but effectively, yes, undocumented overtime becomes the expectation from your peers. That is toxic.

[p1esk]

How do you know if there’s overtime involved? I’ve worked with people who could accomplish as much in two hours as I did in two days. Would it be “toxic” to work in such an environment?

[sdiupIGPWEfh]

If your colleagues are leveraging substantial undocumented overtime, you're going to find out eventually. If you know someone is in the office 40 hours a week and they submit massive pull requests first thing in the morning, even Monday mornings, for problems you know they hadn't solved or started the night or week before, you should suspect something's up. Sooner or later, if someone's breaking their neck, they will resent team members who aren't putting in the same effort, and they'll slip and admit to the amount of time they're putting in, directly or indirectly.

Granted, it's easier to hide this now when everyone's working from home.

> I’ve worked with people who could accomplish as much in two hours as I did in two days. Would it be “toxic” to work in such an environment?

No, why would that be toxic?

[p1esk]

Why does it matter to you whether your peers are more productive than you because they are smarter than you, or because they work more? Is the former OK, but the latter "toxic"?

[dreinhardt]

It matters because someone has to decide what A- and B-List performance means. And the performance ceiling will shift if people put in 60 hours constantly. They will get more stuff done (assuming all else being equal) and soon your 40 hour A-List performance will have degraded to B level and now you’re either pressured in also doing the unrecorded overtime to get as much stuff done, or you are fired (you’re B-List now since someone is beating your performance by around 33%).

[hutzlibu]

"But I don't think they value overtime at all. "

But they do value putting the company over yourself (and your real family).

This can probably have very toxic effects, if you are having problems at home for example (sick kids or whatever) and all they allways care about, is your performance right now. So definitely not the place for me - as I would never put a company over my children (and it sounds like this is expected, even though they would likely never phrase it this way), but there are people without family, who have their work as top priority, so this might work out for them.

[tux3]

Oh yeah, I see what you mean. Absolutely agree on that.

[ihumanable]

They've chosen the best possible version of "Sustained A-level performance," that the person is capable of doing that with minimal effort.

There are a handful of people that are capable of producing "Sustained A-level performance" and for them this workplace probably seems ideal.

Even for the engineers that could reach this bar, it's a very high standard to apply constantly. There's another slide that gives a slight allowance for temporary performance issues, but that lack of security is hard for most people.

Slide 34 to be exact says this about Loyalty. "People who have been stars for us, and hit a bad patch, get a near term pass because we think they are likely to become stars for us again."

"A bad patch" is pretty loosely defined, if you burn out achieving something, or are assigned a problem that is particularly difficult, how much leeway do you have?

I don't think it would be an environment I would particularly enjoy, but I think to the original post's point this is a pretty great set of values because it really clearly articulates the trade-offs. If you are a 10x engineer and hate working at $current_company because they care about hard work and that's frustrating because you work smart not hard and you are comfortable with your career being contingent on consistent high performance, then Netflix is the place for you. If you work hard but think this would burn you out, look somewhere else. And that's what values should do, declare the trade-offs and take a firm stance on which things you value.

[dreinhardt]

Anyway it’s not working, as I guess we can agree the Netflix client apps are pretty bad products probably not even C-level quality…

[p1esk]

You do realize they offer top of market compensation (250k fresh grad, >500k senior SWE, etc) for what they are looking for?

[hutzlibu]

So your argument would be, as long as the pay is right, toxic culture is allright?

I mean, as long as this is a individual decision, that would be allright with me - but pay does not negate toxic. It only makes it bearable.

But like stated above, I do not say that Netflix culture is toxic, as they are clear about what they expect: top performance above everything else. That this can lead to toxic situations, as we all are not only having good times - should be clear to anyone applying. But I suppose even at netflix they are aware of this and hopefully have plans to deal with temporary burn outs, other than instantly firing those underperformers.

[p1esk]

So your argument would be, as long as the pay is right, toxic culture is allright?

No. Why would you think so?

[hutzlibu]

Because the context was toxic culture?

[p1esk]

No, the context was Netflix seeking top performance (results) from its employees. Whether this leads to toxic culture is a different question and up for a debate.

My point is a company that offers top compensation can and should demand top performance.

[hutzlibu]

"Whether this leads to toxic culture is a different question and up for a debate"

And here I was thinking this whole thread was about that question ...

"My point is a company that offers top compensation can and should demand top performance. "

Anyway, sure they can. But no company can expect from me, to put the company over my self. A good company has those goals aligned. I get money - and they get performance. Win win. But I will not work to death for them, as then all my money would be worthless.

That is - no for-profit company can expect this from me. A non-profit on the other hand, that has truly utilitarian goals, that really benefit humanity - I might consider putting myself aside. But why should anyone sacrifice himself, so a company makes more money? That doesn't make sense to me. But of course it makes sense, that companies want their employes give everything to them.

[csee]

I interpret that as a positive sign. Every manager and company I've worked for has been too slow to fire under-performers.

[jayd16]

I would say that one possibly toxic element to that is that it could mean that Netflix is not a place to grow. Do not expect help improving. Expect the door. That has other knock on effects like possibly hiding struggles, faking results, etc etc.

Does Netflix actually have such a cutthroat culture? I have no idea.

The slides are a bit contradictory. They talk about only keeping top talent but then also mention a major/minor league analogy. So what's the culture, really?

[chasd00]

If you've never done it, it's very hard, emotionally, to fire an under-performer. You see someone struggling and you know it's best for your team/company but now you're going to put that person out of a job.

I'm not excusing it, but I can see people putting off firing under-performers just to avoid feeling like shit.

[1123581321]

Netflix itself uses the analogy of a high-performing sports team, or at least used to. So this would be like if the LA Rams say they will drop you from the team if you aren't NFL caliber. It's hard to read a straightforwardly high expectation to match the environment and coworkers as toxic.

Now, it is toxic if a mediocre organization tries to fire a particular good performer because they aren't exceptional, when clearly the rest of the organization also isn't exceptional. That is dishonest, delusional, etc.