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Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise

• ab71e5 2mo ago
  So he was fired for sharing he had ketamine based therapy for depression? Why? Like is it promoting drug use or something?
  • Zafira 2mo ago
    We can only speculate, but it would not be surprising if someone was hunting for a reason to get rid of them and thought this was a good excuse. Personally, I don’t think this is a good excuse and while we don’t have all the facts, it sounds like Netflix conceding the therapy factored into the dismissal is probably something they will very much regret admitting to on the record.
    • DrJokepu 2mo ago
      I’ve been working in this industry for 20 years. Nobody gets fired for this, not at Netflix or any of the other studios. Especially a VP. I don’t know how to express how unlikely any of this is. This was an excuse, not the real reason.
      • randallsquared 2mo ago
        So they couldn't come up with an excuse that would have been a legitimate reason?
        • oaiey 2mo ago
          Also HR has bad employees / agent once in a while.
        • rsynnott 2mo ago
          Well, bear in mind that this all seems to be based on his account of the incident.
          • randallsquared 2mo ago
            Per the article, Netflix's attorney confirmed that the therapy factored into the decision.
  • dyauspitr 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    • deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    • gleenn 2mo ago
      It's not, although rules vary by state. Medical professionals can prescribe it even though it's a Schedule III drug. I get ads for these presumably legitimate therapy services online all the time on major social networks.
      • bijowo1676 2mo ago
        should Netflix fire all women on maternity leave, since they most likely were administered fentanyl during delivery ? why isn't Netflix firing anyone who had even a minor surgery or even tooth extraction done, since it most likely involved opioids
      • werdnapk 2mo ago
        Medical professionals can also use fentanyl among other drugs that aren't legal for recreational use.
    • quietsegfault 2mo ago
      Firing someone for taking a prescribed therapeutic medication for a medical condition? Yeah, that’s illegal.
      • s1artibartfast 2mo ago
        So your heart surgeon can get high during surgery? Obviously the details matter.
      • anticensor 2mo ago
        What if no medication history and perfect health was a precondition of that position, with equivalent disability position with the same task except to those with heavy disability offered separately in the same entity?
  • bijowo1676 2mo ago
    isn't this highly illegal, since it is used for medical purpose (mental health) ? its like firing a person who was sedated by professional Anesthesiologist with Fentanyl during surgery (A friend of mine had a surgery and was administered fentanyl)
    • sidewndr46 2mo ago
      not that I'm aware of, no. Maybe in some states sure, but not in most.
    • adastra22 2mo ago
      Yes, IANAL but it seems very much like grounds for an open-and-shut wrongful termination suit, given that they have admitted it up front. They could be taken to the cleaners for this.
      • dlcarrier 2mo ago
        This guy's back pay of income, severance, and benefits could really add up, but that's more a factor of him getting paid a lot in the first place than wrongful termination suits being particularly fruitful. I wouldn't really describe their payouts as being "taken to the cleaners".
        • adastra22 2mo ago
          Bringing a wrongful-termination suit is career-killing, so damages could be as much as his entire expected compensation of his remaining career (including equity grants), x6 for punitive damages.
      • s1artibartfast 2mo ago
        It is a lot more complicated than that. The details matter. Were they doing it at work? Did their usage patern or disclosure show poor judgment? It is very likely Netflix's argument would be more complex.
        • 2mo ago
  • chasd00 2mo ago
    If HR policy says no drugs then that’s a wrap. Allowing an employee to violate HR policy probably puts the company in all sorts of legal risks.
    • stult 2mo ago
      You can't have an HR policy that discriminates against people for receiving mental health treatment from a physician, that is plainly illegal under multiple statutes both federally and in the state of California. This was not a situation where he was on ketamine while at work, and there are no accusations that his ketamine use even affected his work at all, even incidentally or indirectly. Even if it had, Netflix would be required to make a reasonable accommodation for him. But we know it did not affect his work because he received treatment in 2022 and Netflix only found about it in 2026 after he disclosed the treatment. Besides, he is a movie executive, it's not like he is operating heavy machinery. Ketamine is unlikely to have any effect on him that would in any way expose Netflix to liability. Netflix seems to have simply assumed that all ketamine use is illegal and recreational, without bothering to conduct even the most cursory of investigations, which would have revealed that ketamine is in fact a clinically acceptable treatment for treatment-resistant depression. This is what happens when you have utterly incompetent idiots for in-house counsel and HR.
      • bijowo1676 2mo ago
        the case of unstoppable force (HR) meeting an immovable target (FMLA, ADA, EEOC, FEHA)
    • hack1312 2mo ago
      HR policy is not the law
    • vel0city 2mo ago
      No drugs even in a medical setting? Man, that's intense. Can't take anesthetics when facing surgery or similar situations. No epinephrine for anaphylaxic shock. Can't take insulin. Pretty rough. Ketamine is an FDA approved drug.
  • mlrtime 2mo ago
    It's buried in the article but this is the way I read it. 1) Get invited to a trust exercise retreat. 2) Share that you have done ketamine in a controlled therapy environment. 3) Share a bunch of other things not in article <speculation> 4) Get fired for having a drug addiction. We are to assume that #2 caused #4 ... but without all the facts it could have been something in #3 + #2 , again speculation.
• malcolmgreaves 2mo ago
  “A retreat may feel more relaxed than the office, but it is still a workplace, and the power dynamics don’t disappear,” Ah, so sad :( Another story of a person who believed other people in the workplace too much. These kinds of exercises are unfortunately a waste of time. If you’re honest, you’re walking into a minefield. But if you’re not being open, then no one is really getting to know anyone else in any meaningful way. In the end, a bunch of money and time is spent with zero value gained. And given that this was about someone sharing their experience with a medical procedure to help them process the death of a parent, the company will probably lose the lawsuit, wasting even more money. What a tragic waste of resources. Also, my heart goes out to this person. Loosing a parent is terrible.
• carabiner 2mo ago
  Google banned political conversations at work. Tech companies are learning from first principles why work/life separation, traditional office culture exist.
  • lokar 2mo ago
    Remember why they erased the separation in the first place: to get massive unpaid overtime.
    • carabiner 2mo ago
      I swear it's the era of chesterton's fence. Boundaries in life, whether personal or professional, are largely protective for everyone. https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/new-article-how-i-learned-to-stop https://letter.palladiummag.com/p/new-article-how-i-learned-...
      • readthenotes1 2mo ago
        It's probably more likely that every era is the era of chesterson's fence. Chesterson, being a good Catholic, probably knew about this adage Proverbs 22:28 (KJV): "Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set." And explained the usefulness of it
  • netsharc 2mo ago
    It seems the message of schizophrenic corporate America is, "don't bring your humanity to work". Because what is politics but an expression of how society should be. Even more ridiculous is this trust exercise, their idea is for employees to show their human side to improve employee-employee relationships for higher productivity, but wait, not too much of the human side! No wonder all the CEOs are crazy about AI. All the intelligence, none of the human.
    • AbsurdCensor 2mo ago
      Meh, some people’s politics have very little to do with humanity and how society should be. In general, best approach is to avoid GRAPE topics in general.
• tchalla 2mo ago
  Remember this story the next time someone says "join our mission" or "bring your whole self to work". They all come with asterisks.
• burnt-resistor 2mo ago
  Don't engage in a parasocial relationship with your employer. They're not your friends.
  • JumpCrisscross 2mo ago
    > They're not your friends Your co-workers can be your friends. But we're not obligated to be. If you're my friend and colleague, sure, vent to me. If we're not, I don't give a flyig fuck about your views on geopolitics or gender or whatever, particulalry if you owe me a deliverable, doubly so if you've chosen a hot-button issue nobody actually has any new takes on other than blind agreement or condemnation. (And unless they’re voiced outside work in a way that affects me, I don’t have a right to care about it either.)
    • janderson215 2mo ago
      Prrreeeeeach. Not quite on topic here, but when I started working at Big Co., they sent 3 weekly Teams invitations each for hula hooping and desk yoga sessions. That infuriated me to no end because I knew how ineffective so many of my new coworkers were there and that they were making more than some of my coworkers who were actually providing value. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have infuriated me because the people attending those people were probably having less of a negative impact doing that rather than re-opening a solved issue or whatever the fuck useless thing they were doing.
      • deleted 2mo ago
        [deleted]
    • sleepybrett 2mo ago
      I only become real friends with my peers at a company AFTER one of us leaves the company. Oh I'll be friendly, grab lunch with you, talk about tame hobby stuff.. but that's the end of it. I'm not coming to your summer bbq, I'm not inviting you to my birthday party and the only time I'm seeing you on the weekend is if we're both in the office trying to get something done.
  • 2mo ago
• strictnein 2mo ago
  " including one incident where Baillie performed a Guinness-related party trick after colleagues asked him to show it off." Is this just splitting the G? If so, it's the most mundane thing in the history of alcohol related party tricks.
  • hmokiguess 2mo ago
    what is splitting the G? I'm not a big drinker
    • Noumenon72 2mo ago
      According to ChatGPT it's the skill of taking exactly one sip such that when you put the Guiness glass down the new beer level ends up precisely through the horizontal middle of the "G". According to LadBible the actual trick was drinking a pint of Guinness while standing on his head. https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/netflix/netflix-executive-job-fired-kevin-baillie-us-981563-20260727?utm_source=chatgpt.com https://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/netflix/netflix-execu...
      • lardosaurusrex 2mo ago
        [dead]
      • ericd 2mo ago
        I appreciate you taking the time to look it up so the rest of us don’t have to.
        • lardosaurusrex 2mo ago
          [dead]
      • GJim 2mo ago
        > According to ChatGPT Please don't do this. Quote a source, not an LLM that bullshits.
• morkalork 2mo ago
  So like that interview candidate being asked about the hardest day of their life and answering honestly about a miscarriage or did this guy do something inappropriate with some ping pong balls in a Guinness-record way?
  • strictnein 2mo ago
    Could always read the article to find out, since it answers your question.
    • morkalork 2mo ago
      They don't give any real details
      • strictnein 2mo ago
        "He said he underwent physician-supervised ketamine therapy in late 2022 to treat depression following his mother’s death. At a January company retreat this year at a Netflix-owned property in California, Baillie shared this experience " ... "A company attorney acknowledged that “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination.”"
    • marky1991 2mo ago
      I'm not trying to attack you but did you read the article? Because I read it and I don't know the answer to either question either.
      • strictnein 2mo ago
        I mean.... "He said he underwent physician-supervised ketamine therapy in late 2022 to treat depression following his mother’s death. At a January company retreat this year at a Netflix-owned property in California, Baillie shared this experience " ... "A company attorney acknowledged that “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination.”"
• CSMastermind 2mo ago
  I'm torn here because it does seem like Netflix brought this on themselves. At the same time the litigious nature of American workplaces are part of the reason large corporate environments are so soul-crushing, with language meant to deliberately obfuscate what's actually happening.
• comrade1234 2mo ago
  "It's difficult for me to share this but I care about Netflix, some would say, too much. My mother died recently and rather than go to the funeral I worked through the last season of goop lab because I know the synergy of Netflix and Gwyneth Paltrow will enrich our subscribers lives like nothing before. Thank you for listening but I think I ate some bad fish at the retreat and need to go lie down in my room."
• ElProlactin 2mo ago
  So this is where the money from the price increases goes.
• nekusar 2mo ago
  Make shit up. Don't talk about your personal life at a company function, ever. Hell, lie and make an embarrassing but completely legal story. Or something stupid like you were totally embarassed in HS or college. But, never ever share your actual personal lives in a corporate setting. Not one time.
  • brailsafe 2mo ago
    Although it seems like this would be an extreme take to someone who's luckily kept a steady job despite not keeping their personal life out of their work life, I completely agree. It's not worth it. I think everyone gets a pass for something kid related, and to a lesser—probably unequal—extent, something spouse or family related, everything else can and will be used against you unless you're just humming along as the most normal predictable person. As far as people at work are concerned, you've never smoked pot, you're not taikng stimulants even though they're prescribed, you won't even drink coffee after 5pm, and you've definitely never had insomnia. Have one drink with the team if you're inclined to, and then gtfo, go drink with real friends. Managers only care about perception and control, and if anything at all doesn't fit into their directive or world view, it'll go into their mental spreadsheet of blemishes like a vindictive romantic partner next time you fight. "Hey there was a bug last release in some code with your name on it, might be time to go to bed at a reasonable hour!?". Ya thanks, I'll note your advice for next time that happens I'm sure it'll help. Why did you approve the change again?
  • tlogan 2mo ago
    I would strongly discourage anyone from making things up. I have participated in these exercises, and many people simply said, “I really have nothing to share that would interest you.” Those were the people others respected the most. They might share personal things with close friends, but they had a clear definition of what friendship meant. In other words, be a person of character. It is perfectly fine not to be friends with everyone. Just be respectful and honest. Do not lie. Say, “I cannot tell you that because of this or that,” or simply remain silent.
    • garciasn 2mo ago
• reptation 2mo ago
  As Benjamin Studebaker put it, bring your whole self to work just means the whole self should be professional
• triyambakam 2mo ago
  This is why I dislike offsites in general
• gregdaniels421 2mo ago
  The article implies it was from sharing his experience using Ketamine therapy for depression, which likely would have been done with a doctor. Which makes this seem much weirder to my ears.
  • deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
• tlogan 2mo ago
  I am not sure how old he was, but I would guess he was under 40 and relatively inexperienced. Part of the purpose of these exercises is to train management, especially executives, to remain fully focused and make decisions solely on performance and the business, even when someone asks them to show emotion. Anyone who is in executive management position should understand that. He failed the test.
  • napierzaza 2mo ago
    [dead]
  • fn-mote 2mo ago
    He was born in 1978 (source: IMDB). He was a VP and other articles say his annual salary was $1.1MM. He was not a beginner. Edit: Also, “under 40” is ridiculous for a bar of being experienced / mature.
    • tlogan 2mo ago
      I guess he just failed the test. Maybe the bar should be 55.
• delichon 2mo ago
  Turns out it was a trust calibrating exercise that the whole team learned from.
  • mcphage 2mo ago
    And all it will cost them will be a huge settlement!
• otterley 2mo ago
  Source article: https://nypost.com/2026/07/26/us-news/netflix-exec-goes-ballistic-after-being-fired-for-stunning-trust-exercise-confession-at-retreat-suit/ https://nypost.com/2026/07/26/us-news/netflix-exec-goes-ball... This is probably the first time I've ever said that a NY Post article was a useful source of information on a story.
  • dang 2mo ago
    Thanks, we've switched to that from https://www.inc.com/amaya-nichole/netflix-company-retreat-sparked-lawsuit-experts-say-real-damage-may-be-just-beginning/91380349 https://www.inc.com/amaya-nichole/netflix-company-retreat-sp... above.
• reactordev 2mo ago
  Your company, your coworkers, are not your friends. HR is not there for you, it's to protect the company from you. Do not disclose personal information to those who control your livelihood. Once you leave or if you build up a personal relationship with a coworker, outside of work, then maybe. Even still. I will never divulge what I have been through simply because corporate wants to be "inclusive".
  • anderber 2mo ago
    Exactly this. No matter how they dress it up, HR is there to protect the company, not you.
    • s1artibartfast 2mo ago
      Genuine question. Can you tell me why people love saying this so much?
      • xquce 2mo ago
        Because HR lies and say the opposite in the majority of companies. "Come to us with any problems, it's safe and anonymous, we are here to help you". From personal experience I have reported gross treats by senior leadership to an HR rep who was shocked about hearing their HR employee evals being suppressed by only allowing score between 8-10 in a 1-10 score. The HR rep confirmed it personally that it was happening and a few months later appeared on the other side of the desk with the leadership as they fired me for budget reasons.
        • kakacik 2mo ago
          This is corporate default. Don't stick your head too much, don't make too much noise, vent off someplace else ie via some cool sports. Doesn't matter how righteous, how correct and good for the company, it will very easily back fire you. Its kafquesque catch-22 all over the place, be a good boy and accept the paycheck with crap it comes along. Or move, but its not always greener on the next site.
• jmyeet 2mo ago
  I wonder if this is a generational thing. I grew up before social media and have long taken the position that I never post anything to the Internet that I wouldn't want public. I don't have a secret Reddit account or anonymous Twitter profile where I post stuff that could be fired, charged or worse. This goes moreso for work. I assume anything you do can and will be used against you. I have zero trust. You're being a sanitized version of yourself. Do people not know this? It's part of the reason I hate these working bonding activities. Well, that and being neurodivergent. There are fiarly standard questions and I have prepared answers that may or may not be the truth. Just like with interview questions. Sorry, but none of you are my friends or can be trusted. You might be shocked how often confiding in a coworker is used against you. The trick with coworkers is saying just enough so they think they can trust you without saying anything that might get you fired or have other consequences. You can't say nothing. That's almost worse. But you have to basically invent a persona, particularly if you're neurodivergent because the default position of neurotyhpical people is to not like you. And at the end of the day so much of your work life is governed by whether or not people like you. And I hate it. So for a trust exercise, I'd come up with something everybody has likely done or is at least sympathetic to. Like, nothing to do with stealing. That might get you fired. Here's an example: "when I was in high school, I lied to my parents and drove to another state for a party and got drunk with my friends". It's better to base your sanitized answer on the truth but I'm not above wholesale lies. They're just harder to remember so you have to be light on details but not too light.
• thot_experiment 2mo ago
  It always surprises me when people don't understand that the employee-employer relationship is an adversarial one. Unless you're in a democratic co-op or similar your employer is the enemy and you should never forget that. The correct move is to try to screw them in every legal way at every turn because that is what they are doing to you. Never divulge any information that increases your attack surface, always try to extract the most money for the least effort. This is capitalism 101. You must not allow them to fool you into thinking that these aren't the rules they're playing by. David Sirlin's "Playing to Win" is a good treatise on how to be good, and perhaps the most important lesson is to play the game by the rules as written, and not by some other set of rules that exists only in your head. (Though in this case the victim was senior enough that I suspect he was playing the game to the best of his ability, trying to humanize himself to gain the upper hand in some other manipulation game and misplayed, kicking things into the legal arena, as one does)
  • imposterr 2mo ago
    That sounds like an exhausting way to live.
    • DanHulton 2mo ago
      I would say that the more-exhausting way to live would be to be unaware of this, to accept the “we’re a family here” lie at face value, and to be passed over and screwed over at frequent intervals without knowing or understanding why. You don’t have to go full Patrick Bateman corp-bro, but keeping in mind the phrase “we don’t fire family” and adjusting your approach based on that counter-example can help you to keep things appropriately transactional and not be taken advantage of.
      • kube-system 2mo ago
        The least exhausting way to work a job is to find people to work with who are smart, well adjusted, and genuinely interested in cooperating to make money together.
  • arjie 2mo ago
• Cider9986 2mo ago
  Kind of crazy Netflix spend so much on engineers while piracy sites give a better UX and more shows for free and with better privacy.
  • mvdtnz 2mo ago
    Sorry how is that relevant to the linked article?
    • TheOtherHobbes 2mo ago
      Second order consequences. Piracy sites are more customer-focused, large corps skew more towards performing productivity for the internal hierarchy.
    • Cider9986 2mo ago
      I just thought when I saw the guy made a million bucks a year.
• rdtsc 2mo ago
  > Adam Mendler, a workplace expert, told Inc. that this kind of exercise carries real risk when companies invite openness without ever clarifying how that vulnerability will be treated afterward. I always felt that those trust exercises, "bring your whole self to work", "let us pay for a personality test so we can know each other better" are all ruses to find the most gullible people and then take advantage of them or get rid of them.
  • jquery 2mo ago
    Probably so, but it was incredibly ill advised of Netflix to admit to this. That’s what I find the most shocking, far more than the firing itself. I cannot fathom how admitting “yeah we fired them for going to therapy” plays to their benefit.
    • bjt 2mo ago
      Because at some point their emails about the firing will be subpoenaed, and if they lie about it now it's going to bite them harder later.
      • nvme0n1p1 2mo ago
        They still didn't have to outright confess to the crime though. When talking to journalists you're allowed to say "no comment".
      • eru 2mo ago
        That's why we got training at Google that more or less told us not to put these kinds of things in writing. Remember: the e in e-mail stands for evidence.
        • Scoundreller 2mo ago
          And the O in RTO stands for Oral-communication-only
        • lukan 2mo ago
• Johnny555 2mo ago
  Offsite retreats seem like a bad idea in general, I've never been to one where I felt the team or company worked together better afterwards, and I've seen some spectacularly bad results... like the time the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales (the classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting with engineering"). The discussion quickly turned shockingly personal and within a month after the retreat both the CTO and head of sales quit. At least they called an end to the retreat early.
  • sidewndr46 2mo ago
    this could pretty much be it's own editorial, if you're feeling journalistic
  • adastra22 2mo ago
    Sounds like it was productive!
    • paxys 2mo ago
      I agree, unironically. Not all workplace tensions can be resolved amicably. Often the only solution is for one of the parties to go. The sooner it happens, the better.
    • sublinear 2mo ago
      No it wasn't. Those kinds of conflicts always have blame for the rest of the execs too.
    • solatic 2mo ago
      I might be reading too closely / projecting, but... Sounds like an ineffectual CEO who didn't understand that his role, like any manager, is to help resolve interpersonal conflict between his subordinates that they're having trouble working out themselves. Outsourcing that to a random coordinator reeks of conflict-avoidant behavior. That they both quit tells me that neither one thought the other was the sole problem they were dealing with.
    • 2mo ago
• cmiles8 2mo ago
  Keep work life and personal life separate. No exceptions. If a company tries to encourage you to do otherwise I’d strongly suggest you find a new employer.
  • Arainach 2mo ago
    Most people prefer to work with humans, not robots. Common experiences and getting to know people are a huge part of that. Sharing stories and getting to know people humanizes them. It's much easier to hate "that team in another country" you've never met than that person you've had a meal together with and learned about their hobbies.
    • cmiles8 2mo ago
      Not saying you can’t discuss basic details like did you do anything interesting this weekend, but these things like “share deep personal details” as mentioned in the article have no place at work.
    • esikich 2mo ago
      Not to mention a lot of things get solved/decided over beers at happy hour. Coworkers shouldn't be your best friends but you're a fool if you're not friendly with them. Like you said, people aren't robots and a business isn't a machine.
      • singingtoday 2mo ago
        Not yet anyways. Not all of them.
    • solatic 2mo ago
      There's a huge difference between learning that your colleague also happens to play chess, and sharing the vulnerability of how you handled personal grief in your life. Your workplace is a community, not a friendship circle, and not a family. Community life has always had a certain level of formality to help paper over the differences between people in the community while still fostering a positive, inclusive environment.
• deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
• Hatrix 2mo ago
  Some executives observe religions that abstain from alcohol. They see you with one beer at a company party and judge everything you do on that.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 2mo ago
    Or, if you’re a teacher: https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2011/02/08/teacher-fired-over-beer-photo/ https://beerandwhiskeybros.com/2011/02/08/teacher-fired-over... (I liked the last note, at the end of the entry)
• colechristensen 2mo ago
  I'm surprised Netflix doesn't get sued more for their employment practices. They are REALLY happy to fire people. But it seems like they're on record firing someone for a legal medical treatment... in California no less. He was already doing pretty well and will get a decent additional payday out of this.
• FaridIO 2mo ago
  I didn't know Netflix was such a stick-up-the-ass garbage place to work at. What an incredibly dumb thing to fire someone over.
  • not_a_bot_4sho 2mo ago
    I can't speak to Netflix one way or the other. But the title seems to imply it was about over sharing, while the rest of the article seems focused on the culture of constant alcohol and drugs which likely has more to do with the way things ended. Hard to say what is true with a publication like this.
    • FaridIO 2mo ago
      The sharing and alcohol were company provided, the game of Guinness is almost certainly a silly one where after your first sip the foam lands in the middle of the G. And based on my own experience if you were to fire everyone who has ever taken psychedelics there wouldn't be many people left in at least SF and NYC tech. He shared the in California legal drug he used to deal with his mother's death. To be honest, the reason is so dumb, it feels like someone was just looking for anything to use against him..
      • nosrepa 2mo ago
        To clarify, the article states that he drank a Guinness while standing on his head.
• glimshe 2mo ago
  Remember: your coworkers aren't your family, your boss isn't your buddy and HR isn't on your side.
• shruubi 2mo ago
  This is why you should refuse to participate in these "trust and honesty sessions". You don't owe your employer or colleagues any insight into your personal life and the HR people who often run these sessions are there for the company, not for you and generally should not be trusted with personal info.
• Brian_K_White 2mo ago
  I don't even explain why I'm taking a day off or a half day or whatever. It's no one else's business to decide if they agree the reason is valid. Don't volunteer stuff like that especially when it would be something they'd likely agree with. Don't validate their right to decide or even be aware of anything like that. Next time maybe your need might not be so convinvcing to anyone else, but you've already established they have a right to know and a right to veto, so then trying to be private stands out as different from other times. It doesn't mean being inflexible or uncooperative either. If there is actually some problem, they can negotiate and try to make the case and convince you that they really need you just that much just that day, and you can voluntarily decide to change your plans, but without ever volunteering what those were. And make it cost. Keep score. Claim a return favor.
  • president_zippy 2mo ago
    This is great advice in general: establish personal boundaries early and stick to them. I never had a problem with vacation time or sick time, but I've had problems with this one asshole at my current job. I managed to fix that problem coworker eventually, but it would have been easier to just stand my ground the first time he was disrespectful. For some reason, PhDs think they can treat every coworker without a PhD like a grad student, and that they can treat grad students like crap. I took a significant reduction in pay to work for academia thinking I was going to work in a great environment working on finding cancer cures alongside good people. At the end of this year, I'm leaving to finish some post-bacc classes and never working for a nonprofit again. Not just because of the culture, but also because I'm sick of working in a low-accountability environment where incompetence is tolerated and people optimize their work around visibility rather than things that really make the world better. I know from experience that the private sector has just as many perverse incentives and just as much dysfunction, but at least I'll get paid 2-5x as much and retire sooner.
• natbennett 2mo ago
  The issue here isn’t that this guy shared something about his personal life it’s the particular personal details. It’s possible to share information about your personal life without talking about your drug use or your therapy or your drug use at therapy. It is irritating that people expect you to understand what reasonable personal sharing is without explaining explicitly and goodness knows I screwed this up when I was younger but “don’t talk about your personal life at all” is bad advice.
• q8zd3 2mo ago
  Bad move. Those corporate events serve the purpose to find "bad apples" (from the employer's perspective), to either shape you into what they want or cut you off. Never sacrifice your privacy in such an environment.
• sxp 2mo ago
  From https://nypost.com/2026/07/26/us-news/netflix-exec-goes-ballistic-after-being-fired-for-stunning-trust-exercise-confession-at-retreat-suit/ https://nypost.com/2026/07/26/us-news/netflix-exec-goes-ball... > Baillie claims he explained the reason why he had taken the drug but was investigated by Netflix. On March 18, 2026 a company investigator brought the incident up, “in a manner suggesting suspicion of recreational drug use,” the suit reads. So the nominal issue is recreational drug use rather than ketamine therapy. It's also not clear that he was fired for the therapy itself. And I doubt Netflix would fire someone just for therapeutic (or even recreational) drug use unless it has a negative impact on the workplace performance. If it was proper & legal therapy (e.g, https://www.betterucare.com/ https://www.betterucare.com/), Netflix wouldn't fire a person since it would have positive impact on their workplace performance. But if Netflix fired an employee for a valid cause, I would expect the employee to try to counter with any option that would get them a severance or settlement. It's likely that we're not hearing the full story and the news sites are just writing clickbait articles from one-sided excerpts of the lawsuit that the ex-employee filed.
  • hack1312 2mo ago
    Did you miss he received the therapy under medical supervision and Netflix’s attorney flat out admitted “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination”.
    • ribosometronome 2mo ago
      Did you miss that that's according to the one sided exceprt from a lawsuit an ex-employee filed?
      • tomnipotent 2mo ago
        Did you miss that a company attorney acknowledged "the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination?"
        • ribosometronome 2mo ago
• laweijfmvo 2mo ago
  > Firing an employee for doing exactly what they were instructed to do during a mandatory retreat So fired if you don’t play along, fired if you do.
  • cyanclouds 2mo ago
    That’s why lying is the new meta. Lying works better than ever in fact they’re making us lie with the way things are going. You’ll get more interviews and higher salaries with a simple lie. Or you get fired for telling the truth. I’m 1000% lying from now on.
• ctkqiang96 2mo ago
  wait what ???
• mrloopex 2mo ago
  The stereotype is real. A guy I work with is part of what they call the Divorced Dad Club. He’s 56 and gets together with a bunch of other divorced dads to do ketamine and play video games. They’re all in the mid 50s, white, and in tech. And keep getting played by puffy lipped 30 somethings.
  • drivebyhooting 2mo ago
    Being infantry might’ve been a better calling than a divorced dad.
  • president_zippy 2mo ago
    What's wrong with being white?
    • hjkl0 2mo ago
      What's wrong with being in your mid 50s?
      • mrloopex 2mo ago
        [flagged]
    • mrloopex 2mo ago
      [flagged]
• EGreg 2mo ago
  “Trust” exercise is doublespeak in corporate settings Come to think of it, Orwell’s 1984 perfectly encapsulates what corporations actually do — even in his own time. Down to the groupthink, wrongthink, doublethink, doublespeak, all of it. Synergy! Concerned. Trust.
• hack1312 2mo ago
  How despicable do you have to be to fire someone for undergoing treatment for depression.
• stult 2mo ago
  I'm shocked Netflix hasn't just settled to keep this quiet, because the entire situation makes them look not only like an abusive, discriminatory employer but even worse, horrifically incompetent at being abusive and discriminatory. Plenty of companies treat their employees like shit, that's not news. But any competently managed company knows how to do so without incurring massive legal liability like this, and it speaks to a remarkable lack of professionalism and basic competence at the leadership level and within the legal and HR teams. If the accusations are true as reported, their in-house counsel fucked up terribly by assuming all ketamine use is illegal and recreational without bothering to conduct the very cursory investigation required to determine that it is in fact a perfectly legitimate option for treating treatment-resistant depression. That single error drove them to fire an otherwise exemplary employee for an obviously illegal reason in a manner that screwed him out of significant compensation including severance. This was an obvious, unforced error by their legal team. Competent lawyers and competent corporate leadership would recognize that the relatively small amount of money they may save by litigating this issue is not worth the damage it is very predictably inflicting on their corporate culture and public brand. The lawyer who publicly admitted that ketamine factored into their decision should be immediately fired because he is demonstrably a terrible fucking lawyer, and he seems to be representative of the quality of legal advice Netflix is receiving, because any attorney with half a brain would have immediately recognized both the underlying legal error that incurred liability for the company and the business context that makes immediate heavily NDA'd settlement the optimal strategy for defending, even were the original legal error not so egregious. My main takeaway from this situation is that Netflix is managed by remarkably incompetent leaders who are advised by even more remarkably incompetent lawyers.
• dgently7 2mo ago
  am i wrong but doesnt the article say the dude worked at "eyeline" which seems to be consistently described in a quick search as a "netflix owned vfx company" which would not really make this guy a "netflix employee". no more so that somebody working at "x" is now a "spacex" employee. Eyeline has its own ceo and presumably culture, but "rando vfx company you've never heard of fires a guy" doesnt grab headlines i guess... no comment on the actual content or context just a nit on everyone saying this was netflix did a thing... this seems like netflix owned company eyeline did a thing based on the actual article and a couple of the eyeline press releases from when they got bought and recently rebranded.
  • dlcarrier 2mo ago
    If you work for a wholly owned subsidiary, the parent company has complete control and the executives have no further hindrance to hiring or firing you than they would ton anyone else, anywhere else within the rest of the company. The CEO is always beholden to the board, and if the board of the wholly owned subsidiary isn't literally the same board as the parent company, then everyone the board is appointed by the parent company.
    • ButlerianJihad 2mo ago
      It sounds like Netflix dividends have consisted of beers and private parties where AI bros brag about their race cars and tripping on Special K.
• natas 2mo ago
  you should never discuss your personal life at work or with your coworkers.
  • ctkqiang96 2mo ago
    Yea this I agree,
  • ianm218 2mo ago
    It really depends on your workspace. At a lot start ups people would find it strange if you never shared anything about your life.
    • deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
• dtagames 2mo ago
  What this really makes clear is that you should neither trust people you work with nor share personal information with them.
• wxw 2mo ago
  > He had been warned during his performance review that he should “drop one or two less f-bombs but don’t stop entirely.” > It goes on to say that at the same retreat Baillie drank a Guinness standing on his head, after sharing that he had learned the trick from his former father in law during a conversation inspired by the trust session. > “His colleague immediately asked for a demonstration, rather than withhold the openness that the session had encouraged, he performed the trick,” the papers say. This reads like a sitcom.
  • xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago
    This guy rocks. Fired for being fun
    • amelius 2mo ago
      Sounds like a case of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_clown_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_clown_paradox > Sad clown paradox is characterised by a cyclothymic temperament, which encourages the creation of light-hearted humour in a professional setting, despite inner turmoil.
      • xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago
        So?
      • finnthehuman 2mo ago
        Bit rude to armchair psychoanalyze. Also wouldn’t change anything about whether the firing was justified.
      • streb-lo 2mo ago
        If we're going to do analysis on no information, I would guess you have a lot more "inner turmoil" than the subject.
      • worldthruword 2mo ago
        If innerX and outerX are opposite, hey that is significant. If innerX and outerX are same, I told you so, its obvious. Psychoanalysis in a nutshell.
• anthuswilliams 2mo ago
  Allow me to correct the headline for you: > Multi-millionaire Netflix executive, known for profanity-laden tirades and shotgunning beers at corporate events, claims without evidence he was terminated for medically sanctioned ketamine use
  • kotaKat 2mo ago
    Forgot the rest of it "... and paid a crisis PR firm to go boost support for his lawsuit in right-wing shit tabloids like the New York Post while not providing any actual paper from the lawsuit to see Netflix's side of the story to justify a toxic executive being punted"
• riddlemethat 2mo ago
  Last retreat I went on the CFO drove drunk around 350 miles to get there. The CEO insisted on heavy drinking for everyone. Then he ordered one of everything on the menu the next morning at a Cracker Barrel for himself and wasted a ton of food. I found out he had a cocaine addiction about a month before the company was acquired. They also had orgies in the office break rooms and gave out a machete to everyone as a Christmas gift. Amongst the many crazy times… My fraternity was more tame and we used to have guys gazing each other in the main room during parties.
  • waste_monk 2mo ago
    >They also had orgies in the office break rooms and gave out a machete to everyone as a Christmas gift Hopefully not at the same time, otherwise there would be opportunity for many kinds of unfortunate mishaps.
    • itsmemattchung 2mo ago
      The image of these two occurring at the same time haha
  • jrflowers 2mo ago
    >They also had orgies in the office break rooms Bring your hole self to work
  • Der_Einzige 2mo ago
    Reminds me of the tik tok of the guy who just starts giving out new machetes in packages to homeless people.
  • clemailacct1 2mo ago
    Dude, that company sounds awesome!
    • DANmode 2mo ago
      If you’re looking for employment that’s as stable as a minor-league cartel, sure. Coke, machetes, and drunk driving gets your passion moved? Concisely, seek help.
• johndubchak 2mo ago
  I cannot see this ending up well for Netflix. It sounds like it personally offended someone's sensibility and they decided to fire the guy. I expect Netflix to lose this lawsuit, but more importantly, settle it before it ever goes anywhere.
  • wongarsu 2mo ago
    And don't forget the effect on employee morale, retention and hiring. They have now made the international news cycle for firing an employee for sharing after being encouraged to share, and doing a party trick after being encouraged by coworkers to do so
    • fullshark 2mo ago
      They'll have no problem hiring, maybe one or two employees who deliver 10x will get demoralized and quit but this will not change a thing realistically re: their work force.
      • keane 2mo ago
        They already have a bad reputation in Hollywood.
• unwise-exe 2mo ago
  >>> Adam Mendler, a workplace expert, told Inc. that this kind of exercise carries real risk when companies invite openness without ever clarifying how that vulnerability will be treated afterward. (That's the Inc article) . Mandatory "vulnerability" is required to be staged and fake. Legitimate vulnerability -- that comes with legitimate risk -- has to be a free choice or else whoever's pushing it makes themselves vulnerable to consequences.
• dlcarrier 2mo ago
  I'm disappointed that this has none of the drama of the Plex retreat in Honduras.
  • vrganj 2mo ago
    Do tell.
    • jaylaal 2mo ago
      This? https://www.inc.com/leila-sheridan/plex-tech-company-retreat-nightmare/91327481 https://www.inc.com/leila-sheridan/plex-tech-company-retreat...
      • dlcarrier 2mo ago
        That's the one.
      • rsynnott 2mo ago
        > The company, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. spent roughly $500,000 on the trip, which was designed as a Survivor-style experience Note to self: if looking for a job, check that they do not do “Survivor-style experiences”, bloody hell.
• jnaina 2mo ago
  in the creative arts business, the work that sells tends to come from people carrying something. a difficult history, a chemical affiliation, some level of quirkiness/flaws, or all of the above. perfect flawless plain-vanilla creatives tend go work for Hallmark channel and product absolute drab cr*p. not sure why Netflix HR would want to sabotage their own internal culture that drives their content success strategy.
• finnthehuman 2mo ago
  "psychological safety" in the workplace? Auzla always lies. HR always lies. HR always lies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpYs-aM8I8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpYs-aM8I8U
• conradfr 2mo ago
  Funnily enough, that reminds of one scene in the Comedy Central TV show "Corporate", episode S01E05 titled... "Corporate retreat"[0]. I didn't know those trust/sharing exercises were real. [0]https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt7289250/?ref_=ttep_ep_5 https://www.imdb.com/fr/title/tt7289250/?ref_=ttep_ep_5
• xyzsparetimexyz 2mo ago
  God forbid anyone invoked with movies do drugs! They might stumble upon a creative thought!
• mfru 2mo ago
  Your work colleagues are not your family. Your superiors are not your friends. Treat every company as if they were going to look for a reason to fire you right now unless you can reasonably argue that they don't
• finnthehuman 2mo ago
  I feel like this thread is full of two camps: People who think it's sweet that their colleague is taking vacation to visit family at the end of august this year. And people who understand exactly why they told that lie.
• RaSoJo 2mo ago
  I doubt the events at the retreat were the only cause for his firing. Creative folks are usually given much wider leeway compared to the bean counters. It feels like somebody in senior management had it in for Baillie. And the ketamine story provided a sufficient cause.
• Good4boothee 2mo ago
  Are we really discussing NYPost article? Even freaking Daily Mail is considered to be more trustworthy among tabloids.
• orcasushi 2mo ago
  Please solve ??? for X = K(special) Do X -> ??? -> Profit
• ionwake 2mo ago
  I know some of the younger folk may not realise reality is stranger than fiction, but I too have been on a "work mandated drink alchohol bus" where I remember even though I was young, I was terrified the whole time wondering why we were being forced to drink infront of C suite; forced on a hell ride through the black country ( Thats a region in England). One might think it was naive and odd for me as a young autistic person to be so scared and negative, but sure enough, the next day the best contractor in the company was fired at 9am for calling the CEO an "alright c*nt" during the pub crawl. The C word being used a token of affection around these parts, was perhaps not the true transgression which was, not to understand, that it was NOT a social function, but a horrifying legal flexing of soft hierarchical power, for purposes of satiating C suite ego, and humiliating everyone beneath them.
  • not-kinsale-joe 2mo ago
    UK had the most unhinged work drinking culture I had ever seen.
    • gadders 2mo ago
      It's dropped off now. It was better in the 90s.
      • dmos62 2mo ago
        Coxnfused. Was it more unhinged in the 90s or less compared to now?
        • c0n5pir4cy 2mo ago
          More unhinged - but a lot of people preferred it that way. To be really clear it's still pretty unhinged and even a decade ago it was much more unhinged.
        • alibarber 2mo ago
          Being from the UK I’m pretty sure they mean more unhinged. To be fair I did enjoy the ‘unhingedness’ but I’m also appreciating that being at least a decade younger was also great.
• tempfile 2mo ago
  Very disappointing to see people rush to cynicism, with no effort at all to put blame on Netflix. I get it, you're stupid if you think your employer has your best interests at heart. Why does that mean they get a pass?
• archibaldJ 2mo ago
  What if he only took it before his career, or before joining Netflix? And is it because his role is not an engineer/designer/etc so the history of having taken medically prescribed ketamine could mean greater risk during the operations designated to him that are of business-type nature? What if my engineers microdose on ketamine for productivity? And will the HR decides differently if it is lsd, dmt, etc? So because of Steve Jobs these naturally have better "branding" to them? What if Kevin Baillie made a documentary film out of this and became "the Steve Jobs of ketamine"? Do things on this planet work this way?
• zabil 2mo ago
  I hate these alcohol fueled company parties. Every one of them I've been too (at-least 7) ended up with 1 or more people being fired because they can't handle their drinks. I avoid them of go back to my hotel room after they open up the bar.
• cachius 2mo ago
  Why the stigma? Does it come from the same direction as US American prudence?
• thi2 2mo ago
  > “Vulnerability-Trust exercise” Sounds like an awfull time.
• cyanclouds 2mo ago
  Reminds me of a recent interview where they asked to what extent I used AI for dev and cautioned that it would be problematic if I said I never used it. So I say the areas I use it. Rejected: We need people who can work without AI. Felt so dumb. I’m never telling the truth again.
• dec0dedab0de 2mo ago
  Wait, he was a creative worker, don't you want them doing drugs?
• idk1 2mo ago
  I have witnessed this happen before. This was approximately ten years ago, but we had a similar thing, a new hire team building exercise. And during it, one of the new hires told a story about how they saved money by taking loads of reams of paper and stuff home from their old office in order to save money. And they were let go during the lunch break. I still feel a bit sorry for them, but I guess saying out loud you were happy to steal stationery didn't go down very well, so it makes sense, but still, it was such a tiny mistake for a 20-year-old. I wasn't in charge of management at the time, but I think I'd have just taken him aside and explained how bad it sounded.
• eudamoniac 2mo ago
  During the pandemic I was uninvited from my company off-site because I was unvaccinated for COVID, despite consenting to a COVID test immediately prior. After that, I'm pretty sure my manager and many others conspired to set me up for failure, meetings with people I had never met were oddly hostile, etc. I guess this is to say that when you have these offsites it is in your best interest to attend and assimilate. Never relax!
• hjkl0 2mo ago
  Both of these are completely one sided. The .inc piece is barely even has the one side, it's almost entirely expert quotes. How can two reports about this go up without any comment from Netflix? They are not even entertaining the idea of another side to the story.
• m463 2mo ago
  So many silicon valley firms have had friday night on-site beer busts, or cafeteria beer kegs, or more...
• kwar13 2mo ago
  I cannot think of too many things worse than being forced into a 'company retreat' where you have to spend even more time with people that you already see most in your life.