Netflix work culture is notorious for being cut-throat.
While some may say it’s toxic (more on that in a second), it clearly works in maintaining only superstar employees. The WSJ published an article that details how ‘radical honesty’ may be creating a culture of fear, where no one is sure if it’s their last hour at the company.
It’s worth a read, and reflect on the following discussion points:
“You can build a system to encourage excellence and that is good, but also check to see if it can be exploited by folks who can fool the sensors into thinking they are excellent. And then put in safeguards to detect those too. I’m sure if they did some data science on roles that turned over a lot it would identify bad managers that were avoiding scrutiny.” – ChuckMcM
Wherever there are KPIs, there are ways to game them – so this is definitely an interesting risk to discuss.
So in the context of such a wealth of information explaining exactly what it is like to work at Netflix, isn’t it an act of willful blindness on behalf of people to take a job at Netflix and then be surprised at what it’s like to work there? – Glenn Elliott
Netflix is very transparent about this kind of culture and that it’s not a good fit for everyone. If you know what it’s going to be like going in, then where are these complaints coming from? Is it just so much more cut-throat than anyone expects?