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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

"Despite her work ethic, her track record, and the fact that we all really liked her, her skills were no longer adequate."

I guess I'm too soft-hearted to be successful as a C-level manager, but I find the pragmatic, calculating nature of this approach appalling, even though I agree with many parts of the argument.

I had recently listened to the Planet Money episode about her work (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/08/28/435583328/episo...), at the end she was let go from Netflix abruptly, too, probably using the practice she installed. Maybe I was biased with a Robespierrean expectation of karma returning, but she sounded like that was quite a blow to her, despite all her earlier rationalistic rhetoric. Now, reading it again, brought to mind this:

  "It couldn't be called ungentle
  But how thoroughly departmental"

(http://allpoetry.com/Departmental)

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I think the key thing here is that they didn't just nuke her, the employee received a "generous" severance package. I think it's ok practice if it's a expected part of the job and is built into the compensation.

But don't be fooled -- this sort of thing is a subtle change in status for finance and engineering jobs. You're no longer a professional, you're labor. That's a concept that tradesmen accept, but I don't think the average IT guy does.

The company need to acknowledge what that means too. If I'm just some keyboard puncher, I could give a fuck about what is best for the company.

> If I'm just some keyboard puncher, I could give a fuck about what is best for the company.

Exactly. The one-sided sense of loyalty implicitly demanded in this article is astounding. Fuck that shit.

It sounds to me like this is a market where Netflix buys loyalty not with loyalty in return but with cash and "A" colleagues.

As long as they're upfront about it, that seems fair to me.

Exactly. Netflix has a massive culture problem. That's why they have to pay engineers 300k per year to work there.

I have to say that I immediately loved the Netflix culture deck when it first went public. If that's truly reflective of their culture, I'm sure it's not for everyone, but it appeals to many.

Yeah it is appealing on some levels, and it would be interesting to work there for six months to a year. I wouldn't want to work there for very long though. It would be a nice place to work your ass off for a while with other talented people and save up tons of money, and then when you inevitably burn out and get fired you can take a year off and relax.

It will work out as long as the the good times roll and the core cadre of decision makers stay lucky. One misstep, the whole place implodes.

It's interesting, in that you need to look at Netflix more like a real estate developer or construction company than a tech player. I went to school with a kid whose dad was a multimillionaire real estate developer dude. Then a project got delayed by some external factor, which killed his cash flow. And the, and the economy shifted and killed his line of credit.

Result: multimillionaire->multithousandaire.

I don't think they have to stay lucky, I think they have to stay calm. The problem is, often when the luck runs out, the calm does too. Amidst panic people seek refuge in tradition, not finding it a place like Netflix could collapse you're right.

But I don't see why these rules couldn't work in a contracting revenue scenario, as long as you keep cutting staffing levels where they need to be to keep a runway.

That too makes it hard to stay calm though. The severance policy helps.

The severance package was described as spectacular. A spectacular severance can be life-changing. I understand, the details are important, and can't be shared, but if it truly is as good as described, she's probably way way better off than if she'd stayed at Netflix.

If all she did with that severance was go back to school and finish a four-year degree, then she'd absolutely kill it in the job market with her track record. Very possibly double her salary.

Reading the article, after browsing the comments, I assumed the article would appear somehow employee-hostile. While, looking from Norway, the concept of at-will work states like California seems crazy -- if you're already in the situation that you can fired for basically no reason -- this sounds like a pretty good deal. At least if they make good on the idea of "spectacular severance packages" and the honesty and communication goes two ways.

I do note that they don't trust their storage/stock workers as much, and she kind of glosses over that bit.

I don't understand why people would expect any loyalty from California-based tech companies, is there any precedence for that? I thought the entire business was generally based on pretty predatory hiring and firing practices? As if the colluding on salaries scandal wasn't enough of a hint?

It is not just California, the whole US. California has some of the best labor laws here.

But not all states are at-will states? Some states you actually need a reason to fire someone? Or so I thought?

It's not quite as simple as states being either "at-will" or "not at-will". Every state in the U.S. is to at least some degree an "at-will employment" state, although different states will have different exceptions.

At a bare minimum level, all states except 7 recognize public policy exceptions to at-will employment (firing employees for doing something compliant with public policy, like filing a disability claim).

At a "getting further away from pure at-will employment" level, 11 states require employers to act in good faith when firing employees (which basically excludes malicious firings)

> At a bare minimum level, all states except 7 recognize public policy exceptions to at-will employment (firing employees for doing something compliant with public policy, like filing a disability claim).

And even if a state doesn't, the federal government does, so there are always public policy exceptions.

I think you are confusing employment-at-will and right-to-work+. Some states are right-to-work, all are at-will.

(+ it is about laws regulating unions, not literal rights to work.

Not only that, but read about Laura. She was their bookkeeper from early on through their IPO. Odds are she had a good amount of stock options. Maybe not "now I have a gulf stream life changing" but if she held onto some portion of them, she's doing pretty well.

Conveniently enough, someone calculated this last year using their IPO value, not the internal strike price:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/081315/i...

Reading the title and description of that Planet Money episode, I have never heard of a coach even at the professional sports level who said hard work was irrelevant.

They don't say it, but if you watch how they behave that is the reality. The hardest worker won't tay on a pro sports team if they can be replaced by someone more productive, even if that person doesn't work as hard. At the end of the day pro sports, when done by successful organizations is all about production.

Hard work can be a prerequisite for ability but it is no substitute for it.

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