One of the best professional pieces of advice I've ever read said something like "Think you're indispensable? Do they know that?". It made me aware that often the people making the hiring/firing decisions aren't actually aware of my day-to-day. Rather, they know only the summary info. Those kudos to fellow employees and in-house "awards" that I'd been ignoring? Those are documentation that someone is worthwhile, and I had none. If I were fired that day, I'd have had precious little "proof" that it was a mistake. (and of course, the point isn't to "prove" it's a mistake, it's to make sure they know not to in the first place).

Now, when I learned that advice I was working for virginia state govt, where I didn't have technically competent and aware management like I do now in Seattle tech companies, but there is still an important kernel in the message: We tend to judge our performance relative to the difficulty of the tasks in front of us. Often, our performance will be judged my management using different criteria. It's a good idea to be aware of how you look from the outside.

...which is why I'd not want to work in the Netflix system. It's not whether I'm a good performer, it's whether THEY THINK I'm a good performer. Ideally these are related, and outside of a Netflix-like environment I might have confidence that my manager would let me know in advance of action if there was a discrepancy. While I'm sure Netflix would claim the same, I doubt McCord was expecting the axe to fall...