One Reason For Netflix’s Success — It Treats Employees Like Grownups

If you’re one of the many Americans toiling away at a huge corporation, here are some things you’re probably familiar with: tracking vacation days, getting expenses approved and sitting through yearly performance reviews.

These are things salaried employees at Netflix don’t have to worry about.

They get unlimited vacation. They can expense without getting approval from their managers, as long as they’re acting in Netflix’s best interest. They don’t have traditional yearly performance reviews. Oh, and they’re also paid really, really well.

Netflix is fond of saying it hires only “fully formed adults,” and the company treats them as such — bestowing on them great amounts of freedom so they can take risks and innovate without being bogged down by process.

The flip side of all this power is that people are expected to work at a super-high level or be quickly shown the door (with a generous severance package).

“What I see in the startups I work with is they go through [the culture deck] and pick what they like and try it,” McCord said.

Lou Shipley of Boston-based Black Duck Software said he looked to Netflix’s deck for inspiration when building Black Duck’s culture after taking over as CEO a bit more than a year ago. He did away with the company’s three-week vacation policy last summer. He asks employees to put in 40 hours a week, but has no strict guidelines for how they structure that time.

Shipley specifically embraced the part of Netflix’s culture that discourages managers from micromanaging.

“You’re just hiring the best people you can, and making clear what the overall goals are, and letting people go,” he said.


The Huffington Post