A decent, insightful look into the counter cultural methods at one of the bigger success stories in the consumer tech world.

Netflix are highly focused on talent density and prioritised less but more talented and empowered employees.

As someone who’s a part of an early stage startup it was another reminder to keep the bar high, even more so in the early days.

Very thought provoking

One of the best culture books I have read so far. Not all of the aspects fit a startup environment, but a nice way how to manage differently from the norm. Made me question more the typical big tech corporate cultures.

Fair take on company culture. All jobs are temporary. Takeaway is, give freedom to your workers, but put accountability systems in the place to make them responsible. Bonuses and KPIs are quite demotivating. Seek for rockstars with 10x output :)

A Netflix Original About How Netflix Became Netflix. Netflix succeeded where many large corporations—Kodak, Nokia, AOL—failed to adapt to changes in their industry. We should be curious about their story, which is related by Reed Hastings, cofounder, and Erin Meyer, author of The Culture Map. The Netflix culture is often cited as a key ingredient of their success. When you dare to do things differently—valuing people over process, emphasizing innovation over efficiency, and having very few controls—you get different results. The book is without surprise different from other similar books. I enjoyed reading it. A mix of conversations, Q&A, real-world examples of situations based on the interviews of more than 200 Netflix employees. What I really appreciate the most about this book is it's not just about the current Netflix culture but how it evolved since the beginning and even before that with the previous company of Reed Hastings. We understand the motivations, the challenges, and the failures that Reed Hastings (and Netflix) overcame to end where they are. It's an authentic book, with a profound motivation to share valuable experiences and lessons, and not simply a way to popularize the Netflix culture. Chapters are organized around the three pillars: build up talent density, increase candor, and reduce controls, which evolved in three cycles representing the three parts of this book. The book organization reflects perfectly how practices, principles, and values reinforce mutually to create a cohesive culture that works at Netflix. A culture is not just a bunch of empty words, or nice-sounded values. A culture must reflect the way people behave in reality. This book is the perfect example. No Rules Rules is a great book for managers that want to understand why great management often has nothing to do with management at all. The main problem I have with this book is the emphasis on talent. As Reed Hastings declares, Netflix tries to hire the best, like every company. Talent is misleading. The Netflix culture and environment contribute for sure in making talent a reality, but talent alone is an illusion. The book How Google Works is far more relevant on this point and is a good suggestion for your next reading. When different companies dare to think differently, it happens that the results are not so different after all.

Second time a book inspired me to do something in People space

Amazing book on management within a high performing creative organization. Packed with real situations and testimonies from employees. Much of it will not apply in most mediocre orgs, but there are definitely some good approaches that any place could benefit from. Candor/feedback is very thoughtfully described in a multi cultural setting.

Fantastic insight as to what makes Netflix one of the leaders of the industry.

Interesting read and a good look at the thought process behind designing the empire that is Netflix. There are some gems in here for anyone interested in startup culture.

Key takeaways for me: 1. One average performer has a significant (negative) performance on an otherwise excellent team. 2. If you build up your talent density (concentration of great performers) you can give them more flexibility and get rid of processes that slow everyone down. 3. Process is important in areas where safety is key, Netflix has a ton of processes around specific types of work. But, where creativity is much more valuable than avoiding mistakes, lead with context and give freedom and responsibility. 4. Pay top of market and encourage people to go out and interview/talk to recruiters to find out their market value. Avoid bonus payment schemes for creative workers, instead just pay a large base salary. Data and Netflix experience show that bonuses for creative work aren't helpful. 5. To help employees grow and do their best work, build a culture of candor, where everyone gets helpful feedback often. Get rid of jerks, and train everyone else to give and receive candid feedback well and use it to improve. 6. Keeper test: as a manager, how hard would you fight to keep this person if they told you they were planning to leave the company? Ask yourself that question periodically for each of your direct reports. If the answer is "wouldn't fight much", manage that person out of your team (fire or move then to another role) Miscellaneous notes I took: Build up talent density Introduce Candor Remove controls Pay top of market and keep increasing talent density Eliminate more rules Lead with context One person's performance spreads very infectiously, thus the criticality of ensuring the talent density is high is critical. Stunning colleagues: creative, accomplish a lot of work, collaborative. Develop a culture of Candor. Get employees to give feedback to their leaders. "tell the emperor when he has no clothes" Make sure you display belonging cues when receiving feedback. Make sure they understand that you are grateful for the feedback. Do this often. Teach people how to give feedback effectively. 4 As framework: * Aim to assist. Explain how it will help the company. * Actionable. * Appreciate: when receiving feedback. Listen carefully and don't become defensive. * Accept it and decide how or whether to adopt it. Leaders need to model the values -- take vacations if removing a vacation policy. Values updates? * If you disagree, say it. It is disloyal to the company to not contribute your dissenting opinions. * We strive to remove processes that slow down people. Techniques to reinforce culture 1. Build talent density 2. Max out feedback/candor 3. Remove control, increase freedom and responsibility Build up talent density 1. Hire well 2. Fire good, but not great, employees Keeper test 1. If this employee told me they are going to quit, how hard would I fight to keep them? 2. Flip side, ask your boss, how hard would they fight to keep me? Do this regularly to learn more of why. Candor with firing 1. Make sure people know the reasons someone was let go. 2. Make it clear that people get feedback before being let go. Instead of a PIP, give a generous severance package and get the employee to agree not to sue Max out candor 1. Only say about someone what you'd say to their face. 2. Set up formal processes for feedback in all directions 3. Set a value about feedback, not providing feedback is "disloyal".

I loved reading this interview-style recap of already well-known Netflix cultural values and virtues. Favorite passage was Reed Hastings answering the question, "How do you avoid a culture of fear?" In regards to the Netflix tactic of letting average/low performers go quickly, with generous severance an no hard feelings. "Wouldn't that lead to a culture of fear?" In white water kayaking they teach you to look at the clear, safe water next to the dangerous hole you want to avoid. Experts have found that if you stare at what you desperately want to avoid, you are actually more likely to paddle into it. Similarly, at Netflix, we tell all employees it is best to focus on learning, teamwork, and accomplishment. If a person gets obsessed by their risk of being let go (or an athlete becomes obsessed with the risk of being injured) they can't play light and confident, and this can bring about the very troubles they were trying to prevent.

The essence of Netflix’s workplace culture is what they call Freedom and Responsibility (F&R). Give your staff the space necessary to be creative and the autonomy to make important decisions on their own, and you’ll build a dynamic and innovative company. This is a fairly well trodden notion and so the important ideas of the book come from the criteria necessary to achieve an F&R culture: only employing top performing talent; paying top of market for new hires; and paying under-performers handsomely in order to leave, for example. It is book that starts you at the end and details all the prerequisites necessary to get there. It’s useful stuff and well written. However, I couldn’t help but think that the most significant prerequisite of all was missing. Namely that, in order to follow the Netflix model you require either a highly profitable or incredibly well funded company. If you are bootstrapping, or offering up equity in place of big salaries, you may run into trouble. This is not to say that the book isn’t useful for these types of companies. For example, their approach to feedback is useful for a company of any size. However, I finished the book wondering, how do you get to a point of F&R on a shoestring? Surely that’s possible too?

I’ve read and skimmed a lot of books on building companies and this one resonated most with the non-hierarchical, creative, free-flowing concept I’ve had in my mind. It felt like the first blueprint I’ve read for a creative economy-era company. They acknowledge mistakes that led to their current structure, while also writing about things I’ll probably never face (global cultural challenges), and that all added credibility and evidence on how to make this work for smaller, scaling companies.

Fascinating insights into the open culture at Netflix, which Reed Hastings attributes their success to. It's very practical, getting people to do unintuitive things like giving radical feedback or doing the "keeper test" step by step. For similar ideas from a different perspective, I recommend "Principes" by Ray Dalio.

An insider’s look at the culture of Netflix. A culture of Freedom & Responsibility. A lot of good takeaways!