4 ms·

>if you are not above average for two performance cycles in a row they let you go. that naturally results in what i anecdotally heard - anytime some corporate

by trhway 6y ago

>if you are not above average for two performance cycles in a row they let you go. that naturally results in what i anecdotally heard - anytime some corporate BS (which basically means anything not helping delivery as delivery is the most important thing at Netflix - again according to what i heard) is being pushed onto the employees there, the employees upon quickly mentally weighting "rejecting the BS vs. suffering performance hit and failing the delivery and loosing the half-million (or frequently even more) cash comp as the result" forcefully and successfully reject the BS most of the times :)

ethbr0 6y ago
It seems like an awesome way to run a business, with some pretty nasty caveats. And those caveats are that (a) you have a substantial and enforced amount of employee empowerment (ability to push back on poor tasking from above) & (b) you have an incredibly objective and ungameable performance evaluation system. If you're going to all in on measuring people by performance, then you'd better be really good at actually measuring performance (and preventing managers from influencing measurements).
- trhway 6y ago
  to me it was told mostly in terms of delivery not "performance" per.se., ie. basically the only thing what matters is failing the delivery vs. successfully delivering . The employee empowerment comes naturally as they are going to lose that great job if they don't push back on anything what impacts delivery.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    > The employee empowerment comes naturally as they are going to lose that great job if they don't push back on anything what impacts delivery. That's not employee empowerment, that's an employee incentive. To the extent that the person doing the tasking remains a the company and the IC doesn't when this happens, that's not empowerment. Empowerment is an ICs ability to effect change, not whether they're sufficiently motivated to.
    - trhway 6y ago
      i think you're right in theory while on practice best empowerment of employees is giving them real incentive to effect the change :)

by trhway 6y ago

ethbr0 6y ago

It seems like an awesome way to run a business, with some pretty nasty caveats. And those caveats are that (a) you have a substantial and enforced amount of employee empowerment (ability to push back on poor tasking from above) & (b) you have an incredibly objective and ungameable performance evaluation system. If you're going to all in on measuring people by performance, then you'd better be really good at actually measuring performance (and preventing managers from influencing measurements).

trhway 6y ago
to me it was told mostly in terms of delivery not "performance" per.se., ie. basically the only thing what matters is failing the delivery vs. successfully delivering . The employee empowerment comes naturally as they are going to lose that great job if they don't push back on anything what impacts delivery.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  > The employee empowerment comes naturally as they are going to lose that great job if they don't push back on anything what impacts delivery. That's not employee empowerment, that's an employee incentive. To the extent that the person doing the tasking remains a the company and the IC doesn't when this happens, that's not empowerment. Empowerment is an ICs ability to effect change, not whether they're sufficiently motivated to.
  - trhway 6y ago
    i think you're right in theory while on practice best empowerment of employees is giving them real incentive to effect the change :)