No Rules Rules

Nov 25, 2021 16 Comments

Just finished reading “No Rules Rules” curious to hear from people at Netflix how well the book actually represents the day to day culture at Netflix. I know sometimes there’s a definitive difference between a company’s espoused culture and their actual culture. Were there any pieces of the book that you thought were an inaccurate representation of netflix? Or anything that was portrayed as beneficial that is actually problematic?

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TOP 16 Comments
  • Netflix / Eng
    NFLX2🌘

    Go to company page Netflix Eng

    NFLX2🌘
    Our talent density is not as high as advertised. And many B players can survive. It's pretty accurate otherwise.
    Nov 26, 2021 3
    • Have you ever seen it cause problems? Specifically has the lack of control mechanisms ever been a problem without the high talent density?
      Nov 26, 2021
    • NBCUniversal
      CdVm56

      Go to company page NBCUniversal

      PRE
      Netflix
      CdVm56
      Agreed. I work in a non-tech role here in the Hollywood office and as the company expands, the talent pool of high performer shrinks and you are left with some above average people who can get the job done, but aren't exactly stunning. Some managers here don't really follow the culture deck and allow some leeway in terms of job performance so you don't have to keep outdoing yourself each year which is nice. It's starting to feel like a traditional media company (at least in creative, admin, HR and finance) now that I'm seeing a lot of colleagues that I would regard as average coming over from legacy media.
      Nov 30, 2021
  • Netflix
    idiotopia

    Go to company page Netflix

    idiotopia
    Pretty good
    Nov 25, 2021 0
  • Amazon
    loikouj

    Go to company page Amazon

    loikouj
    Another thing I’m curious to learn from Netflixers is that the book talks about individuals can be informed captains and are encouraged to make big decisions. If things go wrong, learn from it, sunshine the learning, and do better next time. But who is held accountable here? Is it the individual who made the decision, or is it their direct manager, or even the entire management chain if the failure is big enough? My guess is that the team manager will still be ultimately responsible for the impact of that decision, even though the individual on the team was the decision maker. Reason being stakeholders normally see the manager of a team own the responsibility and accountability for decisions out of their team.
    Nov 27, 2021 4
    • Amazon
      loikouj

      Go to company page Amazon

      loikouj
      Thanks folks! It clarifies a lot of things. My remaining question is about when things go really wrong. One or two ICs constantly make bad decisions despite feedback. I believe they will be let go after some time. In the meantime, these bad decisions are from one single team where the manager is held accountable for outcomes out of that team. I would guess if that team often produces bad decisions or does not deliver impact, the manager would be let go. This is where I believe even if an IC is encouraged to be an informed captain, their manager will share a big portion of the accountability there.
      Nov 27, 2021
    • Netflix
      dataleak

      Go to company page Netflix

      dataleak
      I think people take feedback seriously and understand the impact of their decisions. That is why it’s uncommon for teams/people to constantly fail. But you are right that bad decisions can lead to termination.
      Nov 27, 2021
  • Amazon
    loikouj

    Go to company page Amazon

    loikouj
    I remember the book says no annual objective/goal/KPI setting because that hinders agility and adaptivity. Is that actually true in Netflix? I can hardly imagine any business can run well without long-term and short-term objective/goal setting.
    Nov 26, 2021 5
    • Netflix
      dataleak

      Go to company page Netflix

      dataleak
      We probably have a lot of goals on the content side (you know how many movies/series you are making many years in advance).

      We have predictions of how many subscribers will join and how much content they’ll watch.

      On the technical sides we also have short term and long term goals, but they are rarely in the form of KPI. For example one of the goals would be “move away from this very old technology by the end of 2021” or “deliver this great video encoding on devices that support it”. In my experience those goals are usually not “annual objective”.
      Nov 27, 2021
    • NBCUniversal
      CdVm56

      Go to company page NBCUniversal

      PRE
      Netflix
      CdVm56
      Goals are vague and cascaded from the top. On the content side, Ted will say something like, "grow global" and Bala will say "grow unscripted in South Korea" and a VP under her will say "create 10 shows across animation, kids, and comedy". And then my boss will say, "acquire showrunners for this project". We have a lot of flexibility in terms of working with numbers, so as long as your work is a hit, it does not matter that a percentage of your work is graded on such and such.
      Nov 30, 2021