Here’s the full text from the Slides:

We Seek Excellence

Our culture focuses on helping us achieve excellence.

Seven Aspects of Our Culture

  • Values are what we value
  • High performance
  • Freedom & responsibility
  • Context, not control
  • Highly aligned, loosely coupled
  • Pay top of market
  • Promotions & development

Values Are What We Value

Many companies display nice-sounding value statements in their lobby. For example, Enron displayed: Integrity, Communication, Respect, Excellence. Yet these were not what was truly valued there.

At Netflix, actual company values are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go. Values are the behaviors and skills that we value in colleagues.

We particularly value the following nine behaviors and skills:

  1. Judgment – Make wise decisions despite ambiguity, identify root causes, think strategically, and separate priorities.
  2. Communication – Listen well, be concise, respect others, and maintain calm poise.
  3. Impact – Accomplish significant amounts of important work and focus on results.
  4. Curiosity – Learn eagerly, seek to understand strategy and market, be broadly knowledgeable, and contribute beyond specialty.
  5. Innovation – Re-conceptualize issues, challenge assumptions, create useful ideas, and simplify.
  6. Courage – Speak the truth, make tough decisions, take smart risks, and question inconsistent actions.
  7. Passion – Inspire others, care intensely about success, celebrate wins, and be tenacious.
  8. Honesty – Be candid, avoid politics, admit mistakes, and be direct.
  9. Selflessness – Seek what is best for Netflix, be ego-less, help colleagues, and share information openly.

High Performance

A great workplace is stunning colleagues, not perks. Adequate performance earns a generous severance. We are a team, not a family—like a professional sports team, not recreational.

Keeper Test

Managers ask: Which of my people, if they were leaving, would I fight hard to keep? Those who don’t pass this test receive severance, making room for stars.

Honesty Always

Leaders and employees must be candid. Periodically, employees should ask their managers: If I were leaving, how hard would you work to change my mind?

Loyalty, Hard Work, and Brilliant Jerks

  • Loyalty is valued, but not unlimited loyalty to ineffective employees or shrinking firms.
  • Hard work is not measured by hours but by results.
  • Brilliant jerks are not tolerated—the cost to teamwork is too high.

Why High Performance?

In creative work, the best are 10x better than average, so effective teams of the best are critical.

Freedom & Responsibility

Netflix increases freedom as it grows to nourish innovation. Most companies reduce freedom as they grow, adding bureaucracy. Instead, Netflix increases talent density faster than complexity grows.

Rules

  • Freedom is not absolute—rules are needed to prevent disasters or legal/ethical issues.
  • Rapid recovery from mistakes is better than over-controlling.
  • Good process helps talented people get more done; bad process prevents recoverable mistakes.

Examples

  • Vacation policy: No policy or tracking. Focus is on results, not time spent.
  • Expenses, gifts, travel: Policy is five words—“Act in Netflix’s Best Interest.”

Summary

  • Minimize rules.
  • Inhibit chaos with high-performance people.
  • Flexibility > efficiency in the long term.

Context, Not Control

Managers set context (strategy, goals, metrics, assumptions, roles, stakes, transparency) instead of controlling tactics. High performance people thrive when they understand the context.

Exceptions: emergencies, learning roles, or when the wrong person is in a role.

Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled

  • Highly aligned: Strategy and goals are clear and well understood.
  • Loosely coupled: Minimal cross-functional meetings; trust groups to execute quickly.

Goal: Be big, fast, and flexible.

Pay Top of Market

One outstanding employee outperforms and costs less than two adequate ones.

Three Tests

  1. What could the person get elsewhere?
  2. What would we pay for replacement?
  3. What would we pay to keep them?

Pay is reviewed annually with these tests. No fixed budgets or raise pools. Compensation is always at market, regardless of Netflix’s performance.

Promotions & Development

  • Promotions require a big enough job, a superstar in the role, and extraordinary modeling of Netflix culture.
  • Timing: Promote now if you would promote to prevent leaving.
  • Development: Give people stunning colleagues and big challenges, not formalized career paths.
  • Career growth is self-managed; economic security is based on skills and reputation.

Continuous Improvement

We keep improving our culture as we grow, always seeking excellence.

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