Netflix wants managers to ask whether they would rehire their employees

Defame someone verbally and it is slander, defame someone in writing and it is libel. A defamatory statement must be false.

When psychopaths ascend, they will abuse their position and assassinate the character of people that cannot be used as pawns. When I say psychopaths, note that only a subset of managers are psychopaths, but psychopathic traits are favored by organizations and they are more likely to become managers, and that subset is highly toxic.

Freedom of expression has limits, defamation is one of them. You cannot just say whatever you want and cause financial losses to others.

The fiction created by a psychopathic manager through manipulation can cross legal lines. And it is time to put an end to this practice that plagues engineering organizations. It is time to let the justice system do its work.

We have enough technology to automatically detect problematic behaviors like sycophancy and other types of manipulation with AI and take that as a factor in evaluations, or take administrative action. In this way, we can finally let people focus on doing their job without the distractions of office politics. i.e.: analyze the sentiment of words used with peers vs managers and if sentiment diverges too much then fire the sycophant, and if a manager only has sycophants as reports, fire the manager too.

And while we are at it, completely destroy the culture of lying through idioms such as "maybe later", "I will think about it" instead of simply saying "no" as they are predictors for dishonesty which ultimately it is a waste of time.

Being a manager should require a license and manipulative behavior past certain limits should get it permanently revoked. We need to make a piñata out of the concept of being a professional liar in an engineering organization as a source of income, we are better than this.

My guess is that if you work at Netflix, you've done at least a bit of research into the culture, and they aren't exactly secretive about how fire-happy they are, so hopefully most know what they're getting themselves into.

https://www.dice.com/career-advice/netflix-company-culture-t... (2018)

> Specifically, Netflix has something called the “keeper test,” which is a measure for management to fire or retain staff. It's very simple; a manager is supposed to ask: "If one of the members of the team was thinking of leaving for another firm, would I try hard to keep them from leaving?"

> CEO Reed Hastings and then-HR Chief Patty McCord wanted to encourage “independent decision making” among employees, but also retain only those who were “highly effective.” As a result, they nurtured a culture in which even longtime employees were ruthlessly evaluated; if they were no longer the best at their role (at least in the eyes of their manager), they were out.

> crux of these tests is to help managers decide (as Hastings did with McCord) if they would fight to keep an employee around. If the answer is no, that employee is terminated or asked to leave. Netflix’s 360 tool provides broad context for personnel decisions. It’s meant to encourage objectivity, but it also seems to produce obscure, sometimes startling changes in the hierarchy.

> Simply put, you can’t copy it, because you’re not Reed Hastings, and your company isn't Netflix. Nor can you likely become him. Employees describe him as a man “unencumbered by emotion.”

Maybe Netflix is successful because of it, maybe they're successful despite of it. They don't seem to at least have any issues recruiting, despite widespread knowledge of the conditions.

Edit: found a Linkedin post, which seems like little more than a FWD:FWD:FWD kind of deal, but whatever: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hiring-committee-google-fails...

Unlike the approach of being required to stack rank and fire the bottom x%, managers aren't required to fire anyone but are supported if they decide someone is no longer adding value.

I think the fact I know this means they are pretty transparent about it.

Obviously, that could be applied unfairly.

Given the transparency, you need to decide:

1. Does the hiring manager seem like a reasonable person?

2. What is the hiring manager's / company's definition of reasonable expectations?

3. Am I willing and able to sustain the kind of efforts that those expectations entail?

4. Am I willing and able to deal with the ego, financial, and hassle ramifications of being wrong about any of the previous questions?

I think it's a reasonable way to run a business.

It's not a way I want to participate in, so I hope it doesn't become the only way.

(edited for formatting)

I didn't get the job. The feedback? "You aced the technical stuff and everyone loved you, but we didn't sense your passion for the logged out experience."

But using apps on Roku and Samsung TVs (and some older platforms, like the Wii player and some blu-ray players), Netflix is consistently better tecnically than Amazon, Hulu/Espn/Disney, Apple+ (maybe it's good on AppleTvs, but it was garbage on Roku); and then all the free ones are way worse.