We connect people and stories, and we have lots of people and stories. Hundreds of millions of users around the world is a good start, but in the future we want to entertain everyone. Like friendship, entertainment is one of the core human needs. Whether big or small, dramatic or satirical, entertainment touches us, changes our feelings and creates consensus.

Our corporate culture emphasizes how we come together as employees to serve our customers and grow. The culture has made Netflix what it is today, and we continue to improve it; Corporate culture also helps us attract and retain talented colleagues; The culture also makes working here more satisfying.

Like many businesses, we strive to hire the best people and we value integrity, excellence, respect and collaboration.

What makes Netflix unique is our commitment to:

  • Encourage employees to make their own decisions

  • Open, extensive and active information sharing

  • Be very honest with each other

  • Keep only high performers

  • Avoid rules

Our core philosophy is that people matter more than processes.

More specifically, we have great people working together as a dream team. In this way, we become a more flexible, interesting, creative, exciting, innovative and successful organization.

Most companies have their own values, but these values on paper are often unclear and easy to ignore. The true value of a company is who gets rewarded and who gets fired. Here are our values and the specific behaviors and skills we care about most. The better those descriptions match you and the people you hope to work with, the better your chances of thriving at Netflix.

  • Make wise decisions and avoid ambiguity

  • Recognize the root of things, not confused by appearances

  • Think strategically, be self-aware and work hard to achieve

  • He is good at using data to support his intuition

  • Make decisions based on the long term, not the short term

  • Speak and write concisely

  • Be a good listener and seek to fully understand before responding

  • Stay calm in tense situations and find the clearest solution

  • Adapt your communication style to people in different parts of the world from your native language background

  • Provide honest and timely feedback to colleagues

  • Eager to learn and able to learn quickly

  • You can make contributions outside of your field of expertise

  • Can make connections that others overlook

  • Want to learn about users from around the world and how we can satisfy them

  • Explore new perspectives

  • Bring up useful new ideas

  • Reframe concepts to find solutions to difficult problems

  • Be willing to challenge established prevailing assumptions and come up with a better way

  • Keep your company agile by reducing complexity and finding time savings

  • Be good at coping with change

  • Willing to express ideas that might help Netflix, even if they might upset some people

  • Be willing to be critical of the status quo

  • Make tough decisions without being plagued by pain

  • Take risks wisely and be open to possible failure

  • Questioning anything that is inconsistent with our values

  • To be able to withstand blows that may occur in the quest for truth

  • Desire excellence and inspire others

  • Take your customers and Netflix’s success to heart

  • Strong and optimistic

  • Humble on the outside, strong on the inside

  • Do what’s best for Netflix, not yourself or your team

  • Be open to the best point of view

  • Willing to take the time to help colleagues

  • Be willing to share information openly and proactively

  • Ability to work effectively with people with different experiences and cultural backgrounds

  • Be willing to cultivate and accept different perspectives in order to make better decisions

  • Focus on talents and values, not whether the other person has anything in common with you

  • Want to understand the impact of different backgrounds on the job, rather than pretend that background does not matter

  • Acknowledge that we all have certain prejudices and try to overcome them

  • When someone is being ostracized, step in to solve the problem

  • It is honest, authentic, transparent and non-political

  • Call a spade a spade

  • Be able to admit mistakes freely and openly

  • Respect for others, regardless of their position or views

  • Able to accomplish a surprising amount of important work

  • Have a consistent excellent performance, worthy of the trust of colleagues

  • Make your colleagues better

  • Focus on the outcome, not the process

It’s easy to write these great values, but it’s not easy to put them into practice. As mentioned in the “Courage” section, “question everything that is inconsistent with our values.” We want everyone to help each other, take responsibility for each other, and be an example. It’s a process of continuous improvement.

In the description of honesty, we mention “speaking your mind”, which is one of the most difficult and important practices for new employees to believe in, but to follow. In most cases, people who consistently speak their mind, whether socially or professionally, are quickly isolated and marginalized. We are committed to ensuring that colleagues provide professional and constructive feedback to each other — both from superiors and from different functions within the organization. Netflix employees often ask “Can I do better?” “Often ask yourself,” What feedback am I not sharing?

We firmly believe that we learn better and faster if we make it part of our daily routine to give and receive feedback in a relaxed environment. Feedback should be an ongoing part of communication and work, not an occasional red tape. We build trust with colleagues through selfless feedback, even though it can be stressful and uncomfortable. But in fact, feedback can help avoid chronic misunderstandings and high dependency on rules. The exchange of feedback will be easier if there is a stronger potential for cooperation and trust among employees. That’s why we take the time to develop these professional relationships. We encourage employees who are frank, especially those who are frank with their superiors. We are well aware that such openness and feedback can be difficult for new employees from different parts of the world to understand, as it is rare in some places. So we’re going to be actively helping people learn how to do that at Netflix through mentoring and setting examples.

The core of the Dream Team [1] is that each member is committed to his or her responsibilities and plays the role of an effective collaborator. The value and satisfaction of being on the dream team is huge. Our idea of a “perfect workplace” isn’t about fancy sushi lunches, gyms, spacious offices or frequent parties. We see a “best place to work” as a dream team with big goals, and we work hard to achieve them. Because only in such a team can you learn fully, execute efficiently, make rapid progress, finish optimally and enjoy your work fully.

Making a dream team work for a company as a whole, as opposed to just a few small teams, can be extremely challenging. There’s no question we need to do a good job recruiting. There is also a need to foster collaboration, support information sharing and break down office politics. Unusually, we offer a very generous severance package [2] that allows positions to be reserved for the right people. The coach’s job is to make sure that every player on the field is able to perform well in his position and work well with other players. We’re shaping ourselves as a team, not as a family. The family is based on unconditional love, which means tolerating the unreasonable behavior of siblings. The Dream team emphasizes being the best teammate you can be, caring passionately about other teammates and realizing that you won’t always be on the team.

We don’t have hard and fast rules like “get rid of the bottom 10% every year.” This kind of approach is not conducive to collaborative cultivation, and we would never support an overly mechanical, rule-driven approach. We focused on the judgment of managers, and based on that, we gave each team member an “in or out test” — would managers try to prevent a team member from leaving if he or she wanted to move to another organization? Those who fail the “stay and go test” (employees that managers don’t intend to try to retain) will receive a generous severance package with full respect, and new members will be found to further enhance the dream team. Elimination may be disappointing, but there is no shame in it. In fact, joining the dream team would be a great honor in our career.

Given the nature of the dream team, managers often communicate with each team member about their position, so surprise attacks are rare. The employee can always ask the manager, “If I were to leave, how much effort would you make to change my decision?” Given the balance between honesty and kindness, we tend to choose honesty. But no matter how candid we are, we treat our employees with full respect.

One might think that the dream team’s focus would lead to a fear of making mistakes. In fact, the opposite is true. In our search for improvement, we try many things and inevitably make many mistakes. The stay or go test is really a judgment of the employee’s overall expected contribution.

In a dream team, collaboration and trust are always important, as each colleague must not only be good at handling his or her own tasks, but also collaborate with other employees. When describing selflessness, we mentioned “willingness to take the time to help colleagues”. We want our new colleagues to feel the enthusiasm of the original team members and get all the support they need.

Some also ask about loyalty. Loyalty is undoubtedly the best stabilizer for an enterprise. If an employee who has performed well in the past suffers a temporary decline in performance, the company will give in to performance requirements. Similarly, we ask for understanding and patience from our employees in the event of any short-term decline in Netflix’s performance. But unconditional loyalty to a shrinking business, or unlimited tolerance for well-performing employees, does not fit our business philosophy.

There should be no “brilliant jerks” on a dream team, as this would greatly increase the cost of teamwork. We adhere to the idea that intelligent people should also have interpersonal skills. When talented employees collaborate, they inspire others to be more creative, more productive, and ultimately build great teams that go far beyond the sum of their individual talents.

A successful dream team should be productive, not just hard-working. A “B” result, despite constant “A” effort, can result in A generous severance package. And no matter what the actual effort, as long as it consistently produces “A” results, you will be rewarded. Of course, most of us have to put in a fair amount of effort to achieve such results. But again, effort is not how we measure performance.

Not everyone is cut out to be part of the Dream team, and we acknowledge and respect that fact. Many people place a high value on job stability and tend to join companies that emphasize stability and seniority and ignore differences in productivity. In contrast, our model is more suitable for employees who are able to gain consensus among their peers.

In order to attract and retain talented colleagues, we offer the most competitive salaries in the relevant talent market. We give them the highest pay by making a fair estimate of the highest pay each employee could earn at a peer company. Normally, we adjust compensation once a year for the market. But we don’t think of it as a ‘raise’ and there is no such thing as a size. Our decision is based entirely on the reality of the job market. We would avoid the “average employee gets 2%, top employee gets 4%” model. There may be a situation where the market value of some employees increases rapidly (due to their actual performance and the lack of talent in their location, etc.), while some employees perform equally well but have no significant change in compensation. At all times, our goal is to provide our employees with the highest compensation in the market.

It is important to note that we will not ask our employees to put up with a lower pay package if the company experiences financial difficulties. A sports team that fails and still gets top pay often inspires its members to try harder to get back to the top. On the other hand, if the company is doing well, the stock options that we offer widely to our employees become extremely valuable.

The Dream Team model emphasizes the idea that an employee’s economic security is based on his or her skills and reputation, not his or her seniority in the organization. At Netflix, you’ll gain experience working with great people to solve difficult problems, and you’ll learn how to increase your market value. That way, you’ll have the confidence that if you leave Netflix, you’ll be courted by other companies. We also consider it normal for employees to occasionally attend external job interviews and encourage employees to talk to their managers about what they’ve learned from the process.

Despite having great team members and great collaboration, we knew we could do better. We strive to maintain calm confidence and a constant desire for improvement, after all, we are mediocre compared to the great goals we strive for.

While many employees ignore litter on the office floor, others pick it up as if they were at home. We strive to be the latter, a company where every member is responsible and wants to do the right thing to help the company at all times. Picking up litter itself is just a metaphor, the essence of which is to affirm the attitude of employees when they find problems, rather than holding a negative thought of “this is not my job”. There are no rules about picking up litter (figurative or real), but rather we want to emphasise the sense of belonging, responsibility and initiative that companies create — the core drivers of spontaneous behaviour.

Our goal is to inspire people to manage themselves. We trust our team to make the judgment they think is best for Netflix, so we give them full freedom, authority, and information to support that decision. This, in turn, creates a sense of responsibility and discipline that urges people to do great work that will benefit the company.

We believe that people can make greater contributions when they fully enjoy trust, freedom and space for play. So we promote freedom and empowerment all the time.

Many organizations have an unhealthy emphasis on process and lack of freedom. Such organizations do not start out with these problems, but gradually fall over time. In particular, most organizations remain free and accountable when they are small. By this time the staff knew each other well and everyone was willing to pick up litter. But as organizations grow and businesses become more complex, the average level of talent and enthusiasm begins to slip. As a result, the well-functioning organization began to break down, chaos arose, and protests grew, leading policymakers to introduce traditional management and processes to control the situation. As rules and procedures proliferated, value systems evolved to be rules-oriented (that is, judgments about how to get rewards). If this standardized management approach is properly implemented, the company’s business model becomes highly efficient, and creative employees are forbidden to question the status quo. This type of organization became highly specialized and adapted to their business model. However, with a view to the next 10 to 100 years, further changes in business models are inevitable, and most of these companies can no longer adapt to the new changes.

To avoid the rigid effects of this over-specialisation, to address the disruption caused by business growth, and to maintain a free and open working environment, we strive to support our ambitions with a simplified business as possible, and always to promote the individual capabilities of our employees. We try to make sure that the company is made up of people who are disciplined enough to find and solve problems without being told to do so.

We are committed to increasing employee freedom [3]. Here are some examples of an unusual degree of freedom in operation.

  • File sharing internally is extensive and systematic. Almost every document is completely public, and every employee can read and comment on it, while making sure the comments are available to others. Specifically, every performance metric, every round of strategic decisions, every competitor and even every functional test memo is open to employees. Despite the huge volume of traffic, there are very few leaks due to our self-discipline and responsibility.

  • There are few spending controls or contract signing controls in place. Every employee can seek advice and opinion support as appropriate. “Use good judgment” is our core philosophy.

  • Our policy for travel, entertainment, gifts and other expenses is simple: It’s in Netflix’s best interest. In addition, we have eliminated the compliance authorities that most companies rely on to enforce their policies.

  • Our vacation policy is also very simple: “Enjoy your vacation.” There are no rules or forms about how many weeks of vacation each year. To be honest, Netflix employees mix work and personal time in a fair amount of situations, from dealing with emails outside of work hours to playing games with their kids on weekday afternoons. Also, we don’t have any dress code, but nobody comes to work naked, so you don’t have to lay down rules for everything. Our leadership team sets an example by taking time off, often returning with new ideas and encouraging the rest of the team to do the same.

  • When it comes to maternity leave, our policy is “take care of your baby and yourself.” New parents often have to wait several months after their baby is born to determine the best time to take leave, so we allow them to apply for leave anytime in the first year.

  • Each employee can choose how much of their salary they want to exchange for stock options each year. You can choose not to convert at all, all or at any rate [4]. Your choice depends on your perception of risk and upside potential. Those 10-year stock options are yours to keep even if you leave Netflix.

  • We will not set up any compensation system that restricts the freedom of employees. Employees can leave at any time without any compensation, but they generally prefer to stay at Netflix. We want managers to create the conditions for people to fall in love with the place, to do great work and to be paid what they want.

There are several important exceptions to liberal philosophy against rigid rules. First of all, we have a strict control system for ethical and safety issues. Netflix, for example, has zero tolerance for harassing employees or trading inside information. In addition, we have strict access control for some information security issues such as member payment information. Also, we have strict controls over large amounts of cash transferred through company bank accounts. But these are the extremes.

In general, freedom and quick recovery are better than mere prevention of error. We are in a creative business, not a safety-centric one. The biggest threat we will face over time is a lack of innovation, so there should be a corresponding fault tolerance. If the employee has good judgment, it is not difficult to recover quickly. Error prevention sounds good, but it is often ineffective in practice. We need to be vigilant that too much error prevention can hinder innovative, creative work.

Freedom can sometimes be abused. For example, one of our senior employees had been taking kickbacks on contracts for a long time before he was caught. But this is the exception, and we want to avoid overdoing it. The abuse of liberty by a few does not mean that our employees are not trustworthy.

Some processes exist to increase productivity, not avoid errors, and we like processes that help get more done. Typical of these are regular meetings. We regularly host multiple types of meetings, set clear start and finish times and prepare valuable agendas for them. Through these meetings, we learn from each other and get more done, rather than preventing mistakes or approving decisions.

For any major decision, there is a “captain” responsible for it, who makes the final judgment after digesting the opinions of others. We avoid decision-making bodies such as committees as much as possible because they slow down the process and disperse obligations and responsibilities. We cultivate dissent. Dissent doesn’t come naturally or easily, so we work together to stimulate it. In most cases, groups discuss issues and debate them, and then someone needs to be the captain and make decisions. Smaller decisions need to be shared via email, while larger ones need to be accompanied by a memo containing the various positions discussed and the reasons the captain ultimately made his decision. For more important decisions, we believe that a broader collection of dissent/agreement opinions should be introduced, often in publicly shared documents.

However, we are keenly aware that this should not be decided by a majority vote of staff or committee bodies. We will not wait for consensus, nor will we promote ill-informed and hasty decisions. When the captain of any particular decision has reasonable confidence that the choice is correct, we trust his decision.

We want our employees to be good independent decision makers, and to consult with management only when they are unsure if the decision is the right one. On the other hand, the job of managers at all levels is to set clear scenarios so that employees can get the right information to make good decisions. We don’t encourage the CEO or other senior leader to get too involved in the details of a product or service. While the legendary Steve Jobs did make the iPhone a great product with his micromanagement, others have gone to the other extreme, calling themselves nanomanagers. The heads of today’s major web companies and studios sometimes make too many decisions about content creation. We do not blindly copy the top-down model of other successful companies, because we believe that the most efficient and innovative companies can be achieved only when employees are able to make their own decisions.

We strive to develop good decision-making across the company, and we want top management to make as few decisions as possible, not as many. We do not advocate hand-holding. Every leader should function like a teacher, setting the scene and being well informed. Of course, the only way to understand how existing scenarios need to be improved is to explore all the relevant detailed examples. But unlike micromanagers, the purpose of knowing these details is not to change some tiny decision, but to recognize how to adjust the situation to help rank-and-file employees make more good decisions.

Of course, there are a few minor exceptions to the “situation not control” philosophy. For example, when a new team member does not have enough information to make a convincing judgment, when the employee involved does not have enough time to consider the right situation and principles, or when the right person is not found to be the decision maker.

We tell people that their job is not to please the boss, but to provide strong support for the business. It is perfectly acceptable to have conflicts between employees and managers, not to hide them. We support employees to make it clear to their manager, “I know you disagree, but I’m going to do this anyway because I think it’s a better solution. If you can specifically reverse my decision, let me know.” We don’t want employees to guess what their manager will do or want and then act on that decision.

As companies grow in size, they tend to become highly centralized and inflexible. Specific symptoms include:

  • The top management team gets involved in countless small decisions

  • A number of cross-departmental meetings are required to communicate specific business strategies

  • Pleasing other internal groups takes priority over pleasing customers

  • Organisation is highly co-ordinated and error-prone, but inefficient and frustrating

We avoid these situations by adopting a consistent and loosely coupled approach. We spend a lot of time discussing strategy and implementing it in a trusting way without prior approval. Generally speaking, two teams with the same goal do not need to know or approve each other’s specific actions. We will also discuss in a timely and candid manner any negative situation arising from subsequent implementation. For example, some strategies may be too vague, or conflict with previously agreed strategies, and we will discuss how to do better in the future.

The success of a “coherent, loosely coupled” work environment depends to a large extent on the collaborative effort between efficient individuals and effective situations. Our ultimate goal is to increase corporate influence while improving flexibility and agility. We will always strive to be bigger, faster and more flexible.

New hires in their first few months on the job are often surprised by how much the culture we describe matches their actual experience. Around the world, we live and create corporate cultures together. In fact, hundreds of people around the world worked on the document.

We do not seek to preserve our culture, but to constantly improve it. Every member joining us will contribute to the further shaping and development of corporate culture. And we’ve found new ways to do greater things together. Every few years, we can actually feel our operations become more efficient than ever before. We learn faster than ever because we have more people focused on different perspectives, and everyone is trying to find better ways to help the team work together in a cohesive, flexible, and efficient way.

As we mentioned at the beginning, what makes Netflix unique is our commitment to:

  • Encourage employees to make their own decisions

  • Open, extensive and active information sharing

  • Be very honest with each other

  • Keep only high performers

  • Avoid rules

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, tells us:

If you want to build a ship, don’t motivate people to gather wood, assign work and give orders, but motivate them to desire the vastness of the ocean.

What is the corporate culture of your company? Let us know in the comments section

  1. The Dream Team is not the men’s basketball team that the United States sent to the 1992 Olympics. This is the strong team of your dreams.

  2. We usually offer at least four months ‘full salary as severance to help our former teammates find a new company that suits them.

  3. Due to different legal requirements, our hourly employees face many limitations.

  4. Unfortunately, tax laws in some Asian countries do not support employee choice.

In this paper, translation has been authorized, the original link: https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

Thanks to nucleon cola translation, thanks to Li Meng’s editorial optimization!

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