I didn't use the Chrome Web Store (or Chrome), I used outline.com
I learned of its existence through other users pasting similar links with articles that involve paywalls.
Previous instances of posting outline links to get around client-side only paywalls have not been fussed at, so I interpreted that to mean acceptance of the practice.
> An effort more recently by Mr. Hastings to allow Netflixers to see the salaries of any other employee, regardless of rank, was soundly defeated in a company poll of executives.
If he had just recited the saying in an offhand way my response would likely be limited to rolling my eyes, but the fact someone at the company said “it’ll really hit home if you bring an actual lemon on stage...” makes me think the leadership is bonkers.
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons, not because managers don’t like them
Oh how I wish I could have had that. I've had an experience in the past where I was dismissed because my manager decided he just didn't like me anymore. Although I was the best performing, most senior developer on the team and was doing all the hiring and mentoring of others, it didn't save me.
Within two months I went from having a glowing performance review that recommended me for a management role to being summarily dismissed for "attitude."
I had the exact same experience with a well known startup in SF. I got a glowing "Outstanding" review in the previous quarter. My manager left and the new manager who came in took just 15 days (with a single one on one meeting) to decide she din't like me and fired me without offering much of a reason.
Ouch!! That's heartless. Got recruited into a role by a friend who a few months later decided to pack up and go back to his previous company. My gall bladder died and went necrotic nearly killing me. I came back from the hospital to find an email telling me my job had been eliminated.
I'll never understand US-style at will employment. It just seems so barbaric and arbitrary. Where I'm from the current conservative government just proposed legislation that would make it slightly easier to fire people in small companies (at most dozen employees or so). This caused the left-leaning part of the country to throw a collective hissy-fit, including several political strikes organized by major unions.
That is american working culture - it is built upon the myth that if you can't cut it you don't work hard enough or smart enough. If you aren't a millionaire or on your way to become one, its because there's something wrong with you.
Note that tech, and especially the tech examined on Hacker News, is an outlier in American business. If this were Civil Engineer News or Actuary News, you'd see a very different attitude toward hiring and firing.
Startups are quick to hire and fire because hiring exactly the right person is important, and hiring the wrong person can cripple the company. Everyone who applies for a position at a startup knows how this works, and I'd argue that if you aren't okay with this atmosphere, you need to avoid the startup scene and go work for a big company with some decent HR policies.
The bullshit shows up when a startup succeeds, and the company tries to preserve its startup culture because they want to keep growing like a startup. You then get BigCo politics with startup arbitrariness, and that's a recipe for disaster. Similarly, sometimes the Good Idea Fairy whispers in the ear of a high-up executive, and he tries to institute startup attitudes toward hiring and firing at a BigCo. This also goes poorly.
Another characteristic of tech is that it is comprised of very, very many people that effectively have no idea how to accomplish the task they were hired to do.
For example, a civil engineer would need to have a degree in their field and then pass a series of stringent examinations to get an FE and finally a PE. Most will require a PE to practice their trade.
In tech an "engineer" may or may not have a degree and there may be certifications, but very few that I know of have ever provided any value. In my experience, there's also not as strong a correlation between a degree in CS for example and one's ability to produce software.
Lots of folks in tech come out of Enterprise IT where projects usually fail and the modus operandi is to purchase technology from vendors and blame them when it doesn't work out.
Projects do not fail. They get cancelled before they are finished, because they are not meeting expectations. This is just a different form of success, since you identified that the project was failing before you wasted any money on it.
Or something like that anyway.
The other big group of fail that I’d point to is bootcamp developers.
Even then why is such culture legal? Over here you're legally required to let someone know they're under performing and give them a minimal time (I think 6 months in the UK?) to improve before you can fire them.
It also means that US employees are able to leave the next day if they want and that company hiring decisions don't have to factor in that it's going to be really really hard to get rid of someone if they don't work out or circumstances change. It allows a lot for flexibility for everyone, with some costs.
Most UK tech companies have an initial six-month 'probationary' contract. If you're a good fit in that period then that is superceded by a permanent contract.
So both sides benefit, the company has the initial flexibility to hire and fire and after that the employee gains some assurance that he won't be thrown off the premises arbitrarily.
That just reinforces our inexorable march down to the US level.
When I started most UK tech, and companies in all other industries had an initial one month probation. Very occasionally, usually for the most senior roles, it might be two or three. Six months weighs the balance much too heavily on the employer side I think.
I can't help but wonder why just about every company has terrible hiring/HR/management practices.
You would think that someone out there would fix those problems at their companies and reap the rewards: an effective, highly motivated workforce.
The fact that we haven't seen that means either that it's a hard problem to solve, that nobody pays attention to it, or that there is no economic value in working to have "good" practices when it comes to workforce management.
... Or maybe it's good to have your workers living in fear, worrying if they'll be next at the end of your Kafkaesque processes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, one last thing I remembered: a previous coworker of mine raved about how his company treated workers, but the company was later acquired by a bigger player, and the situation changed. Perhaps companies with good practices get absorbed by the "big bad wolves" that have established themselves in the market.
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 granted.
I can't help but wonder why just about every company has terrible hiring/HR/management practices.
At least with startups, I think money is too cheap and is flowing to underqualified people, managementwise. The VCs see a business person and a tech person, call it a startup and try to eke out a real company. Meanwhile, employees learn the meaning of shit flowing downhill and how culture comes from the top. Anyway, these cheap-money bosses are more often than not predictably bad at org-charting. Just add "flat hierarchy" and 3rd party HR, and 90% of the time it'll be a shitshow that at best elicits a chuckle when you mention how you work. [exaggerated for effect]
> just about every company has terrible hiring/HR/management practices
There are certainly companies out there with a lot of problems, and there are a lot of toxic people. But if it seems that every single manager and hiring person that you encounter is an asshole and a jerk, there is an alternative explanation. Just saying.
You would think that someone out there would fix those problems at their companies and reap the rewards: an effective, highly motivated workforce.
The fundamental problem is a misalignment of incentives: what is good for any individual manager - getting a bigger budget and more staff reporting to them - it not necessarily what is good for the organisation as a whole, nor for any other individual within it, or even the shareholders or customers.
At my previous job the management not liking you layoff was because "you're not being a team player/difficult to work with".
They were never firings because the the company just did massive layoffs every year so you just get rid of the bad apples with the rest of the under-performers when the company downsizes.
You'd think that in any decent company a manager would be held accountable for firings. "They weren't performing, why not? What did you do to assist them? Show us the minutes from your meetings where they outlined why they couldn't meet performance goals and you provided ways to help them"
A manager's role is to support their team, any failure to do so should be looked at very carefully as to why they are under-performing. This behaviour needs to continue up the chain to the very top of the company structure.
The manager's role is to deliver. Managers are given head count to deliver. Managers are assessed on how demanding they are of their direct reports. The general expectation is to ruthlessly cut and replace underperformers.
Only attorneys in labor disputes will be asking to show minutes from meetings.
At Netflix you'd be fired not because your manager didn't like you. You'd be fired because he didn't like your performance. There's a lot of it, alas it's just not the quality we are looking for here...
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons, not because managers don’t like them
That's not true at all. The company fires people all the time because their skills just aren't necessary. I mean I guess technically it's a layoff, but a layoff and getting fired are functionally the same at Netflix as they both come with the same severance.
When we moved to AWS, there were plenty of folks who were let go because their expertise was in physical infrastructure and they had no desire to learn about the cloud.
They were stellar performers, their expertise just wasn't needed anymore.
I very much enjoyed working in a culture where both hiring and firing were easy to do, to make sure that the team was always the right people at the right time.
> but a layoff and getting fired are functionally the same at Netflix as they both come with the same severance.
I actually think that's a really great policy. I've seen layoffs done under the guise of "underperformance" (i.e. with no severance) and it's really shitty. Giving everyone severance is a just fairer way to say "the business has fundamentally changed".
That's really a third category and happens all the time when companies shift strategies or just evolve product lines over time. Sometimes there's a transition path to a new role but, even (or especially) if you're the world expert in X and there's no need for an expert in X any longer, there just isn't a place for you (especially at a salary commensurate with world expert status) any longer.
It doesn't need to be about not being willing to learn new things. It can be about having expertise and there still being a market for continuing to develop that expertise elsewhere.
> "I mean I guess technically it's a layoff, but a layoff and getting fired are functionally the same at Netflix as they both come with the same severance."
hmm, but unemployment is a concern too, and you wouldn't get that if fired?
> to make sure that the team was always the right people at the right time.
That is what contractors are for.
Full-time employees are hired because they know/learn the business, get things done, and adapt to changing circumstances. You want them around to help you get through changes. If you are hiring full-time employees to fit a narrow niche need that will change in the future, with the intent of "easy" hiring and firing, you are just setting yourself up to have a bad reputation as an employer.
That seems like a no win. You hire employees and your mean for firing them when you don't need their skillset. You hire contractors and you look like you are stingy and don't want to pay as many benefits.
I don't think it works like that... The company doesn't ask you if you'd like to switch to the cloud, and then you give a yes/no answer.
In my experience, what happens is there is a technology shift -- the company leadership decides they want to use the cloud (or use containers, or start moving their codebase to ${LANG}, etc.) and there is a group of employees that will lead this effort by learning and working with the new technologies, and there is another group that will actively oppose taking responsibility to learn about the new technology, and may actively work to sabotage or slow down the process.
" and there is a group of employees that will lead this effort by learning and working with the new technologies, and there is another group that will actively oppose taking responsibility to learn about the new technology, and may actively work to sabotage or slow down the process. "
And I have seen groups that would like learn the new tech but never get involved by management.
True, I think it depends on the culture where the drivers of change come from, but in my experience that matters less than the fact that there is a change at all.
What is stopping a group from learning a new tech, regardless of whether change is organic or imposed by management? Or are you saying you have seen people get replaced with zero warning that new technology was being introduced? That's definitely not been my experience.
This was mainly in large companies where departments are quite large and the regular workers don't really see what's going on. I have seen people in one department being told to keep working on their current stuff while new people were hired for the new tech. Once the new people were up to speed the old department was laid off. There was no effort to get current employees involved.
Consider our industries project failure rate. I've been on projects where it was the new team on the new tech stack that's let go and the guys maintaining the 20 year old system get a huge boost to their negotiating power.
When do you suggest that they find time to 'study up'? Most corporate environments in which I have worked have an assignment:time ratio greater than 1:1. Often there wasn't an opportunity to take the legal statutory lunch break nevermind study.
another group that will actively oppose taking responsibility to learn about the new technology, and may actively work to sabotage or slow down the process
Another perspective is that that group of employees was doing the unglamorous work of maintaining the legacy systems that kept the lights on and paid the bills while the lucky few got to play with new toys, and they were rewarded for their diligence with getting shafted. Been there, done that, lessons learned.
> I very much enjoyed working in a culture where both hiring and firing were easy to do, to make sure that the team was always the right people at the right time.
I think you'll agree that your perspective may be something of an outlier, given that you 1.) are not the person who's going to be fired, 2.) are the person who is most empowered by a policy of ease of hiring and firing those under you, and 3.) don't need to work.
I don't like working in a culture where being fired is a thing anyone in my management chain might decide to do to me easily and suddenly for any reason at any time, and I don't think I'm unique in that.
It occurs to me that I like that sort of work environment as well, as an employee.
One of the reasons I always insist on working as a contractor is so that the company can end things whenever they want. Importantly, though, the risk of that happening is reflected in my rate.
Since from my perspective the risk of being let go as a 1099 vs. as a 1040 is roughly equal, and the compensation is roughly double, it seems like an easy trade-off.
And a fella can buy an awful lot of health insurance for 100% of his salary...
I find it hard to believe that you "let go" of people with physical infrastructure expertise after you "moved to AWS." Netflix has a massive physical hardware project with Open Connect and runs one of the largest bandwidth networks in the world. The fact that everything suddenly collapsed under one individual probably had something to do with it. I don't mind said individual, but a lot of people don't like him. He's been known to do and say some pretty petty things.
>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.
I worked for a place like this. Regular firings, sometimes every month. The CEO (who also self-funded the company) believed that regularly letting people go was a way of eliminating bad apples and forcing people to work harder and smarter. Similar to Netflix philosopy, but on a smaller scale.
Firings happened for all the reasons you'd think--politics, cliques, not being a "cultural fit." "Not being a team player" was often code for not trying hard enough to make your lead look good.
It was toxic and led to massive tech debt accumulation, as a succession of engineering managers all made new and different decisions on frameworks and technologies as soon as they were hired. Very little institutional knowledge.
Implicit quotas for regularly letting people go is just an insane way to run a business.
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 that manager was gone, job security for those people was also gone.
Weird how people put up with madness like that when your field is in high demand.
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 statement and distill your management philosophy into 3 or 4 words preferably starting with the same alphabet. Next thing every CEO has their own tag lines: 'Agility, Accountabilty, Ambition' or 'Passion, Persistance, Performance' or <insert words from thesarus>.
My previous company CEO spent thousands of dollars on polished metal tangram squares with her three words embossed on them given to every-single-employee at the company.
> "Not being a team player" was often code for not trying hard enough to make your lead look good.
Replace often with always. That's coded language that exactly means this. It's really hard to avoid this though.
> massive tech debt accumulation
Do you know any company that doesn't have that? Honestly I've never seen it. I've worked in a 10 people company, I founded a company with a co-student, I worked in a 50 people company, I currently work in a 95,000 people company and there's always huge loads of technical debt. Also I now often work with Google APIs/tools/frameworks as well as AWS. Also loads of technical debt, right there.
> Implicit quotas for regularly letting people go is just an insane way to run a business.
That's for sure. It's great for getting investors though.
I recently quit a job that had me burned out, and in the meantime I've decided to take a couple months off before my next job. My biggest fear in going back is that I feel like now that I have 0 tolerance for the corporate culture bullshit that permeates all large organizations. I don't really even fault Netflix for what they're doing (I've certainly seen much worse) but I've determined that to function that pretty much all large organizations have to do this weird theatrical dance that separates them from their humanity, and no one (or sometimes too many people I guess??) are willing to call them out on their bullshit.
The good/bad thing about going back to corporate is that the initial euphoria of stability and lack of stress offsets the frustration at meetings and politics. As the first declines, your ability to deal with and ignore the second increases. Equilibrium ensues until you next get the startup itch.
I guess so, but it’s not like you have to believe in the dance with your heart and soul in order to perform it.
I think this is a “pick your poison” situation. If you freelance you need to kiss clients’ asses, in a smaller org there are politics as well, just expressed differently.
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.
Also, I don't think after you get KIA in the armed forces, they hold a special funeral where your commanding officer tells your entire battalion that you were a coward and a poor soldier so justifiably you got shot.
Pretty sure you don't die when you get fired from Netflix. You go work for a different FANG for a lower base salary. Little bit much with that analogy.
I didn't choose this analogy, GP did. That said, I do think it conveys - somewhat hyperbolically - the premise that your own managers and teammates are encouraged - as a matter of policy - to disparage you and your performance once you are forced out of the outfit.
If it was a fear based culture I would agree with you - I’ve worked in those & left as fast as I could.
Netflix is not even close to that in my experience, nor have I seen any evidence of that in the engineering teams around me.
Of course some teams may be different-and it certainly is different to how many companies operate-but the article seems to be unfairly characterizing the culture based on grumbling from a few disgruntled ex employees.
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.
I wouldn't say the culture deck isn't followed. Just that it doesn't say what people in this thread seem to think it says. Have you looked at it? I wouldn't call it "scary". There's one section that's a little bit intimidating for a humble person who doesn't think of him/herself as a "rock star". I think that can cause impostor syndrome in many new hires. But it passes (at least for me), and the ability to trust any given colleague to do great work (and for them to trust you to do the same) is extraordinarily refreshing.
A few months ago, a good engineer who had left Netflix told someone I know that the reason was the work culture: specifically, she mentioned that there were team meetings where everyone was encouraged to say what they didn't like about others, in a public setting.
More recently, this person I know brought it up when interviewing at Netflix (not wanting to work in such a culture), and was reassured by the hiring manager that no, such things do not happen, that all feedback/criticism is 1:1 and never in a public setting.
Now, the article says
> At some team dinners and lunches there are rounds of “real-time 360,” executives say, where everyone goes around and gives feedback and criticism about others at the table.
What has your experience been?
It seems likely to me this is actually true (as independently corroborated by both my friend's friend, and this article), and the manager denied it to a potential future employee, which seems not a very nice thing to do.
And surely there's a selection bias at play: anyone who has a problem with such a culture (e.g. someone who doesn't want to be criticized in public as a matter of course, or someone who doesn't want to be fired one day unexpectedly) would leave, so by definition those who remain are those who are fine with such a culture and don't see it as a problem.
My personal experience was that the only time we went around giving feedback was when managers were meeting. It was never individual contributors, except one time when I specifically asked my team to give me feedback, but it was all one way.
However, it was highly encouraged for ICs to give each other feedback in person one-on-one, and for ICs to give managers feedback (both their own and others they had to work with).
she mentioned that there were team meetings where everyone was encouraged to say what they didn't like about others, in a public setting
I have read that the Army Rangers have something like this, they call it the "beef circle". Everyone says a person who has annoyed them, then the two of you wrestle in the centre of the circle, then you shake hands and the matter is considered closed. But that's obv inappropriate for a corporate environment.
Both the manager and the friend-of-friend could be correct – it depends on the team. Some teams encourage (but don't require) a group feedback session where everything is out in the open; others encourage private feedback.
But either way, the goal is the same – not to target you or make you feel inadequate, but for you to discover things that you might not have realized were negatively impacting the team.
Group feedback meetings do exist, but I can't imagine that anyone would be penalized (even in thought) for choosing not to participate.
The way I see it, people will talk about their coworkers at any workplace. At most places it's behind their back; here we have respect enough for one another to give each other constructive feedback directly instead of gossiping. It makes a lot of sense to me, but I guess not everybody feels that way. If your manager doesn't make it clear that group feedback is optional, that would be a great piece of feedback for your manager!
So I think "criticized in public as a matter of course" is a mischaracterization. IME managers go to great lengths to ensure that people are treated respectfully and not made to feel pressured to participate in things they aren't comfortable with. And "fired one day unexpectedly" is certainly not the norm – I'm not aware of anyone who was let go without having been told weeks or months in advance about issues they needed to address. That's not to say it couldn't happen, because it could happen at any workplace. But it's not the norm.
Edit: Should also mention that the feedback cycle also includes positive feedback. It's not just a gripe fest. You identify things that your colleague is doing well/things you appreciate, and also things that they could improve.
Oddly enough, the military actually does stack rankings with the same predictable results. You just can't get fired right away easily in the military, but a supervisor who doesn't like you can easily make you impossible to promote for the rest of your career.
Some of these companies are sounding more and more like the embodiment of The Circle with Tom Hanks and Emma Watson. I've experienced it on a smaller scale years ago when it wasn't nearly this bad. Little things like feeling like an outsider for not using the cultural lingo.
And I'm all for constructive candor but to do so you have to remember to a) know your audience and, b) ease people into it. Otherwise you're just being a dick.
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons, not because managers don’t like them
From what I've seen, managers give poor performance reviews or "metrics" when they don't like people. This feels like a distinction without a difference.
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).
Some people just don't get along. It's a fact of life. Managers are humans, and they detest working every day with people who rub them the wrong way.
Couple that with upper management at Netflix pressuring managers to hit firing quotas, and you can be sure who is chosen to be sacrificed on the altar of that particular metric...
Further, to that point, any manager that dislikes a report is likely going to have a very difficult time getting quality work out of that report regardless of how talented they may be.
Ergo, the report's performance may be suffering, but entirely because they're being poorly managed.
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 aren't compatible, it's just a tenuous forced balance that will eventually break and plunge the relationship to even deeper depths.
Of course in this situation, all performance reviews for the employee are anywhere from slightly to heavily distorted in their disfavor.
This will always result in one of them eventually leaving the team, typically the employee.
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.
Sometimes a business that is not a pure meritocracy may have managers who got the management gig because they’re someone’s relative or from some non-work-related connection. They may be afraid they’ll be exposed for not really being that qualified for their job.
If they have a report that produces really high quality work, they may be intimidated and hold off on the praise to avoid placing attention on the report, and on their own self-perceived inadequacies.
In addition to holding off on praise when it’s warranted they may also even write the report up for trivial things such as being 1 minute late to work. So the net effect for the report is more negative reviews than would otherwise be, and less positive ones than deserved.
No matter how people perform on any side, It sounds a little draining to work with people you don't like, regardless of the reason of dislike. Some people aren't in control of that so they just suck it up, whereas others get a say over their lives. The question is whether they will find sufficient incentive to prioritize company interests where they differ. One thinks of that when one joins a team with a lead that is a center of social activity outside work, and whether one has the energy to participate. When social dynamics are involved things are always a bit more complicated than the performance which strictly happens at work.
If people don't want this, I think it's up to the organization to do this, as opposed to the vigilant wall of an ethic. Presumably the organization doesn't want little cliques, and should structure their incentives properly.
As far as I can tell, "right to work" means "you can quit any time for no reason, and we can fire you any time for no reason, and we're going to pretend that this is an equal trade."
Not have I seen it, I've been involved in hiring the person for their next role. There's a lot to be suspicious of but I think most people have been in a position where the personal relationship is beyond reconciliation for no other reason except it's difficult to change well formed opinions.
Yes, I think it lacks an understanding of human nature to think that a manager wouldn't give someone bad reviews just because they don't like them. Though, I bet a lot of times managers do this unconsciously, especially as one tends to see more faults with people they don't like.
Let's not overlook someone's effectiveness as an influence on likability.
I hired a grumpy, cynical systems administrator who often spoke his mind at inopportune times, but I'll admit he was head and shoulders above every other candidate in terms of technical ability. And he was diligent.
I liked him. I liked him in spite of his shortcomings.
In general I tend to make large allowances for people of strong technical ability. It's not a conscious thing -- they do good work, and they're effective. Sure, they may be brusque: yesterday one said to me, "No, you're wrong, that's not who it works." He couldn't be bothered to sugarcoat what he was saying. But I like him -- he's good.
I think the headline misconstrues the issue. There's nothing wrong with transparency, but there are plenty of issues with airing dirty laundry and having, quite apparently, sociopathic upper management.
Isn't it actually selective transparency that's just passed off as transparency? Just because someone states reasons A, B, and C as the supporting evidence behind a decision doesn't necessarily mean that those three were the only reasons.
Yea, you're definitely right. The direction I was going was more along the lines of "you're fired because x/y/z" instead of "hey everybody, this person was fired because x/y/z, they are now available as a blame dumping ground for all your problems."
See my response to tareqak. I mostly disagree with the way the headline is written as it implies that transparency is bad. Obviously the article dives much further into the issue but since when have people bothered reading such things? :)
Is this "here's an article talking about the corporate culture of company X" a recent thing (I can recall Netflix and Amazon recently at least), or is it a long-running trend? (has this happened to IBM, Oracle, GM, American Airlines, etc?) I suspect the latter, but honestly once I get the gist I stop reading, so I've likely forgotten many such articles.
If it's long-running, is there any common thread between them? Do they target companies that have extreme cultures...or do they just target big companies and describe the cultures in extreme ways?
Not to rationalize the environment there but I feel like Netflix is pretty transparent about being a difficult place to work and compensates for the potential stress with above average pay. I feel like most people who can get hired there are well aware of the work environment they will be entering.
It is very common. Senior Software Engineers are commonly at 400+ up to 7-800. Director level for Software, Data Eng, Data Science are very rarely under 600+. VP in the same areas rarely (never?) under 800+.
The initial offers are often higher than 400 for Senior Software Eng, Senior Data Scientists, Senior Machine Learning Research Scientists and Engineers. 600 is actually pretty common for experienced people. On paper, there are no Juniors (there are associates in Marketing and Business and I think other teams). They pay top of the market according to their Excel sheets.
Netflix does not have "tech lead" or "Principal" roles for the Software or Science teams. It is Senior, then you have Managers (who can be paid less than Seniors), Directors (no senior Directors), VP (no Senior VPs), and C-suite (with comp that is publicly available).
It's not that high for Seniors. $400k is pretty standard for a Senior at most FANG companies. With Netflix you get it all in cash and that's the major selling point.
Reed thought he was creating a high performance culture without accounting for the very nature of humans. The Netflix culture deck became a blunt instrument for managers to fire people in the name of performance and radical candor. I can’t wait for the lone Netflix engineer to write a great article tomorrow about the great Netflix culture he/she is personally experiencing. Kind of become a standard PR response these days.
After working in organizations where terrible performance is tolerated, this seems like a breath of fresh air. We've all worked with some asshole/fuck-off who we wish someone would fire. It starts to eat away at morale. I'd rather take my chances an not have to work with the problem children.
Unless that person is your boss, then good luck. How hard could management be at Netflix? You don't need to coach up people when you can just fire them. The more you delegate, the better you look. Sounds like tenured professors who tell you to just figure it out.
...until you find out that you are the terrible performer. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is real. You may very well be that low performer everyone else wishes someone would fire, and you wouldn't even know.
I'd take having to tolerate a useless chucklefuck on my team over living with a Sword of Damocles constantly hanging over my head.
Actually, what I really want is Japanese-style lifetime employment...
It's a reclaimed slur - it's meant to be used exclusively by the targeted group. Not respecting that requires you to ignore the painful cultural background of the term.
> In sociology and cultural studies, reappropriation (or reclamation) is the cultural process by which a group reclaims terms [...] previously used in a way disparaging of that group
I assume the GP, like me, is not American: in most cultures the very notion of made-up taboo words (i.e. words that are forbidden regardless of what context/sentence they're used in) is considered a decadent aberration. Whether you call it "taboo word" or "reclaimed slur" makes no difference.
Sorry I am not American, but in my (European) culture there are some taboo words that are definitely not okay. The equivalent of the American "N-word" being one of those.
This is considered to be normal, and people that publicly use this kind of words are generally viewed with contempt. And it could be a reason to get fired from your job.
I believe this to be common across Western European countries (even with the current surge of far-right parties).
Damn, my knee-jerk reaction got the best of me and I missed the full context of that what discussed and replied without nuance.
Since I cannot edit anymore, let me correct it here:
In the country where I work, using such words in a professional context, even for illustrative purpose such as described in the article, would be rather uncommon, would definitely feels weird and at least raise a few eyebrows.
But I have to say I don't think it would usually result in immediate outrage and for the speaker to be fired (I can still see this happening, but it would definitely be the odd occurrence). It would probably be considered more of a well-intended-but-slightly-misguided attempt.
So we definitely have such taboo words outside the US, but maybe they are not as strong a taboo here...
>it's meant to be used exclusively by the targeted group
Impressive use of the passive voice to pretend that there is some central authority deciding how words are meant to be used. People don't agree on how words are meant to be used and there is no reason to give preference to one over the other. Either ban it or not, don't have a skin color test to determine if someone should be fires or patted on the back after they drop a racial slur on the phone.
That Wikipedia article even mentions that people in the in group are often offended by the use of the word.
"We shouldn't have any shows that use the term 'retarded' because it can be as painful for a developmentally disabled person to hear as the word 'nigger' is for a black person to hear"
As reported he used the "n-word" as an example of something really hurtful that shouldn't be said. Is that really worth a firing? Is it really wrong at all? What am I missing?
Sure, they fire for performance reasons by setting up one of those kangaroos courts where your voice is nowhere to be heard. The build-up to the inevitable firing is something akin to an Ionesco play, one absurdity after the other. The higher-up gets some sidekicks onboard, people who would sell their grandmother for a half-chewed piece of chocolate, and the smearing campaign begins.
The apologist has the words ready: they pay you a lot, they are clear about firing liberally, and you get your severance package. What's to complain about? Unfortunately (for the apologist), there are people who still have some dignity and do not like to be on trial with the kangaroo court. It is better to be punched in a leg than in the face, we all agree on that, but some people – a dying breed, apparently – do not like to be punched at all.
The article is a good description of what happens at Netflix, including the creepiness trickling down from the top with the lemonade, although there was never an email from the CEO asking the leaker to expose herself.
I remember reading about this a while ago and I thought that it could work for a while but eventually you will attract and accumulate a bunch of cutthroat sociopaths. How do you even assess performance objectively without smart people gaming the system?
They don't, of course, people game the system. The trick is recognizing that a good fraction of people in tech at a company like Netflix could disappear tomorrow along with their work and the company would not even notice. So it is not that the fire someone and other people protest because they recognize they have lost "talent". Life goes on, paycheck comes and they are all ready to code again.
> When news of the firing leaked to the trade press, Mr. Hastings, irritated at a very un-Netflix breach of trust, fired off an email to his executive staff saying whoever leaked it should report themselves to HR.
Are you a member of Netflix CEO's "executive staff"?
If not, how would you know that such an email was never sent?
> 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 of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift?
What a treat!
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons
So Netflix is actively propagating the obvious myth that all terminations are due to poor performance. Not because the nature of the project / technology changed, not because the chemistry between the fired person and key players like his supervisor has unfortunately gone south... No, it is always poor performance.
Good luck getting your next job!
And to help you on your way out, we'll make sure every single one of your former co-worker hears your former supervisor talking trash about you in very blunt terms.
You know, just to make it easier for these same co-workers to provide references to your prospective next employers.
If they are such solid performers, they can get jobs in other FAANGs who pay just as well. Netflix pays well, but does it pay so much better that I should put up with this BS?
I doubt.
In fact, by keeping up this abusive charade, Netflix is guaranteeing that many of the best candidates will never apply. So my guess would be that their employees aren't the best, but perhaps the best candidates willing to accept this BS.
> Netflix pays well, but does it pay so much better that I should put up with this BS?
To the FAANG employee with a PHD who's been "hanging out" making widgets a 1st year programmer could build, the appeal I think is to invite people who want to show off the fire in their belly to do something.
And then they make 1st year programmer widgets, but with LOTS of passion and arguments and being told they can be fired at any moment.
The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation. The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
Netflix goes out of its way to pay top-of-market and often by a significant margin.
> The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation. The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
A Principal Engineer at FB would make "half" of $350-500k in compensation?
Pure nonsense.
Moreover, it seems like Netflix pays more cash and less equity, so some folks on this thread love to talk about "base compensation", "salary", etc.
What really matters is total comp, and from what I know, Netflix is about on par with the rest of FAANG.
I don't know much about them directly, but I do know folks who work for FAANGs very close to Los Gatos, and would certainly be inteested in moving if Netflix paid more "by a significant margin".
You're claiming total comp at non-Netflix FAANG for senior-principal is $175k-$250k?
Would love to see any specific numbers you have but that just sounds straight up wrong. IME $200k-$250k is around what L4s at Google make in total comp.
Are you sure this isn't a salary vs. equity thing?
There are multiple Netflix employees in this thread, all citing the same $360k total comp figure.
I'm guessing GP is someone who heard base salary data for Netflix vs other FAANGs, and doesn't realize how much of total comp at a non-Netflix FAANG would come from bonus and RSUs.
They definitely pay more at Netflix for equal IC positions and very likely for Director roles. It is very rare to find ICs making 600-700 k total comp at Facebook or Google, not rare at all at Netflix.
I agree, they sometimes exchange dignity for money.
In fact, it is not-my-wild guess that the probability of stopping a homicide steeply decreases with the amount of money given to look the other way. For some, even their sister's. Go figure for a job in tech.
>The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation.
true according to acquaintances from there. Pure cash.
>The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
the base at FAANG is about half of NFLX. The RSUs take the total higher than NFLX. Know cases where $100K-$200K higher total comp offer from FAANG (i.e. mostly RSU) wouldn't move the NFLX employee - $500K cash change your view of the world :)
> Know cases where $100K-$200K higher total comp offer from FAANG (i.e. mostly RSU) wouldn't move the NFLX employee - $500K cash change your view of the world :)
That's really silly, but demonstrates Netflix's pay strategy. They don't pay better than other FAANGs - the comments in this thread indicate they pay less than the top FAANGs. But then they use the fact that it's "all cash" to appeal to folks who are misguided about RSUs.
they can get jobs in other FAANGs who pay just as well.
There are no shortage of articles, just on this very site even, indicating that all of the FAANGs have weird, dysfunctional internal cultures. So it would be out of the frying pan into the fire.
Because Netflix pays 360k a year plus benefits. It’s a shit place to work if you don’t fit the exact culture though, which is pretty brash and confrontational
Don’t choose them. It sucks I just said that.
But working at Google or Facebook is totally different. Netflix has a couple hundred engineers. They aren’t involved in selling ad funded content. I wouldn’t want to work at google or facebook
Huh, immediately then someone will complain Google is evil as it working with Chinese government and FB is evil because it is working Russians who meddled with US elections.
Infact I wouldn't know of many companies who can't be branded evil or full of BS for some or other reason.
Just cash. Plus another 5% in free options. It’s a ton of money. No bonus, no RSUs or stock, just straight cash salary. And I didn’t write books on the language I used or anything, in my opinion I’m just a regular developer.
It may be on par, but that's total comp. My understanding is that the 'Flix doesn't do bennies, matching, vesting over time, etc., they just throw straight cash at you.
Reduces their overhead -- no plan administrators, etc. -- and no abstractions or surprise fine print in the 401k matching or classes of stock or whatever.
> So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift?
Well no. It’s usually very positive about them and generally sad that things couldn’t be made to work.
The point is not that they were bad - the idea is Netflix wouldn’t have hired them if that were so! It’s that it just wasn’t a good fit due to misalignment of goals. Perhaps someone doesn’t want to change or just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to.
I’ve read a few departure emails in my time at Netflix and none of them - even the one with the C level exec who is mentioned in the article - were “badmouthing” anyone.
If anything they’re quite positive about the person tbh.
> It’s that it just wasn’t a good fit due to misalignment of goals.
That's not what Netflix's own spokesman say:
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons
Only "performance reasons", not "misalignment of goals".
> Perhaps someone doesn’t want to change or just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to.
Saying someone "just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to" is a very negative thing to say. As a hiring managing, hearing that about a candidate would cause me not to hire them.
> It’s usually very positive about them
Something is very distorted if you think saying about someone that he "just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to" and similar stuff that make a person unemployable is "very positive about them".
And once more, this contradicts everything else in the article. You can't have your cake and eat it, too: if Netflix is saying (through it's spokesman and multiple other execs in the article) that firing is always due to performance reason, then that's not a "very positive" statement about the person being fired. It's actually a very negative statement.
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 mentoring ability are part of the job description.
On the other hand, I find it very strange that the article describes a sort of 'post-mortem email' that goes out to dozens of people that describes the failings of the (now-departed) employee. That seems like it would cause more problems than it would solve.
> 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.
There's a moderately good cure for the subject-to-managers-whim problem.
Have a policy that in any case of performance issues, the person with the bad ratings gets to move to a different area in the company with as clean a slate as possible without being naive. Ideally away from the management chain up to and including the director. Then have HR reevaluate after 3-6 months.
It's only moderately good because it's never (and shouldn't quite be depending on the cause of poor performance) a completely clean slate and because it is very expensive to execute.
I've seen a number of folks who has relationship problems due to their environment be salvaged as perfectly good employees this way. I've seen others who left with the realization that maybe it wasn't JUST the manager after all and hopefully growing from that experience. And of course, I've seen people think it's all a giant conspiracy against them as well.
"It is nothing personal" is usually one of the most blatant lies. It always is, and at the same time it isn't. I try to judge people simply based by the quality of work they produce, despite spending a lot of time with them we are not married. So nothing personal as lond everybody acts as professionals and adults.
That being said, most political office stuff is very much personal, at least for one party involved. And than it gets nasty. And yes, with review processes being incredibly intransparent, without a real chance for the reviewed to defend himself, bad reviews are an easy way to get rid of people.
> So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift?
This isn't what happens, as far as I've seen. These e-mails/meetings don't badmouth people or imply that they weren't competent. They give context around specific ways in which the person wasn't meeting expectations (as well as outlining out the ways in which the person was positively contributing). IME it's valuable context and isn't an assault on anyone's dignity (or "trash talking") like you're suggesting.
They largely badmouth people. I have seen very harsh things written after the employee was fired, with the employee having no opportunity to answer. Harsher for ICs than for Director and up – cowardice is always cheap.
You cannot write that that person is not at the level of their peers, that she was not able to communicate with the stakeholders in a company-wide email, with no opportunity for the fired person to comment.
In my book, that is all very unfair. I hope you are not used to that behavior, either actively or passively.
If you want cash it is. Netflix salaries are generally $350k+. They only hire seniors, but that can mean 4-5 years of experience. Not even Google pays that kind of comp in salary.
"not even Google pays that kind of comp in salary" -- maybe not a deliberate equovocation, but total comp ("salary" plus stock) at google is definitely at or above that range.
I don't know shit about Netflix vs Googles comp but there is a lot to be said for cash: there's no vesting period ; it's dependable, there's no weird dips because an investing firm got spooked; it's liquid, you can spend it at the bar tonight, right now; taxes are straight forward.
That said -- I mean this with all sincerity -- it does my commie heart good to see that absolutely no in this thread is buying Netflix's bullshit.
> there's no vesting period ; it's dependable, there's no weird dips because an investing firm got spooked; it's liquid, you can spend it at the bar tonight, right now; taxes are straight forward.
For the most part, these are all benefits of RSUs at a company like Facebook or Google.
They're totally liquid. They "vest", but in short order.
This isn't startup equity. It's very much real money.
Yeah at Google you have autosale as well, whenever rsu vested they get sold and cash comes into my account. Slight hassle at tax time, other then that more or less the same as cash.
If you think that FAANG does not have their own special policies you are sadly mistaken. They don't even need to exist on paper. It could simply be tacitly understood.
Had this not been the case every single company would have been doing perp-walks of the managers engaging in such behavior.
As someone in tech, if you are making over $250k/year you should realize that unless you have a contract ( not as in 1099 but as in someone who has an individual, negotiated, untouchable using regular processes ) and you are not in the top 3 tiers of management, then to the management you are a very expensive line item which needs to be minimized. Google and Facebook are starting to tip over -- there will be stories about their culture popping up next year or two.
> to the management you are a very expensive line item which needs to be minimized.
"Expensive" is relative, though. The top places are growing and in constant need of great new employees. Firing an engineer making $250k just to hire a replacement making the same amount is actually highly expensive and wasteful - firing and recruiting can easily cost as much an annual salary.
Recruiting is really expensive.
> Google and Facebook are starting to tip over -- there will be stories about their culture popping up next year or two.
Stories about Uber's toxicity started popping up when it became unclear that all of those working for it would become multi-millionaires next two years.
Stories of Zenefits ickiness started popping up when it became unclear that those working for it would become multi-millionaries in next few years.
Stories of Netflix culture toxicity started popping up when it became no longer clear that Netflix will continue to eat the world of streaming -- hence continuing to provide massive $$ to those working for it.
People would take more abuse for a higher chance to make a boatload of money. The smaller the boatload or the less are the chances of making it, the less employees are willing to take.
If you are to look at Google and Facebook stories over last 6-12 months you would see more and more questions about how far those two companies can grow. As the growth trajectory slows down more and more stories about the internal ugliness show up because fewer people are willing to take it.
People tend to work hard and accept a lot of crap as long as they are making a lot of money, or hoping to.
Once those prospect dim, hell does tend to break loose. People suddenly lose patience with bad policies, with politics, with people they only barely tolerated before, with high levels of stress at work...
The same people who soldiered on like good boyscouts when the money was pouring in, will become fed up and recalcitrant once they run out of financial reasons to take shit from management.
I would really not like to work there, but out of the FAANG companies, Netflix is definitely the most all-in on its quirks. My sense is that the culture at Google, Apple, MS, and FB are all in a cluster compared with the culture at Netflix, which is a real outlier. It's also an outlier in my unwillingness to go there. But I think they and I are both happier that way.
"FAANG" seems like a bizarrely arbitrary grouping overall, with Netflix as a clear outlier; I understand that it might make superficial sense to an investment banker, but in terms of the businesses they are engaged in and the type of work their employees are doing, Netflix should be dropped from the list and replaced with Microsoft.
I think this was "the group of big tech companies with increasing fortunes," which at the time the acronym was coined did not include Microsoft. Anyway this is a popular thing to gripe about on HN recently, but the acronym seems fine to me.
I newer understood why Apple who is as old if not older then MS and share more culture which the likes of HPE and intel is classified with millennial companies like google or Facebook from the post dotCOM age.
When your manager is a sh*tbag, two things can happen: You will either get sick of him/her and switch teams, or you'll keep taking it till the manager decides they really don't want you any more, and they give you a bad review, and a warning. Which basically means you're fired.
Well, it's not like Olympic athletes are doing anything new and innovative. They are just the best at doing what millions of other people also do. That seems like a decent analogy for Netflix whose basic task isn't groundbreaking, but who has to manage doing it at a scale that rivals anyone else in the industry.
It's not a good analogy because it doesn't require individuals at the top of their field. The only reason Netflix is winning is because they have massive amounts of content and integration into many devices. Both of those are business arrangements and have no requirements for the best engineers in the world. Just competent ones.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadHm, are you just violating their TOS and they're putting the onus on WSJ to ask them to take down your link:
https://outline.com/dmca.html
I use it often on news websites as it allows you to by-pass most soft paywalls.
I learned of its existence through other users pasting similar links with articles that involve paywalls.
Previous instances of posting outline links to get around client-side only paywalls have not been fussed at, so I interpreted that to mean acceptance of the practice.
Someone educate me?
I love transparency!!
Are you serious? What is it with the trite theatrics?
Now let's see if they drink that lemonade.
Oh how I wish I could have had that. I've had an experience in the past where I was dismissed because my manager decided he just didn't like me anymore. Although I was the best performing, most senior developer on the team and was doing all the hiring and mentoring of others, it didn't save me.
Within two months I went from having a glowing performance review that recommended me for a management role to being summarily dismissed for "attitude."
Technically, I was caught in the campus-wide 10% across-the-board layoffs, but it's very clear why I was made eligible for that list.
Funny that it happened to be the same month that I was recovering from surgery to remove my cancerous thyroid gland.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
Startups are quick to hire and fire because hiring exactly the right person is important, and hiring the wrong person can cripple the company. Everyone who applies for a position at a startup knows how this works, and I'd argue that if you aren't okay with this atmosphere, you need to avoid the startup scene and go work for a big company with some decent HR policies.
The bullshit shows up when a startup succeeds, and the company tries to preserve its startup culture because they want to keep growing like a startup. You then get BigCo politics with startup arbitrariness, and that's a recipe for disaster. Similarly, sometimes the Good Idea Fairy whispers in the ear of a high-up executive, and he tries to institute startup attitudes toward hiring and firing at a BigCo. This also goes poorly.
For example, a civil engineer would need to have a degree in their field and then pass a series of stringent examinations to get an FE and finally a PE. Most will require a PE to practice their trade.
In tech an "engineer" may or may not have a degree and there may be certifications, but very few that I know of have ever provided any value. In my experience, there's also not as strong a correlation between a degree in CS for example and one's ability to produce software.
Lots of folks in tech come out of Enterprise IT where projects usually fail and the modus operandi is to purchase technology from vendors and blame them when it doesn't work out.
Or something like that anyway.
The other big group of fail that I’d point to is bootcamp developers.
So both sides benefit, the company has the initial flexibility to hire and fire and after that the employee gains some assurance that he won't be thrown off the premises arbitrarily.
When I started most UK tech, and companies in all other industries had an initial one month probation. Very occasionally, usually for the most senior roles, it might be two or three. Six months weighs the balance much too heavily on the employer side I think.
You would think that someone out there would fix those problems at their companies and reap the rewards: an effective, highly motivated workforce.
The fact that we haven't seen that means either that it's a hard problem to solve, that nobody pays attention to it, or that there is no economic value in working to have "good" practices when it comes to workforce management.
... Or maybe it's good to have your workers living in fear, worrying if they'll be next at the end of your Kafkaesque processes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, one last thing I remembered: a previous coworker of mine raved about how his company treated workers, but the company was later acquired by a bigger player, and the situation changed. Perhaps companies with good practices get absorbed by the "big bad wolves" that have established themselves in the market.
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 granted.
Systems like that tend to get neglected.
At least with startups, I think money is too cheap and is flowing to underqualified people, managementwise. The VCs see a business person and a tech person, call it a startup and try to eke out a real company. Meanwhile, employees learn the meaning of shit flowing downhill and how culture comes from the top. Anyway, these cheap-money bosses are more often than not predictably bad at org-charting. Just add "flat hierarchy" and 3rd party HR, and 90% of the time it'll be a shitshow that at best elicits a chuckle when you mention how you work. [exaggerated for effect]
Obligatory "sick systems" reference: https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html
There are certainly companies out there with a lot of problems, and there are a lot of toxic people. But if it seems that every single manager and hiring person that you encounter is an asshole and a jerk, there is an alternative explanation. Just saying.
The fundamental problem is a misalignment of incentives: what is good for any individual manager - getting a bigger budget and more staff reporting to them - it not necessarily what is good for the organisation as a whole, nor for any other individual within it, or even the shareholders or customers.
They were never firings because the the company just did massive layoffs every year so you just get rid of the bad apples with the rest of the under-performers when the company downsizes.
A manager's role is to support their team, any failure to do so should be looked at very carefully as to why they are under-performing. This behaviour needs to continue up the chain to the very top of the company structure.
I think most big companies would find that much firing accountability at the all levels uncomfortable.
Only attorneys in labor disputes will be asking to show minutes from meetings.
That's not true at all. The company fires people all the time because their skills just aren't necessary. I mean I guess technically it's a layoff, but a layoff and getting fired are functionally the same at Netflix as they both come with the same severance.
When we moved to AWS, there were plenty of folks who were let go because their expertise was in physical infrastructure and they had no desire to learn about the cloud.
They were stellar performers, their expertise just wasn't needed anymore.
I very much enjoyed working in a culture where both hiring and firing were easy to do, to make sure that the team was always the right people at the right time.
I actually think that's a really great policy. I've seen layoffs done under the guise of "underperformance" (i.e. with no severance) and it's really shitty. Giving everyone severance is a just fairer way to say "the business has fundamentally changed".
It doesn't need to be about not being willing to learn new things. It can be about having expertise and there still being a market for continuing to develop that expertise elsewhere.
hmm, but unemployment is a concern too, and you wouldn't get that if fired?
That is what contractors are for.
Full-time employees are hired because they know/learn the business, get things done, and adapt to changing circumstances. You want them around to help you get through changes. If you are hiring full-time employees to fit a narrow niche need that will change in the future, with the intent of "easy" hiring and firing, you are just setting yourself up to have a bad reputation as an employer.
Is that true? I have seen it quite a bit that people in similar situations were never asked if they would like to switch.
In my experience, what happens is there is a technology shift -- the company leadership decides they want to use the cloud (or use containers, or start moving their codebase to ${LANG}, etc.) and there is a group of employees that will lead this effort by learning and working with the new technologies, and there is another group that will actively oppose taking responsibility to learn about the new technology, and may actively work to sabotage or slow down the process.
And I have seen groups that would like learn the new tech but never get involved by management.
Another perspective is that that group of employees was doing the unglamorous work of maintaining the legacy systems that kept the lights on and paid the bills while the lucky few got to play with new toys, and they were rewarded for their diligence with getting shafted. Been there, done that, lessons learned.
I think you'll agree that your perspective may be something of an outlier, given that you 1.) are not the person who's going to be fired, 2.) are the person who is most empowered by a policy of ease of hiring and firing those under you, and 3.) don't need to work.
I don't like working in a culture where being fired is a thing anyone in my management chain might decide to do to me easily and suddenly for any reason at any time, and I don't think I'm unique in that.
One of the reasons I always insist on working as a contractor is so that the company can end things whenever they want. Importantly, though, the risk of that happening is reflected in my rate.
Since from my perspective the risk of being let go as a 1099 vs. as a 1040 is roughly equal, and the compensation is roughly double, it seems like an easy trade-off.
And a fella can buy an awful lot of health insurance for 100% of his salary...
I'd much rather work at a company that practices Japanese-style lifetime employment.
I worked for a place like this. Regular firings, sometimes every month. The CEO (who also self-funded the company) believed that regularly letting people go was a way of eliminating bad apples and forcing people to work harder and smarter. Similar to Netflix philosopy, but on a smaller scale.
Firings happened for all the reasons you'd think--politics, cliques, not being a "cultural fit." "Not being a team player" was often code for not trying hard enough to make your lead look good.
It was toxic and led to massive tech debt accumulation, as a succession of engineering managers all made new and different decisions on frameworks and technologies as soon as they were hired. Very little institutional knowledge.
Implicit quotas for regularly letting people go is just an insane way to run a business.
(edit: clarity)
Microsoft called it Stack Ranking.
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 that manager was gone, job security for those people was also gone.
Weird how people put up with madness like that when your field is in high demand.
Well, when everywhere is pretty much the same...
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 statement and distill your management philosophy into 3 or 4 words preferably starting with the same alphabet. Next thing every CEO has their own tag lines: 'Agility, Accountabilty, Ambition' or 'Passion, Persistance, Performance' or <insert words from thesarus>. My previous company CEO spent thousands of dollars on polished metal tangram squares with her three words embossed on them given to every-single-employee at the company.
Replace often with always. That's coded language that exactly means this. It's really hard to avoid this though.
> massive tech debt accumulation
Do you know any company that doesn't have that? Honestly I've never seen it. I've worked in a 10 people company, I founded a company with a co-student, I worked in a 50 people company, I currently work in a 95,000 people company and there's always huge loads of technical debt. Also I now often work with Google APIs/tools/frameworks as well as AWS. Also loads of technical debt, right there.
> Implicit quotas for regularly letting people go is just an insane way to run a business.
That's for sure. It's great for getting investors though.
Oh well, guess I could always be an Uber driver.
I think this is a “pick your poison” situation. If you freelance you need to kiss clients’ asses, in a smaller org there are politics as well, just expressed differently.
I worried about a lot of things during my time in, but getting fired was not one of them.
Netflix is not even close to that in my experience, nor have I seen any evidence of that in the engineering teams around me.
Of course some teams may be different-and it certainly is different to how many companies operate-but the article seems to be unfairly characterizing the culture based on grumbling from a few disgruntled ex employees.
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.
More recently, this person I know brought it up when interviewing at Netflix (not wanting to work in such a culture), and was reassured by the hiring manager that no, such things do not happen, that all feedback/criticism is 1:1 and never in a public setting.
Now, the article says
> At some team dinners and lunches there are rounds of “real-time 360,” executives say, where everyone goes around and gives feedback and criticism about others at the table.
What has your experience been?
It seems likely to me this is actually true (as independently corroborated by both my friend's friend, and this article), and the manager denied it to a potential future employee, which seems not a very nice thing to do.
And surely there's a selection bias at play: anyone who has a problem with such a culture (e.g. someone who doesn't want to be criticized in public as a matter of course, or someone who doesn't want to be fired one day unexpectedly) would leave, so by definition those who remain are those who are fine with such a culture and don't see it as a problem.
However, it was highly encouraged for ICs to give each other feedback in person one-on-one, and for ICs to give managers feedback (both their own and others they had to work with).
I have read that the Army Rangers have something like this, they call it the "beef circle". Everyone says a person who has annoyed them, then the two of you wrestle in the centre of the circle, then you shake hands and the matter is considered closed. But that's obv inappropriate for a corporate environment.
But either way, the goal is the same – not to target you or make you feel inadequate, but for you to discover things that you might not have realized were negatively impacting the team.
Group feedback meetings do exist, but I can't imagine that anyone would be penalized (even in thought) for choosing not to participate.
The way I see it, people will talk about their coworkers at any workplace. At most places it's behind their back; here we have respect enough for one another to give each other constructive feedback directly instead of gossiping. It makes a lot of sense to me, but I guess not everybody feels that way. If your manager doesn't make it clear that group feedback is optional, that would be a great piece of feedback for your manager!
So I think "criticized in public as a matter of course" is a mischaracterization. IME managers go to great lengths to ensure that people are treated respectfully and not made to feel pressured to participate in things they aren't comfortable with. And "fired one day unexpectedly" is certainly not the norm – I'm not aware of anyone who was let go without having been told weeks or months in advance about issues they needed to address. That's not to say it couldn't happen, because it could happen at any workplace. But it's not the norm.
Edit: Should also mention that the feedback cycle also includes positive feedback. It's not just a gripe fest. You identify things that your colleague is doing well/things you appreciate, and also things that they could improve.
Some get untold wealth even for failing and land perfectly after. The system does not seem to be coherent.
[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/26/containing-ceo-pay/
And I'm all for constructive candor but to do so you have to remember to a) know your audience and, b) ease people into it. Otherwise you're just being a dick.
From what I've seen, managers give poor performance reviews or "metrics" when they don't like people. This feels like a distinction without a difference.
I've seen plenty of employees getting fired because their manager, who didn't like them, gave them a bad review.
In fact, across companies and even industries, being disliked by your manager is the single most reliable way to get fired.
Anyone claiming you can be disliked by your superior yet reliably keep your job - is BSing you.
Since this is, essentially, what the spokesman is stating, then I call typical PR BS.
My personal experience puts that at about 2/4 as far as previous managers go.
Some people just don't get along. It's a fact of life. Managers are humans, and they detest working every day with people who rub them the wrong way.
Couple that with upper management at Netflix pressuring managers to hit firing quotas, and you can be sure who is chosen to be sacrificed on the altar of that particular metric...
Ergo, the report's performance may be suffering, but entirely because they're being poorly managed.
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 aren't compatible, it's just a tenuous forced balance that will eventually break and plunge the relationship to even deeper depths.
Of course in this situation, all performance reviews for the employee are anywhere from slightly to heavily distorted in their disfavor.
This will always result in one of them eventually leaving the team, typically the employee.
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.
Sometimes a business that is not a pure meritocracy may have managers who got the management gig because they’re someone’s relative or from some non-work-related connection. They may be afraid they’ll be exposed for not really being that qualified for their job.
If they have a report that produces really high quality work, they may be intimidated and hold off on the praise to avoid placing attention on the report, and on their own self-perceived inadequacies.
In addition to holding off on praise when it’s warranted they may also even write the report up for trivial things such as being 1 minute late to work. So the net effect for the report is more negative reviews than would otherwise be, and less positive ones than deserved.
Human nature is a hell of a thing.
If people don't want this, I think it's up to the organization to do this, as opposed to the vigilant wall of an ethic. Presumably the organization doesn't want little cliques, and should structure their incentives properly.
Absolutely! Which is why people do get fired all the time if they rub their managers or the rest of the team in the wrong way.
That's why making blanket statements that "all our firings are due to pure performance reasons" is such a blatant lie.
I'd like to see the manager who puts up with someone they just personally dislike, for the most mundane reasons, every single day, for months.
The article states that upper management also encourages managers to fire employees, which makes this decision just a little easier and more likely.
I hired a grumpy, cynical systems administrator who often spoke his mind at inopportune times, but I'll admit he was head and shoulders above every other candidate in terms of technical ability. And he was diligent.
I liked him. I liked him in spite of his shortcomings.
In general I tend to make large allowances for people of strong technical ability. It's not a conscious thing -- they do good work, and they're effective. Sure, they may be brusque: yesterday one said to me, "No, you're wrong, that's not who it works." He couldn't be bothered to sugarcoat what he was saying. But I like him -- he's good.
If it's long-running, is there any common thread between them? Do they target companies that have extreme cultures...or do they just target big companies and describe the cultures in extreme ways?
I've heard 400k cash is not that uncommon.
Netflix does not have "tech lead" or "Principal" roles for the Software or Science teams. It is Senior, then you have Managers (who can be paid less than Seniors), Directors (no senior Directors), VP (no Senior VPs), and C-suite (with comp that is publicly available).
I'd take having to tolerate a useless chucklefuck on my team over living with a Sword of Damocles constantly hanging over my head.
Actually, what I really want is Japanese-style lifetime employment...
The race of the speaker shouldn’t matter. Either make the word forbidden (a silly concept to begin with) or don’t.
> In sociology and cultural studies, reappropriation (or reclamation) is the cultural process by which a group reclaims terms [...] previously used in a way disparaging of that group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reappropriation
This is considered to be normal, and people that publicly use this kind of words are generally viewed with contempt. And it could be a reason to get fired from your job.
I believe this to be common across Western European countries (even with the current surge of far-right parties).
Since I cannot edit anymore, let me correct it here:
In the country where I work, using such words in a professional context, even for illustrative purpose such as described in the article, would be rather uncommon, would definitely feels weird and at least raise a few eyebrows.
But I have to say I don't think it would usually result in immediate outrage and for the speaker to be fired (I can still see this happening, but it would definitely be the odd occurrence). It would probably be considered more of a well-intended-but-slightly-misguided attempt.
So we definitely have such taboo words outside the US, but maybe they are not as strong a taboo here...
Impressive use of the passive voice to pretend that there is some central authority deciding how words are meant to be used. People don't agree on how words are meant to be used and there is no reason to give preference to one over the other. Either ban it or not, don't have a skin color test to determine if someone should be fires or patted on the back after they drop a racial slur on the phone.
That Wikipedia article even mentions that people in the in group are often offended by the use of the word.
"We shouldn't have any shows that use the term 'retarded' because it can be as painful for a developmentally disabled person to hear as the word 'nigger' is for a black person to hear"
As reported he used the "n-word" as an example of something really hurtful that shouldn't be said. Is that really worth a firing? Is it really wrong at all? What am I missing?
The apologist has the words ready: they pay you a lot, they are clear about firing liberally, and you get your severance package. What's to complain about? Unfortunately (for the apologist), there are people who still have some dignity and do not like to be on trial with the kangaroo court. It is better to be punched in a leg than in the face, we all agree on that, but some people – a dying breed, apparently – do not like to be punched at all.
The article is a good description of what happens at Netflix, including the creepiness trickling down from the top with the lemonade, although there was never an email from the CEO asking the leaker to expose herself.
Are you a member of Netflix CEO's "executive staff"?
If not, how would you know that such an email was never sent?
So every employee gets to be badmouthed in front of as many as hundreds of former co-workers, as Netflix's special parting gift?
What a treat!
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons
So Netflix is actively propagating the obvious myth that all terminations are due to poor performance. Not because the nature of the project / technology changed, not because the chemistry between the fired person and key players like his supervisor has unfortunately gone south... No, it is always poor performance.
Good luck getting your next job!
And to help you on your way out, we'll make sure every single one of your former co-worker hears your former supervisor talking trash about you in very blunt terms.
You know, just to make it easier for these same co-workers to provide references to your prospective next employers.
Have we said good luck already...?
(Netflix employees, why do you accept this?)
Money, of course. Plus, people working in tech and making very good money are not known for "spine-straightness".
If they are such solid performers, they can get jobs in other FAANGs who pay just as well. Netflix pays well, but does it pay so much better that I should put up with this BS?
I doubt.
In fact, by keeping up this abusive charade, Netflix is guaranteeing that many of the best candidates will never apply. So my guess would be that their employees aren't the best, but perhaps the best candidates willing to accept this BS.
To the FAANG employee with a PHD who's been "hanging out" making widgets a 1st year programmer could build, the appeal I think is to invite people who want to show off the fire in their belly to do something.
And then they make 1st year programmer widgets, but with LOTS of passion and arguments and being told they can be fired at any moment.
The pay for Senior & Principal level positions at Netflix are $350k-$500k+ base compensation. The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
Netflix goes out of its way to pay top-of-market and often by a significant margin.
A Principal Engineer at FB would make "half" of $350-500k in compensation?
Pure nonsense.
Moreover, it seems like Netflix pays more cash and less equity, so some folks on this thread love to talk about "base compensation", "salary", etc.
What really matters is total comp, and from what I know, Netflix is about on par with the rest of FAANG.
I don't know much about them directly, but I do know folks who work for FAANGs very close to Los Gatos, and would certainly be inteested in moving if Netflix paid more "by a significant margin".
Almost same outcome.
:shrug: You need better data.
Would love to see any specific numbers you have but that just sounds straight up wrong. IME $200k-$250k is around what L4s at Google make in total comp.
Are you sure this isn't a salary vs. equity thing?
I'm guessing GP is someone who heard base salary data for Netflix vs other FAANGs, and doesn't realize how much of total comp at a non-Netflix FAANG would come from bonus and RSUs.
In fact, it is not-my-wild guess that the probability of stopping a homicide steeply decreases with the amount of money given to look the other way. For some, even their sister's. Go figure for a job in tech.
true according to acquaintances from there. Pure cash.
>The same shape of thing at Apple, Facebook, etc. would be about half that in many cases.
the base at FAANG is about half of NFLX. The RSUs take the total higher than NFLX. Know cases where $100K-$200K higher total comp offer from FAANG (i.e. mostly RSU) wouldn't move the NFLX employee - $500K cash change your view of the world :)
That's really silly, but demonstrates Netflix's pay strategy. They don't pay better than other FAANGs - the comments in this thread indicate they pay less than the top FAANGs. But then they use the fact that it's "all cash" to appeal to folks who are misguided about RSUs.
There are no shortage of articles, just on this very site even, indicating that all of the FAANGs have weird, dysfunctional internal cultures. So it would be out of the frying pan into the fire.
Also, I won't have to live in Los Gatos.
Infact I wouldn't know of many companies who can't be branded evil or full of BS for some or other reason.
Reduces their overhead -- no plan administrators, etc. -- and no abstractions or surprise fine print in the 401k matching or classes of stock or whatever.
Well no. It’s usually very positive about them and generally sad that things couldn’t be made to work.
The point is not that they were bad - the idea is Netflix wouldn’t have hired them if that were so! It’s that it just wasn’t a good fit due to misalignment of goals. Perhaps someone doesn’t want to change or just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to.
I’ve read a few departure emails in my time at Netflix and none of them - even the one with the C level exec who is mentioned in the article - were “badmouthing” anyone.
If anything they’re quite positive about the person tbh.
That's not what Netflix's own spokesman say:
> Richard Siklos, a Netflix spokesman, said the company only fires employees for performance reasons
Only "performance reasons", not "misalignment of goals".
> Perhaps someone doesn’t want to change or just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to.
Saying someone "just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to" is a very negative thing to say. As a hiring managing, hearing that about a candidate would cause me not to hire them.
> It’s usually very positive about them
Something is very distorted if you think saying about someone that he "just keeps behaving in a way that they’ve been asked not to" and similar stuff that make a person unemployable is "very positive about them".
And once more, this contradicts everything else in the article. You can't have your cake and eat it, too: if Netflix is saying (through it's spokesman and multiple other execs in the article) that firing is always due to performance reason, then that's not a "very positive" statement about the person being fired. It's actually a very negative statement.
On the other hand, I find it very strange that the article describes a sort of 'post-mortem email' that goes out to dozens of people that describes the failings of the (now-departed) employee. That seems like it would cause more problems than it would solve.
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.
Have a policy that in any case of performance issues, the person with the bad ratings gets to move to a different area in the company with as clean a slate as possible without being naive. Ideally away from the management chain up to and including the director. Then have HR reevaluate after 3-6 months.
It's only moderately good because it's never (and shouldn't quite be depending on the cause of poor performance) a completely clean slate and because it is very expensive to execute.
I've seen a number of folks who has relationship problems due to their environment be salvaged as perfectly good employees this way. I've seen others who left with the realization that maybe it wasn't JUST the manager after all and hopefully growing from that experience. And of course, I've seen people think it's all a giant conspiracy against them as well.
That being said, most political office stuff is very much personal, at least for one party involved. And than it gets nasty. And yes, with review processes being incredibly intransparent, without a real chance for the reviewed to defend himself, bad reviews are an easy way to get rid of people.
This isn't what happens, as far as I've seen. These e-mails/meetings don't badmouth people or imply that they weren't competent. They give context around specific ways in which the person wasn't meeting expectations (as well as outlining out the ways in which the person was positively contributing). IME it's valuable context and isn't an assault on anyone's dignity (or "trash talking") like you're suggesting.
You cannot write that that person is not at the level of their peers, that she was not able to communicate with the stakeholders in a company-wide email, with no opportunity for the fired person to comment.
In my book, that is all very unfair. I hope you are not used to that behavior, either actively or passively.
Let me take a stab at this: money is good.
> Let me take a stab at this: money is good.
Better than everywhere else, including other FAANGs, where you don't have to tolerate such policies?
Effectively what they're doing is comparing total comp at Netflix with base salary at other FAANGs, which is very misleading.
That said -- I mean this with all sincerity -- it does my commie heart good to see that absolutely no in this thread is buying Netflix's bullshit.
Agree to all the other points though.
For the most part, these are all benefits of RSUs at a company like Facebook or Google.
They're totally liquid. They "vest", but in short order.
This isn't startup equity. It's very much real money.
Had this not been the case every single company would have been doing perp-walks of the managers engaging in such behavior.
As someone in tech, if you are making over $250k/year you should realize that unless you have a contract ( not as in 1099 but as in someone who has an individual, negotiated, untouchable using regular processes ) and you are not in the top 3 tiers of management, then to the management you are a very expensive line item which needs to be minimized. Google and Facebook are starting to tip over -- there will be stories about their culture popping up next year or two.
"Expensive" is relative, though. The top places are growing and in constant need of great new employees. Firing an engineer making $250k just to hire a replacement making the same amount is actually highly expensive and wasteful - firing and recruiting can easily cost as much an annual salary.
Recruiting is really expensive.
> Google and Facebook are starting to tip over -- there will be stories about their culture popping up next year or two.
What do you mean by that?
Stories of Zenefits ickiness started popping up when it became unclear that those working for it would become multi-millionaries in next few years.
Stories of Netflix culture toxicity started popping up when it became no longer clear that Netflix will continue to eat the world of streaming -- hence continuing to provide massive $$ to those working for it.
People would take more abuse for a higher chance to make a boatload of money. The smaller the boatload or the less are the chances of making it, the less employees are willing to take.
If you are to look at Google and Facebook stories over last 6-12 months you would see more and more questions about how far those two companies can grow. As the growth trajectory slows down more and more stories about the internal ugliness show up because fewer people are willing to take it.
People tend to work hard and accept a lot of crap as long as they are making a lot of money, or hoping to.
Once those prospect dim, hell does tend to break loose. People suddenly lose patience with bad policies, with politics, with people they only barely tolerated before, with high levels of stress at work...
The same people who soldiered on like good boyscouts when the money was pouring in, will become fed up and recalcitrant once they run out of financial reasons to take shit from management.
Does the value of the subscription really vary according to the company's HR practices? I'm not even sure that of the stock will.
Oh please. Get over yourselves.
It’s also about the quality of the service, the apps and the rest of the experience.
They are trying to make a parallel for the expectations and rigor involved in maintaining peak performance.