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Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

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Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#81
post #20

Make shit up. Don't talk about your personal life at a company function, ever. Hell, lie and make an embarrassing but completely legal story. Or something stupid like you were totally embarassed in HS or college. But, never ever share your actual personal lives in a corporate setting. Not one time.

No. It's like with cops. There is no safe thing to say. The least damaging thing is simply say nothing. Even that costs, but it costs the least and there is nothing better you can do.

Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#82

Offsite retreats seem like a bad idea in general, I've never been to one where I felt the team or company worked together better afterwards, and I've seen some spectacularly bad results... like the time the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales (the classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting…

Sounds like it was productive!

I agree, unironically. Not all workplace tensions can be resolved amicably. Often the only solution is for one of the parties to go. The sooner it happens, the better.

Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#83

It always surprises me when people don't understand that the employee-employer relationship is an adversarial one. Unless you're in a democratic co-op or similar your employer is the enemy and you should never forget that. The correct move is to try to screw them in every legal way at every turn because that is what they are doing to you. Never divulge any information that increases your attack surface, always try to…

Until this present universe I didn’t really care about that because retaining the job wasn’t a top priority. If you got fired over something like this you took it as a good way to go do something somewhere else.

Now of course it’s hard to say if the original employment shape is still valid.

Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#84

Your company, your coworkers, are not your friends. HR is not there for you, it's to protect the company from you. Do not disclose personal information to those who control your livelihood. Once you leave or if you build up a personal relationship with a coworker, outside of work, then maybe. Even still. I will never divulge what I have been through simply because corporate wants to be "inclusive".

Exactly this. No matter how they dress it up, HR is there to protect the company, not you.

Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#85

It always surprises me when people don't understand that the employee-employer relationship is an adversarial one. Unless you're in a democratic co-op or similar your employer is the enemy and you should never forget that. The correct move is to try to screw them in every legal way at every turn because that is what they are doing to you. Never divulge any information that increases your attack surface, always try to…

That sounds like an exhausting way to live.

I would say that the more-exhausting way to live would be to be unaware of this, to accept the “we’re a family here” lie at face value, and to be passed over and screwed over at frequent intervals without knowing or understanding why.

You don’t have to go full Patrick Bateman corp-bro, but keeping in mind the phrase “we don’t fire family” and adjusting your approach based on that counter-example can help you to keep things appropriately transactional and not be taken advantage of.

Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#86
post #79
post #56

> Adam Mendler, a workplace expert, told Inc. that this kind of exercise carries real risk when companies invite openness without ever clarifying how that vulnerability will be treated afterward. I always felt that those trust exercises, "bring your whole self to work", "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better" are all ruses to find the most gullible people and then take advantage of them o…

Probably so, but it was incredibly ill advised of Netflix to admit to this. That’s what I find the most shocking, far more than the firing itself. I cannot fathom how admitting “yeah we fired them for going to therapy” plays to their benefit.

Because at some point their emails about the firing will be subpoenaed, and if they lie about it now it's going to bite them harder later.

Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#88
post #69
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It goes on to say that at the same retreat Baillie drank a Guinness standing on his head, after sharing that he had learned the trick from his former father in law during a conversation inspired by the trust session. From another article: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/netflix-exec... Honestly, the whole thing seems sort of innocuous. He had some particular medical treatment and then drank a Guinne…

Mate needs to move down to Australia, he would have been promoted after showing that off.

But in Australia, he would have just been drinking it normally.

...I'm fired, aren't I? I'll see myself out.

Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#89
post #63

Some executives observe religions that abstain from alcohol. They see you with one beer at a company party and judge everything you do on that.

Or, if you’re a teacher: https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2011/02/08/teacher-fired-over...

(I liked the last note, at the end of the entry)

Re: Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

#90

Offsite retreats seem like a bad idea in general, I've never been to one where I felt the team or company worked together better afterwards, and I've seen some spectacularly bad results... like the time the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales (the classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting…

I feel like our offsites, especially in a post-COVID remote world, tend to improve communication and productivity. People get to know their coworkers, and feel much more comfortable working cross-functionality.

I've had some bad experiences, of course, but overall I've found it to be incredibly worth it.

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