At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsettle the Ranks

Re:At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsett... by rpdillon on Thursday October 25, 2018 @07:03PM (#18305381)

It's interesting to me that the discussions in this thread treat performance and ability to work with others as distinct. In a team-based work environment, one's ability to work effectively with others is a critical aspect of performance. If an employee engages in behavior that frustrates, annoys, or confuses others, performance suffers, particularly in any role above entry level, where leadership, communication, and mentoring ability are part of the job description.

On the other hand, I find it very strange that the article describes a sort of 'post-mortem email' that goes out to dozens of people that describes the failings of the (now-departed) employee. That seems like it would cause more problems than it would solve.

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Re:At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsett... by dunpeal on Thursday October 25, 2018 @07:38PM (#18305573)

> If an employee engages in behavior that frustrates, annoys, or confuses others, performance suffers, particularly in any role above entry level, where leadership, communication, and mentoring ability are part of the job description."

I don't see arguments in the thread that being generally insufferable at work is not a performance problem.

Most of the comments are about the fact that you can easily lose your job for being disliked arbitrarily by exactly one person: your direct superior.

This can happen to people who are good performers and team players.

One obvious example: professional differences, where an employees generally disagrees with his superior's approach. None of them is necessarily wrong, they just have different professional styles.

One less benign example: the manager is incompetent, the employee is a top performer, so the manager is intimidated and tries to push the employee out.

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Re:At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsett... by smueller1234 on Friday October 26, 2018 @03:38AM (#18307452)

There's a moderately good cure for the subject-to-managers-whim problem.

Have a policy that in any case of performance issues, the person with the bad ratings gets to move to a different area in the company with as clean a slate as possible without being naive. Ideally away from the management chain up to and including the director. Then have HR reevaluate after 3-6 months.

It's only moderately good because it's never (and shouldn't quite be depending on the cause of poor performance) a completely clean slate and because it is very expensive to execute.

I've seen a number of folks who has relationship problems due to their environment be salvaged as perfectly good employees this way. I've seen others who left with the realization that maybe it wasn't JUST the manager after all and hopefully growing from that experience. And of course, I've seen people think it's all a giant conspiracy against them as well.

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Re:At Netflix, Radical Transparency and Blunt Firings Unsett... by hef19898 on Friday October 26, 2018 @01:46AM (#18307045)

"It is nothing personal" is usually one of the most blatant lies. It always is, and at the same time it isn't. I try to judge people simply based by the quality of work they produce, despite spending a lot of time with them we are not married. So nothing personal as lond everybody acts as professionals and adults.

That being said, most political office stuff is very much personal, at least for one party involved. And than it gets nasty. And yes, with review processes being incredibly intransparent, without a real chance for the reviewed to defend himself, bad reviews are an easy way to get rid of people.

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