MattSolar.com
Early stage startup marketing & community management + the great outdoors.

The Best Post on Culture I’ve Ever Read (via Netflix)

This was shared during one of our team meetings at uTest and it’s one of the best posts on the topic of culture that I’ve ever read.  I highly recommend going through the Slideshare presentation below but I’ve listed  a few items I found particularly interesting, and highly underutilized by many companies (sometimes including uTest);

  1.  “The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.” (Slide 6)
  2. “Like every company, we try to hire well… Unlike many companies, we practice: adequate performance gets a generous severance package.” (Slide 21-22)
  3. Manage through context, not control. (Slides 78-87)
  4. Pay top of market:
    1. Pay them more than anyone likely would”  (Slide 98)
    2. “Compensation not Dependent on Netflix Success” (Slide 103)
    3. “If [employees] choose Netflix [health benefit] plans that are less than $10k [per year], they keep the difference” (Slide 109)
    4. “We don’t want managers to ‘own’ their employees with vesting – all comp is fully vested”  (Slide 112)
  5. If a manager would promote to prevent from an employee from leaving, the manager should promote now instead of waiting. (Slide 119)

The emphasis is really about who you employ – if they’re not at the top of the market, and paid as such, then you need to replace them.  I’m not close enough to NetFlix to know how closely they follow these ideals but I certainly respect their agile marketing and ability to compete in an increasingly competitive industry.

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