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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

This is what I loved about working at Netflix. We didn't have performance reviews. It was assumed that your performance was good to excellent, otherwise you wouldn't be working there anymore. You had a constant feedback loop with your manager on performance, but nothing was ever formal.

Raises were completely divorced from any performance assessment. You were paid whatever they thought the max was for your skillset, based on a bunch of data they had on what people at other companies got paid for similar work.

What we did have was 360 reviews once a year. It was basically a small survey you could fill out about anyone in the company, which they and their manager would see. You could evaluate your boss, your VP, or people who worked for you, or anyone else you worked with anywhere in the company. It was expected that managers do a 360 review for all of their reports, but beyond that you could do as few or as many as you wanted to. It was basically a start/stop/continue kind of thing.

It was such a refreshing change from the stack ranking at eBay, which forced good people to get shitty reviews just so they could "fit the bell curve". And as you said, it incentivized you to not praise coworkers and some people even actively sabotaged their coworkers to get a better rank.

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I think this culture is often the difference between a company that's in exponential growth mode - where you care more about velocity than costs. When a company becomes a stable giant, the engineering department is no longer necessarily creating value in the same way it was before and often slowly becomes bloated.

That may very well be true. It also only seems to work at companies without junior engineers. Junior engineers need more guidance and more feedback and a more hands on approach from their managers to guide career growth.

I agree, but in the specific case of Netflix, people are let go all the time, and managers have a lot of authority to make the decision to fire someone. Tenure doesn't matter, either -- you could work there for 6 years and end up getting fired when you get a new manager or the existing one decides you're phoning it in.

That's a massive amount of trust placed in managers. I've had asshole managers before that didn't have this much power thanks to company structure.

Honestly I would never work at a place like this. Maybe it's lean and efficient for the company, but it definitely doesn't sound fun for the employee.

It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, it certainly happens and it sucks for the good person that it happens to. But managers like that don't last very long.

When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc. And then they follow up if the person says, "it was a total shock". I've definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but they were let go soon afterwards. Word gets around quickly to their manager that they let go someone who was a strong contributor.

So then what was the behavior after the bad manager was let go? Did they actually reach out to those who were let go? The toxic effects of bad managers is way larger than ICs.

In some cases the fired people were invited back, but usually if they were good they already had another job.

That supposes that good people get good jobs easily. Given the stupidity of the interview system and my own experience trying to get a better job after working my ass off on improving myself, I think this is really not guaranteed to be the case.

Is there mobility so people can leave bad managers and move to other teams easily (i.e., vote with their feet) rather than being stuck under bad managers and getting screwed this way?

Yes, it's easy to change teams. You just find a new manager and ask if they have openings. You don't want to leave your old team high and dry, but the only requirement was the new manager saying yes.

Obviously in reality there were most likely some negotiations amongst the managers, as the new manager wouldn't want to get a reputation for stealing people.

But I saw people change teams pretty regularly. Not just because of bad managers, but because they just wanted a new challenge.

When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned

Why would anyone give any kind of useful information in the exit interview? The only one who benefits is the company, they need to cover their back in case a suit over harassment comes up. If anyone wants revenge over poor management, keep silent, let the fellow continue to lose the company money and set them up for a lawsuit.

HR is not on your side. The company is not on your side. The union would be, but in software we can't have that.

That's a very cynical view. While the company may not be on your side, helping your coworkers by proving feedback about bad management is a good thing.

Also, why would you want the company to fail? Just because they have one bad manager? My friends still work there, and if you have stock options, you even have a financial interest in the continued success of the company.

I see no downside in providing truthful feedback during an exit interview. Sure, it won't help you, but it helps everyone else that's still there.

The company only looks out for itself and will support you only when it benefits. It will never benefit from supporting an ex-employee that left on bad terms, and the ex-employee will never benefit either from supporting it. So why bother, there is no rational reason.

The bond to co-workers at a former workplace is strange and tenuous - actually it goes the other way around, they reach out to you when they want to improve their situation. Let them ask you when they want out, then offer a hand.

> and the ex-employee will never benefit either from supporting it.

Like I said, even when you get fired, you still have stock options. So you do in fact benefit by helping the company when you're leaving.

> The bond to co-workers at a former workplace is strange and tenuous - actually it goes the other way around, they reach out to you when they want to improve their situation. Let them ask you when they want out, then offer a hand.

Why not offer them help when they don't ask, in the form of giving feedback to HR? Why do they need to ask? Why can't I be altruistic and help just because?

I'll say this -- you're entitled to your opinion, but I really hope I never work with or for someone who shares your outlook. And I especially hope I never manage someone with your outlook.

Whatever happened to "we're all in this together"?

> Whatever happened to "we're all in this together"?

Because we are not in this together. I like working in collaborative environments but after switching jobs more times than I can count I've become more cynical.

- Co-workers are not your friends.

- HR is not your friend.

- Management is not your friend.

It's a business relationship and in the eyes of the corporate structure you are just a fungible resource being consumed to produce shareholder value. Some companies do a great job of creating a "culture" but even in these companies it's only a thin veneer over the machiavellian tactics that keep the corporate machine chugging along.

I'd disagree with that, management and HR, sure, but friendship with co-workers is important. Personal relationships are the main way people find jobs, and unlike with management and HR with co-workers at least nominally you're on the same team

That sounds like a pretty horrible existence. I often spend more time with my colleagues than my family, and luckily I have formed great friendships with them. I care about them and vice versa. This contributes greatly to my quality of life.

Luckily we all have decent jobs that we enjoy that presents interesting challenges, and earn a decent amount too.

I'm sorry, but you're j"I worked at Reddit and Netflix"edberg. I am a schmoe who works in a small town where there are fewer than 10 good companies that I would want to work for, and you haven't heard of any of them.

From the average perspective, I have found the parent's commenter's advice to be far more accurate. I don't think you have a good idea of how terrible and vindictive the average mid-level paper pusher in management or HR is outside Silicon Valley (I suspect there are quite a few in SV as well, but maybe you all are a little more skeptical about their utility). I don't want some maniac manager talking crap about me to everyone they know and consequently blowing up my meager job prospects just because I complained to HR about their shitty management style. Oh, and unlike your Netflix example, tens of people complained about terrible management style at a former employer, and not a single manager got fired or even cautioned as a result. So I'm going to smile, nod, and leave a company – nothing more.

So, in summary – hopefully this doesn't sound like flattery, but consider that you might be in the position of a Lakers player giving advice to a local pickup basketball group. The advice doesn't always translate well to a different context :)

That is a completely fair and relevant assessment. I don't know what it is like to work in small town with few job prospects.

I would hope I would act the same in that situation, trying to make things better for everyone, but honestly I don't know.

Hopefully the rise of remote work will fix some of this, giving you more prospects outside of your small town, and more flexibility.

> So, in summary – hopefully this doesn't sound like flattery, but consider that you might be in the position of a Lakers player giving advice to a local pickup basketball group.

Aw man, thanks for that ego boost today. I'll try not to let it go to my head. :)

But seriously, I always try to give advice that is generally relevant, because I am self-aware enough to know that just about every situation I've been in is not the norm. But thank you for calling me out, because sometimes I still make poor assumptions.

> Hopefully the rise of remote work will fix some of this, giving you more prospects outside of your small town, and more flexibility.

Thanks! I hope so too. :)

The context being described is one in which you were just sacked at the whim of a manager. Doesn’t it seem a little funny to wait until the exit interview to ask if it came as a surprise? Maybe they’re going to act in that information somehow, perhaps sacking that manager if it’s part of a pattern of poor decisions, but they’re not planning on doing anything to help you personally, like overturning the dismissal.

Maybe you’re inclined to help them out just to be a good person, and that’s fine; but I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to do that.

> Doesn’t it seem a little funny to wait until the exit interview to ask if it came as a surprise?

When else would they ask? The exit interview is when you are being informed of the decision.

The process is you get a meeting invite for a 1 on 1 with your manager. They come in, tell you that you're getting let go and why, and then invite HR to come in. They then leave and HR goes over the paperwork and asks you about if you expected it. If you were a poor performer, then it's most likely not your first meeting with HR.

I'm not sure when else they would ask.

" I'm not sure when else they would ask"'

Perhaps have the manager give their decision making and their inputs in writing, have the employee review these and provide a response. After all, if the employee were good enough to have lasted six years under the scrutiny of other good peers, then a sudden firing needs investigation. That's how it is done at other places where people are valued.

This entire thread reminded me of the callous attitude toward firing shown in the movie "Margin Call". Is it all related to American culture that the rest of us don't understand?

You will never ever get a reason for being fired in writing here in the US because all that does is provide evidence for a possible lawsuit.

> Is it all related to American culture that the rest of us don't understand?

In part, yes. Here in the US we don't really have worker protections. Many believe it is because of this that we have such a strong growth in business.

It objectively makes our economy more nimble and adaptable, but at the expense of employees.

A perfect example: I worked at a startup in 2000, and we had a bunch of people in the US as well as Europe. When business was down and we had to lay people off, we ended up laying off engineers in the US, because we couldn't get rid of any of the people in Europe quickly enough. We had to pay people for months before they were let go, and they didn't even show up to work. It was great for them, but it was bad for the company and also bad for our growth since we had to pay people to do literally nothing.

To be clear, I think workers need greater protections. But those protections should not be at the direct expense of the company. It should be indirectly through taxation.

But to get back to your question, yes, here in the US, workers are not treated as well as elsewhere. Entrepreneurs and businesses are seen as the drivers of the economy, not the workers.

> When else would they ask? The exit interview is when you are being informed of the decision.

At a previous employer, a manager would need to formally put you on a performance improvement plan to give you a chance to improve, to discuss about what's going on (maybe you need a leave of absence for family; or maybe training). HR should be surprised that the exit interview is the first time they're talking to the person.

That's my point. Those things still happen, even without a formal process. Most likely if you're in that meeting, you've already had multiple meetings with HR and your manager about your performance.

If HR is just hearing about it for the first time in the meeting, that is when they would be following up, because it means the manager made a quick rash decision.

Would they potentially overturn the dismissal in that case?

I don't think so. The last thing you want is to have someone working for a manager who tried to fire them. I don't recall any case where a dismissal was overturned.

Keep in mind, the HR person will still have at least a few hours warning, since they are invited to the meeting ahead of time and will know what the meeting is about, because they have to prep the paperwork. So if they disagree, they are most likely to ask the manager to discuss it first.

That must be an absolutely horrible experience, if you genuinely didn’t expect it! Is there at least a reasonably generous severance package?

Edit to add: in fact, thinking about it, doing the entire process in a single meeting like that feels like a bit of a mean trick -- catching people off-balance so they’re probably more likely to answer the HR questions honestly, rather than having time to think about what they want to say and what they want to ask.

I wonder what questions that HR team asks and what use they make of the data.

The severance was several months of pay and usually a few months of health insurance too. It's the most generous package I've ever heard of.

For high level execs it got up into a whole year's salary sometimes.

Even for the lowest levels of engineers, the severance would be in the $40,000 range.

VPs could walk away with $1M+ in severance. CxOs even more.

This sounds horrific. I would never want to work in an environment where sudden unexpected on the spot firing was done, even if it was uncommon.

I have given useful information in exits when i felt the company was open to it and would take it seriously. Because while i knew my tenure was done and it was time to move on, me providing my reasons may help the rest f their retention. And from what i have heard, that advice was taken seriously and it did work.

I have also just run through the paces in ones where i know its not gonna change a thing.

I also work in a small enough community where its wise not to burn bridges because you very well may run across other again down the line.

This seems like a limited view. I have worked and re-worked with people across multiple companies during my career. To burn bridges as you go through your career seems short sighted.

>Why would anyone give any kind of useful information in the exit interview? The only one who benefits is the company

My favorite personal experience on an exit interview: Question: What did you like best about working at $Company? Answer: The weather (it was in SoCal, so weather was typically great)

That was the best thing I could come up with, and was about as useful as I was going to be

Yes, all the incentives are perverse during an exit interview. HR is only interested in avoid suits, and the ex-employee wants a good reference, or if not at least their severance.

This. I never understood people who go apeshit during exit interviews or are even honest during it. There is simply zero benefit to genuinely cooperating on an exit interview.

If the company is trash and you lay it all out during the exit interview you're simply burning bridge (particularly if they do in fact act on your feedback and somebody gets smacked about it) and if you're ever in a situation where you get let go suddenly or whatever, the person who you blasted may veto your return.

You owe the company less than nothing. Play your cards close to the chest, say the reason for leaving is personal and not at all related to the company and move on with your life. Why would you want to help the company that just fired you?

> When you get let go

I'm sorry for going a bit offtopic, but I have noticed this weird linguistic contortion "get let go" often. Why the euphemisms? You get fired. It doesn't hurt to speak plainly. This "let go" expression seems weirdly childish, like how people say that someone "passed on" to avoid confronting the hard reality of death.

And I'm not picking on you, I know that almost everyone talks like this now.

Well at Netflix in particular, there is no real difference between being fired and being laid off, since both come with the same severance and benefits.

So it makes sense to use a generic term.

In most cases you use the generic term to avoid liability. Saying someone was fired could be libelous/slanderous.

Interesting point, but in most cases people say it when talking about themselves (I was let go) or in the hypothetical, as was the case here with OP: "When you get let go". So no risk of liability, there must be some other explanation.

There is still a liability when talking about oneself. Sometimes when someone is fired they have to sign a non-disparagement agreement to get their severance.

Saying you were fired could be considered disparaging.

> Saying you were fired could be considered disparaging.

I'm sorry, but I highly doubt that this is the case.

The "let go" is total corporate newspeak. You can't "let" go someone who didn't ask to go nor doesn't want to. You can only force him to go (by firing him).

That still sounds pretty bad. The person who fired you getting fired doesn't get you your job back.

No it doesn't, but do you think at other companies people don't get fired for bad reasons?

Of course people get fired at other companies, but that's whataboutism - it's bad no matter where it happens.

It's not whataboutism when you are comparing two things. Jed is suggesting one company culture is superior to another. The fact that it doesn't solve a problem that the other also doesn't solve is non-sequitor in such a discussion.

Exit interviewers are for those who quit. Never seen a firing exit interview.

At Netflix everyone gets an exit interview, no matter the reason for leaving.

How does it physically happen?

Usually you are called into a meeting. Told your services are no longer required. Then you are given career resource support / paperwork with an offer and helped off the property. At what point is there a chance for an exit interview? After they first fire you, you are in shock.

Sooo American. I mean sure if they fire you, that's how it goes usually but even the other way around people leave and are gone in two weeks and there's no way you get a replacement quick enough to have whoever leaves train them. And Co workers are usually told on the day. Such BS.

There are more civil ways where both sides give a couple months notice and giving notice doesn't mean you get escorted off the property. It means you'll still do your job for a couple months, maybe even train a replacement.

After the paperwork, if you want to.

In companies I worked for, people never left like that. They would be talked to and then continued going to work although significantly less motivated. The firing on spot must have big reason like not showing up or drinking.

American companies do that thing where they fire you, you have to leave instantly and then they pay you salary for the time you would be still going to work in any normal company.

The rest of team spends time guessing the situation, trying to contact you to figure out what happened and generally is disturbed.

The "helped off the property" part always surprises me as a non-American. In Poland, unless you get fired for disciplinary reason (which would be reserved for conscious infractions against the company, e.g. sending confidential data to a competitor), you still work for two months at the company. This is the time in which you can look for another job, pass over your tasks to your other coworkers, release all the accounts, make sure the data is backed up where it should be etc.

> When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc. And then they follow up if the person says, "it was a total shock". I've definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but they were let go soon afterwards.

I guess "the firings will continue until morale improves?"

I feel like it has to be this way. You can’t both want to be trusted and enjoy the benefits of that autonomy and then expect others to not have that trust an autonomy. In many ways it shows it’s properly baked into the culture and not just some nice sound bite to attract engineering talent.

In this sort of setup, you'd expect there to be a chance of asshole managers; but you'd also expect that those asshole managers would be quickly fired by their non-asshole managers. Being stuck under an asshole would only happen if you were in reality stuck under a whole chain of assholes, leading all the way to the top. And if that was true, the company would be in the middle of imploding anyway.

This may sound flippant, but it's not: you mean like Uber. (See eg Susan Fowler's book Whistleblower.)

On the other hand, I'm sure those bad managers get the natural result of their management much quicker and more visibly when there is no bureaucractic structure protecting them from themselves.

I have to agree; it's one thing to empower leaders to enact their vision. It's another to give them carte blanch to screw over the people they are supposed to be leaders to. Firing is serious, and it doesn't just affect someone's work life.

I think the number of people that are let go is overexaggerated. But yes, it is easy to fire and hire. The two go hand in hand.

My coworker was a product manager at Netflix and she said in a 2 year period she saw at least 20 engineers get fired. That seems pretty high to me.

Probably depends on team and circumstances. In my ~3 years there I've only seen a handful of engineers I interact with (which was a lot) get fired.

That's a huge amount.

I remember working in a large company with easily a hundred people over the years. I'd say there were only 2 employees that were fireable materials.

Yeah but how hard was it to hire new people? There is a direct correlation. It's super easy to hire people at Netflix. It is literally just up to the hiring manager.

The flip side is that it is also easy to fire, so you can quickly correct any mistakes you may have made in hiring.

This of course means more churn. But to someone working there, this felt like a good thing. It means you didn't have people just biding their time like you see in most big companies.

Never once did I think, "how does that person still have a job?" Unlike the other big companies I've worked for, where there is always at least one person who you know is just floating as long as they can and getting away with it.

Well, there can be some challenges to get people to apply to the archaic job board and they often don't recognize the brand. It's certainly easier to hire at Netflix being a well known consumer brand.

How's the interview process though? Do managers get to hand pick candidates, without them being subjected to a grueling full day onsite with 6-8 employees?

I'd say that's the biggest issue to hire. Even if referred and highly recommended, it's trivial to be rejected due to any one interviewer having a bad day or an impossible bar.

The process in general worked like this:

The candidate is found, either by the hiring manager themself, through an internal referral, or via the internal sourcers/recruiters (shout out to them for being amazing at their job!)

The hiring manager sets up an interview panel, where they recruit relevant stakeholders (in the case of an engineer, this was usually peer engineers and sometimes other managers who that team worked with a lot).

The panel is usually around four hours, with four or five people, including the manager, someone from HR, and some future peers.

If that goes well, then a second panel is set up for round two, also about four hours, which usually involves a Director or VP or two, maybe another higher up peer or sibling team peer or manager, and a higher up manager from HR.

Throughout the day, the hiring manager solicits feedback from the interviewers, usually within 15 minutes of them finishing.

The final decision rests solely with the hiring manager, but usually most of the feedback needed to be positive to move forward. The manager could also stop the process at any time. So if all the feedback was "meh", they could save everyone some time and cut it short.

Out of town candidates would have the both panels set for one long day, or sometimes the afternoon and following morning, so for out of town candidates who got all the way through, it could be pretty grueling.

After all that, if the hiring manager decides to hire you, you could get an offer before you even leave, or within a day or two usually, unless there were multiple people for one position, and then you had to wait for them all (although if you were amazing you'd get an offer anyway and then if someone else was good they would get an offer too).

For me personally, the entire process from first contact to signing offer papers was less than a week, and that was pretty typical at the time.

Thanks for the description. Sounds like the typical very difficult full day interview as in every other big tech company, so it doesn't seem to me to be easy to hire or to be hired by any stretch.

In some respects it is very similar, but I think the key differences were that the manager has complete discretion. Even if everyone said no, they could still hire you (as unwise as that might be). There was no hiring committee, no one had veto power.

But yes, you still had to pass a series of interviews. :)

I'm sorry, I'm afraid my comment was too negative. I agree everything is exaggerated on the internet, and I think Netflix's way of doing things is refreshing and has benefits over previous approaches. For example if, instead of getting fired, I was put on a dead-end project for 2 years, I would feel like I wasted time that could have been used improving my career prospects. The engineers who work at Netflix are all desirable and should not have trouble finding work (although likely with less pay).

My wife worked there for a year, and was used to seeing the emails to her dept. saying so-and-so was fired once or twice a week. Eventually she quit because of it, but she had an overall positive experience.

This works for high tier companies. But mid tier don’t have the same pull. It’s HaRD to hire good people. The funnel is full of chaff. My team has been interviewing for a Sr engineer for months.

You simply need to pay above the market. My company does that quite often when we need someone senior quickly to fill in a gap after some other senior left and you'd be surprised of the caliber of people that come out of the woodwork.

Even a first line manager can fire? are there no hr processes

There is no HR process. In reality you've already had multiple discussions with HR and your manager if you're going to get fired, but it isn't required.

Totally agree, when there is growth everyone is growing when the company is flat or worse then it’s a 0 sum game / survivor competition game.

How is this not stack ranking by firing instead of by formal review?

With stack ranking a manager must rank the entire team from worst to best and fire / warn the lowest ranked person in the team. Imagine a team with the 10 best people you ever worked with. Now fire the least great of them. You must, because didn't you just say he/she is the worst of the team?

Instead the Netflix process sounds a lot more fair. If everyone is awesome, no one needs to be fired.

I mean, they both sound like dystopian nightmare scenarios tbh.

Yeah. Threads like this whole discussion are why I never want to work for a "big" company. More than about 50 people and you start to get into this kind of managerial/competitive BS. No thanks, I'll take the lower (but still more than sufficient) pay of a small company over that any day.

What part of Netflix's arrangement sounds like a "dystopian nightmare scenario"?

Get fired for no reason because your manager doesn't like you?

I guess a lot of that is helped by "at will" employment in the States. In the UK for example if an employee has worked for 2 years at a company you can't just fire them for no real reason.

I'm curious about the 360 reviews. Where I work, peer feedback is solicited by your manager. So your manager can choose the people writing your feedback based on whether the manager wants to reward you or to screw you over. As a byproduct, your peers do not fear any repercussions for bad behavior if they have confidence that their manager has their back. So, for example, people have no qualms about sabotaging the work of other teams. Do the 360 reviews help with this problem?

I don't think they are related. I think what stops that from happening is open feedback across the company and hiring the right people. No one is really thinking, "man I would totally screw this person if not for the bad review they might give me!". Especially since the reviews only happen once a year.

If you do something negative to someone, that person will either directly address it with you or your manager at the time. The reviews are more to address longer term behavior.

This sounds like a huge step up in company management from what exists at most places.

I love how it creates the side effect that bad managers get fired if they fire a good employee (as you mentioned elsewhere). Its not even a written rule, but just through social physics it seems to bring out the correct outcome for people who actually add/subtract value.

I bet they also save a lot of money simply by not employing people who do nothing but look good and smooch around while being a negative contributor, since those people typically cost the most. And, a small portion of the money saved goes back into the salary of those who deserve it for the rate they are worth making them glad to stick around and help them succeed.

Sounds like you are no longer there - what was the dark side?

Honestly there was no real dark side. I supposed you could say some mangers were a little trigger happy on firing, but in a sibling comment I addressed that.

I left to start a startup. I would work there again in second if I ever go back to working for someone else (and they had a role for me).

Same. If you can possibly manage a stint at Netflix, do it.

So when people say companies are afraid of hiring false positives because it's costly to get rid of them - it's their internal corporate culture that is to blame for firing being expensive in the first place? Rather than some overarching legal complications?

The conventional wisdom in SV is that it's really hard to fire people. It's been my experience, too. I've worked with lawyers numerous times to fire people and it was always way more complex than I wanted. The problem is there are so many protected classes and once someone is in one, in CA, it makes it hard to just fire them, unless you have documented very precisely why you are firing them. And that is very taxing on everyone.

Geez that sounds exactly like how the place I work at works. Interesting!

Sounds like a place I would like to work.

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