Granted, it's easier to hide this now when everyone's working from home.

> I’ve worked with people who could accomplish as much in two hours as I did in two days. Would it be “toxic” to work in such an environment?

No, why would that be toxic?

If I'm a manager and I notice someone is consistently underperforming (compared to his peers) - it does not matter if the rest of the team is working overtime, or is smarter, or more experienced - I don't care. I will ask the underperformer to step it up (again, don't care if this means working harder, or smarter), and if no improvement after a set period, I will be looking for a replacement. I'm paying top dollar for top performance.

This situation is normal and expected in professional sports. I don't remember hearing about "bad work/life balance", or "being pressured into doing overtime" in conversations about elite athletes' performance. Should we treat elite SWEs differently?

If they're open about expectations, assuming I'm at a point in my life where the trade-off makes sense, then if the compensation is good, that's fantastic. Nothing toxic about that. Not that different from some US manufacturing workers getting paid hourly wages, who make the same kind of trade-off all the time, making damn good money for 60 hours of peak performance a week. Sure, they might end up paying for it by ruining their bodies and drop dead from a heart attack or stroke within a year of retirement if they make it that long, but the risks are no secret.

> This situation is normal and expected in professional sports.

Let's google. The NFL seems topical around this time of year.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/01/heres-what-the-average-nfl-p...

> The minimum annual salary for a rookie active roster player with a one-year contract is $480,000 . . . A player with three years’ experience would command a salary equal to at least $705,000, while players with seven to nine years on the field must be paid at least $915,000 . . . the average NFL salary was only about $2.7 million in 2017 . . . That’s less than three-quarters of the average $4 million earnings of a major league baseball player and less than half the typical wage of NBA players, who earn about $7.1 million on average.

I take everything back! Let's not treat SWEs any differently. For that kind of money, I will gladly put in 80 hours a week.

So yeah, it seems like we are in agreement :)

This isn't just about Netflix. The over-arching topic is company anti-values. The context has narrowed since then, first to Netflix, then to a specific slide about not measuring people by hours worked, and so on. But for the heck of it, some other quotes from said slide deck:

> We don't measure people by how many hours they work or how much they are in the office

> Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees.

> Honesty Always

> Pro Sports Team Metaphor is Good, but Imperfect

> Internal "cutthroat" or "sink or swim" behavior is rare and not tolerated.

Again, if the expectation for a workplace like that were 60-80 hours a week, and that fact is clearly and openly communicated, fine.

But if you're making those claims while your top performers are the ones putting in undocumented additional hours and pressuring others to do the same, then I insist that is toxic behavior. Yes, even if they don't brag about work/life balance, though I'll consider it even worse if they do.

> So yeah, it seems like we are in agreement :)

All sarcasm aside, no, we're definitely not!

What if your peers actually worked 2 hours a day, and accomplished a lot more than you when you worked 8 hours a day? Would you feel pressured to put in more hours? Would this be toxic?

I believe the question is relevant because you seem to equate delivering results with working long hours, and while the two are usually correlated, it might not be the case when talking about star performers. For example, if my peers are all like Jeff Dean in terms of productivity, I would probably feel inadequate. You could even say I would feel pressured into doing more - not by my peers or even my manager - I'd be pressuring myself. This, to me, does not mean the environment is toxic. And that's why I believe the environment at Netflix is not toxic (assuming no other issues).

I'm trying to understand what you mean by "toxic", that's why I keep asking the question.

But they do value putting the company over yourself (and your real family).

This can probably have very toxic effects, if you are having problems at home for example (sick kids or whatever) and all they allways care about, is your performance right now. So definitely not the place for me - as I would never put a company over my children (and it sounds like this is expected, even though they would likely never phrase it this way), but there are people without family, who have their work as top priority, so this might work out for them.

There are a handful of people that are capable of producing "Sustained A-level performance" and for them this workplace probably seems ideal.

Even for the engineers that could reach this bar, it's a very high standard to apply constantly. There's another slide that gives a slight allowance for temporary performance issues, but that lack of security is hard for most people.

Slide 34 to be exact says this about Loyalty. "People who have been stars for us, and hit a bad patch, get a near term pass because we think they are likely to become stars for us again."

"A bad patch" is pretty loosely defined, if you burn out achieving something, or are assigned a problem that is particularly difficult, how much leeway do you have?

I don't think it would be an environment I would particularly enjoy, but I think to the original post's point this is a pretty great set of values because it really clearly articulates the trade-offs. If you are a 10x engineer and hate working at $current_company because they care about hard work and that's frustrating because you work smart not hard and you are comfortable with your career being contingent on consistent high performance, then Netflix is the place for you. If you work hard but think this would burn you out, look somewhere else. And that's what values should do, declare the trade-offs and take a firm stance on which things you value.