Netflix has taken the web by storm with its new ‘cultural manifesto’, hailed by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg as “the most important document to ever come out of Silicone Valey”.
The slideshow presentation made several radical points, including offering unlimited holidays to employees in exchange for zero job security.
Running counter to accepted employment norms, the video streaming and DVD rental company highlighted that companies must thrive on uncertainty, creativity and trust.
“Many people love our culture and stay a long time,” the company said. “They thrive on excellence and candor and change… some people, however, value job security over performance and don’t like our culture.”
The slideshow has so far amassed 3.2 million views on Slideshare.net.
The document also blamed managers for poor employee behaviour.
“Managers: When one of your talented people does something dumb, don’t blame them. Instead, ask yourself what context you failed to set,” the slideshow read. “High performance people will do better work if they understand the context.”
Netflix said that it also did not have any policy or tracking when it came to vacation time and said that it gave its employees unlimited holiday leave.
Staff are allowed to decide when they go on holiday and for how long. The company also replaced its travel expense claim system with a policy called “Act in Netflix’s Best Interest” – whatever that means.
Creativity was listed as the most important value to tech companies.
“In procedural work, the best are 2x are better than the average,” the document reads. “In creative / inventive work, the best are 10x.”
The document listed judgement, communication, impact, curiosity, innovation, courage, passion, honesty and selflessness as attributes that Netflix valued most.
“Lots of companies have nice sounding value statements,” the document reads. “The real company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted or let go. Real company values are the behaviours and skills that we particularly value in fellow employees.”
View the entire slideshow below:
