Netflix was known for its “no rules” culture that executives say attracted the best talent. But as it’s grown, the company has pulled back on some of that freedom, including its generous parental leave. WSJ’s Jessica Toonkel explains why Netflix is changing the culture that fueled its success, and what it means for employees. Further Reading: -Netflix’s Extraordinary Parental Leave Was Part of Its Culture. That’s Over. -Netflix Is Rethinking Employee Freedom, a Core Tenet of Its Vaunted Culture Further Listening: -Netflix Turns to Ads Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Ever since it was founded in the late 1990s, Netflix has tried to build a special work culture.
Think about it as sort of a corporate anti-bureaucracy utopia. So there's a lot of transparency.
That's our colleague Jessica Tunkel. She says that Netflix trusted employees with a lot of leeway.
Everyone could trust. access strategy plans and could weigh in on things. You know, the expense policy was like act in Netflix's best interest. So if that meant flying business class, go do it. If it means taking your team to a five-star restaurant, go do it. Like it was, there was no red tape on anything.
Netflix also gave out really generous benefits when it came to things like vacation. And in 2015, the company added a perk that was especially unusual, even among tech companies. A whole year of paid parental leave.
So the idea behind this was, look, we're looking at tech companies all the time. We're trying to recruit from them. Google was one that they talk about a lot. Google's policy at the time, I believe, was 18 weeks paid leave, which was pretty significant. And they said, let's do better than that. Let's say people can take up to a year unlimited. And so they did.
But as the company has grown, it turns out that what you put on paper isn't always what happens in practice. And Netflix has been pulling back on some of its generous benefits. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson. It's Monday, January 6th. Coming up on the show, the cultural reckoning at Netflix.
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