Hello, Netflix!

(Mostly, Hello Corporate Engineering!)

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Roy Rapoport

November 6, 2019

Disclaimer: This should not be read to in any way apply to any other group or hiring manager at Netflix

This is Weird

• Quite likely, yes
• We'll learn more about each other organically
• This was the best way I thought of to quickly and efficiently* mention a few things
• This is not a presentation, but an infodeck
• You probably should read, and be deeply familiarized with, The Netflix Culture first

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* For some value of 'efficient'

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What Is This? Why Is This?

I’m new* here. We work together. I thought it’d be useful to talk a little about some things I thought you should know about me and what you can expect of me; while these conversations will also happen in person, having a way to jumpstart some of them, and a way to communicate them in written form, seems to be at least somewhat useful. People seem to usually find this at least mildly useful. You can see the version of this wrote at my last job, and the one before that.

Also, this is now outdated. My latest README will always be available at https://bit.ly/roy-latest-readme

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* Sort of. You probably already know this, but I worked at Netflix 6/29/2009 to 2/17/2018.

But You Already Wrote One for Netflix

Yeah. It’s likely someone might have mentioned (and certainly Whitepages will tell you) I was here before. the doc I wrote before applies in principle but still was mostly written from a different context — that of a tenured leader communicating some things to a new employee. The tables are turned now — you’re tenured, I’m new. My 619 days at Slack also tempered me in some ways. It seemed worthwhile to create a new version of this.

I Don't Believe in Personality Conflicts

• We should have substantive disagreements
• When it comes to adjusting to personalities, I strongly believe that the person in the more senior position is getting paid, partially, to adjust to the personality styles of the people reporting to them
• If you're a manager, this belief also extends to how I expect you'll work with your reports

Autonomy

• A decision is either yours, or mine, but not both
• My scope of responsibility does not enclose your scope of responsibility
• I cannot override you
• I can try to persuade you
• I might come to believe that your judgement isn’t sound (and I’ll tell you if we’re headed in that direction), but
• Disagreeing with me is not prima facie evidence of bad judgment

My Job

1. Attract and Retain World-Class Talent (that's you)
2. Establish, clarify, and set context
1. If I do something that negatively impacts my ability to retain you, you would be doing me a huge favor if you let me know about it, as soon as possible
2. If I do something that feels more like telling you how to do your job than setting context, you'd be doing me a huge favor if you let me know about it, as soon as possible*

* There are limited cases where this may be warranted. You may be doing something that’s new to you, a growth opportunity, and want some advice on how to approach it. I’m willing to help and offer advice/suggestions. I’m not willing to dictate how you do your job

On Feedback

• I love feedback
• Feedback is critical to your success here, and mine
• Three dimensions are required for people to continue to give you feedback:
• Safety (unlikelihood of being punished for giving feedback; should be high)
• Effort (The amount of work in order to give feedback, also known as "how much do you argue when people give you feedback?"; should be low)
• Benefit(how likely is it that giving you feedback will materially impact your behavior? should be high)
• Let me know if I don't do well on any of these three dimensions
• I'll let you know if you don't do well on any of these three dimensions

On Feedback

• I've been called 'blunt'
• I care about kindness, but I'll optimize for effectiveness and within that optimized effectiveness try to be as kind as possible
• My job is to make sure you got the feedback

Oh, Blogging

• I’ve written some blog posts on leadership, feedback, and performance management. You don’t have to read any of them. Some people have found my thoughts on performance correction conversations, whether people can change, and candor and bluntness interesting.

Work Hours

• I'll endeavor not to talk to you about work things outside of work hours (~0800 to ~1800), assuming we're not at some sort of after-hours work function
• I may slip
• If I reach out to you via Slack or email outside of those hours, feel free to ignore me until next day
• Even within these hours, I don't expect you to be responsive 0800-1800. Be reasonable.
• You may see me working long hours. That’s what works for me. Please do as I say, rather than as I do, and manage your work/life balance in a way that works for you and your loved ones. This is important. Working here should support your life, not the other way around.
• I'm disinclined to call you or page you outside of business hours. That means that if I am, it's an emergency. This should happen really, really, rarely.
• All of this is just for me contacting you, not being on-call or being paged by production systems.

Want to Talk? Let's Talk

• I do a bunch of things here. Very few of them are more important than spending time talking with you if you want to talk with me
• Feel entirely free to put time on my calendar to talk whenever you want
• (Actually, that applies to others here: Feel free to just send meeting requests rather than asking for permission from anyone here)
• If you can’t find time on my calendar, hit me up via DM, text, or phone, and I’ll probably be able to vacate something. If you want to talk with me, it’s a high priority for me to find time to talk with you.
• I made the same promise at my last company. Most people didn’t believe me at first. There were probably a total of about 15 times people reporting to me (directly or indirectly) asked for same-day time on my calendar. To the best of my recollection, they always got it. Let me know if you want references :)

Are You Afraid of Being Fired Yet?

• Chances are very good that sometime in the first 3 months you will be wondering if you're about to be fired
• Find three engineers who've joined Netflix in the recent past and ask them if they experienced that fear
• Chances are, at least two have
• It's totally natural
• If you're within your first three months at Netflix and you're an engineer, you're incredibly unlikely to get fired anytime soon
• Exception: I've actually told you, explicitly and bluntly, that you're in danger of being fired

Speaking of Terminations, My Track Record

Last time I was at Netflix, I was an engineering manager for about five years. In that time, I

• Hired a bunch of people (more than ten, I believe)
• Had a few people people transferred under me
• Terminated three people

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Speaking of Terminations, My Track Record

• I'm deeply interested in making sure anyone terminated by me for performance reasons is entirely unsurprised by this
• I have so far been successful at this
• Bluntness helps
• You will not be surprised

How Are You Doing? The Performance Spectrum

In my head, every person reporting to me is in one of three particular levels of performance at any given point:

1. Green: You may have things you want to improve, there may be things I want you to improve, but if you changed nothing, given our current requirements I'd be delighted if you continued to work here for as long as you wanted
2. Orange: There's something you're doing that, long-term, makes your current trajectory unsustainable. This, if not changed, will not end well. You'll need to change something
3. Red: Your trajectory is unsustainable on a short-term and there's a specific, concrete, timebox we'll be putting around changing it, and you and I have had an explicit conversation around what's wrong and what the timeline for fixing it is.

I might realize in hindsight that you're not actually green but orange, but red is never a hindsight realization. It also means that chances are that the answer to the question "am I red right now?" is "if you have to ask, the answer is no".

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Going Orange? That's It, Polish the Resume!

• Not at all
• Going orange is utterly recoverable
• If you go orange, you can pull out. And if you do, this builds trust
• Even red is not necessarily terminal. People have been in red, pulled out of it, and went on to have long successful careers here
• If you're here, it's because I have faith in your ability to be successful here. IF I lose that faith, I will not be performance managing you, I will be terminating you (with the obvious generous severance package)

What (I think) I'm Good At

• Giving feedback, both positive and negative (AKA "I'm high on the candor scale")
• Making sure my message is heard (AKA "I'm high on the bluntness scale")
• Receiving feedback and acting on it
• I’m not subtle. I really am not. That also means that, for example, if I’m asking you a question it’s not meant as a subtle suggestion, it literally is just a question.

Known Failure Modes

• I've been accused of an extreme interpretation of "context not control"
• At least until you demonstrate an ability to resist me telling you to do stupid things, I'm likely to be reticent to express opinions about what/how you should be doing (But I'll never demur in the face of a direct question or request for advice)
• I tend to take this whole "personality conflicts are my problem" thing a little far. In at least one case I've retained someone too long because I was unwilling to consider they were just wrong

One on Ones (1o1s)

• 1o1s are for you
• 1o1s are not for status updates unless you want to update status

On Candor

• This company may require me to not tell you about something before a certain date (e.g. stock option plan changes which managers knew a week before they were announced). This has happened here once in the years I've been managing
• This company cannot require me to lie to you. That's never happened (I've never been asked to do so), and it could never happen (I would not abide by such a requirement).
• We bias toward transparency and candor. You can ask anything. Most of the time, I'll answer. Rarely, I won't. I'm committed to never lying to you.

One Last Note

• I’m incredibly happy, and grateful, and honored, to work with you
• Let me know how I can help you
• Let me know when I can do a better job getting out of your way

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Let’s go.