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At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

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Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#121

Post by sargun »

strict9 wrote: post #59
stephengillie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CEO ... believed that regularly letting people go was a way of eliminating bad apples and forcing people to work harder and smarter. Microsoft called it Stack Ranking.

Presumably it wasn't structured like MS's stack ranking, it was arbitrary. It's a weird feeling to come in regularly and be uncertain if you'd still be employed by the end of week, but not for anything you specifically did. Now that I think about it, it was a bizarrely nepotistic environment. An engineering manager would hire their friends, many speculated as at least partial insurance against being fired. But once t…

You mean cronyistic, not nepotistic.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#122

Post by dunpeal »

rpdillon wrote: post #104
dunpeal wrote: post #37

> Many employees say they see the keeper test as a guise for ordinary workplace politics while some managers say they feel pressure to fire people or risk looking soft. Postmortem emails and meetings explaining why people got fired are viewed by some employees as awkward and theatrical when the audiences can be dozens or even hundreds of people. So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds…

It's interesting to me that the discussions in this thread treat performance and ability to work with others as distinct. In a team-based work environment, one's ability to work effectively with others is a critical aspect of performance. If an employee engages in behavior that frustrates, annoys, or confuses others, performance suffers, particularly in any role above entry level, where leadership, communication, and…

> If an employee engages in behavior that frustrates, annoys, or confuses others, performance suffers, particularly in any role above entry level, where leadership, communication, and mentoring ability are part of the job description."

I don't see arguments in the thread that being generally insufferable at work is not a performance problem.

Most of the comments are about the fact that you can easily lose your job for being disliked arbitrarily by exactly one person: your direct superior.

This can happen to people who are good performers and team players.

One obvious example: professional differences, where an employees generally disagrees with his superior's approach. None of them is necessarily wrong, they just have different professional styles.

One less benign example: the manager is incompetent, the employee is a top performer, so the manager is intimidated and tries to push the employee out.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#123

Post by Apocryphon »

AareyBaba wrote: post #84
stephengillie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CEO ... believed that regularly letting people go was a way of eliminating bad apples and forcing people to work harder and smarter. Microsoft called it Stack Ranking.

Also known as "Management by Bestseller". Some CEO of a successful company writes a book claiming his management wisdom led to his company success and then a bunch of CEOs read the book and try to replicate the same success because they don't have any original ideas themselves. In this instance the CEO was GE's Jack Welch and his policy was 'rank and yank' Similarly, some CEO will write that you must have a mission s…

Sounds like those squares were conjoined triangles.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#124

Post by sjg007 »

MattyRad wrote: post #79

It's a mercenary approach, interesting even just as a sociological experiment. Obviously a lot of people don't agree with the methodology, but Netflix isn't hiding anything; if you accept a job at Netflix then be prepared for a mercenary culture. Ultimately, I'm most interested in seeing the results. Does having this mercenary culture increase or decrease the quality of the product? Hard to measure, of course, but if…

You could answer this question. We have mlb.tv, amazon prime, hbo, Hulu... all different companies that produce a similar product.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#125

Post by Apocryphon »

At this point, is there a single FAANG company, or tech company of equivalent size or prestige, that doesn't have a toxic environment? I don't even mean contains pockets of toxicity because of the inherent size of the enterprise, but something rotten at the top or in the core, at the managerial level or in the culture.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#126

Post by type_enthusiast »

Arubis wrote: post #11

Wow. I can literally feel my neck and shoulders bunching up just _reading_ this. If I wanted to live in a fear-based culture every day, I'd join the armed forces--at least that way I could shoot back.

FWIW, "culture of fear" hasn't been my experience at all, and as far as I know it isn't the experience of the people I work with. I can't speak for other teams/orgs (I work in the ML org) but in the years I've been here I could count on one hand the number of folks (at least among those I knew) who were let go. I don't worry or think about my job security; I think about building better software (and from what I can tell, the same could be said for my colleagues).

The article really sensationalizes the culture deck for dramatic effect, IMHO. It's intimidating at first, but if you're good at your role and treat your colleagues with respect then (at least IME) you have nothing to worry about. The mood is collaborative, not confrontational – and I've never witnessed anyone being treated with anything but dignity and respect. Again, maybe different teams have their own "microclimates" – but that's been my experience.

So yeah, my two cents is that the article sensationalizes things and deliberately leaves context out of other things. I really wanted to keep my distance from this thread, but it makes me really sad to see how successful the WSJ was in getting people to buy in to the picture they set out to paint. I'll say one more thing (at the risk of sounding like a mouthpiece, which I'm not): Netflix has been hands-down the best workplace I've experienced in my career so far.

On the other hand, I've learned that I should view other "culture take-down" articles about tech companies with a degree of skepticism.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#127

Post by thwarted »

halbritt wrote: post #86
omegaham wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason is that HR is similar to IT and QA - if they do their job right, it's like they're doing nothing at all. My guess is that "Thank God HR was on top of that problem" is not a common phrase in meetings. Neither is "Wow, HR did a fantastic job creating that job posting, and every single candidate that they've brought in has been at least plausible." If they aren't braindead, you just take them for gran…

The role of HR is to shield the company from liability.

The role of IT and QA is also to shield the company from all kinds of liability: legal, process, financial, failures, continuity, etc.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#128

Post by toast0 »

halbritt wrote: post #115
dunpeal wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. A pattern I've seen when relationship between employee and superior goes south is similar to disfavored step-child: They get less praise for doing well, and more blame for any mistake. This tends to escalate over time, and very often the employee's performance will degrade (since they won't get any credit anyway) which escalates the situation. Often they "patch things up" a few times, but if they really ar…

It sucks that it’s not commonplace for managers to be accountable to their reports. Google has kinda structured things in this way, at least as far as I can tell from the outside. Managers can’t decide who is hired or fired and performance reviews are done by committee. Seems pretty egalitarian but I’m told that even still, politics becomes an issue.

I haven't worked at Google, but from what I've heard, politics becomes an even bigger issue. If you're only worried about your boss (and your boss's boss, presumably), that's like two people to impress. If you're going to get graded by a committee, not only do you have to do good work, you also have to make sure everybody on the committee knows you're doing good work; and you have to fight people on your team to get the opportunities to do visible good works.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#129

Post by owyn »

AareyBaba wrote: post #84
stephengillie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CEO ... believed that regularly letting people go was a way of eliminating bad apples and forcing people to work harder and smarter. Microsoft called it Stack Ranking.

Also known as "Management by Bestseller". Some CEO of a successful company writes a book claiming his management wisdom led to his company success and then a bunch of CEOs read the book and try to replicate the same success because they don't have any original ideas themselves. In this instance the CEO was GE's Jack Welch and his policy was 'rank and yank' Similarly, some CEO will write that you must have a mission s…

Ah yes, the "Conjoined Triangles of Success" from Silicon Valley is a parody of this.

Re: At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

#130

Post by darkerside »

quasse wrote: post #52
darkerside wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH your feelings for your reports correlates highly with the quality of work they're putting out

That assumes most managers are skilled / engaged enough to correctly judge the quality of work put out by the individuals working under them. My personal experience puts that at about 2/4 as far as previous managers go.

Sometimes the disconnect is that your idea of quality work is different from your manager's. Although at the end of the day, that's your manager's fault anyway (because keeping that alignment is literally the manager's job).
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