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Reed Hastings developed a discipline of staging formal debates with employees. He’d ask a few people to prepare arguments both for and against a possible change to make and present their findings to the whole team in the Netflix theater, and then they’d break into small groups to debate the positions. At one such meeting, the question was, “Should we spend more money, less money, or no money on kids’ content. . . . One director who is also a mom got up onstage and passionately declared, ‘Before working here I subscribed to Netflix exclusively so my daughter could watch Dora the Explorer. I care a lot more about what my kids watch than what I watch myself.’” The debate led to the decision to hire a VP of kids and family programming, as well as to begin creating original animated shows. “After two years,” Hastings reports, the company had “tripled our kids’ slate, and in 2018, we were nominated for three Emmys for our original kids’ shows.

Hildebrand, StarkThe Life Cycle of a CEO
p.169

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But for all creative jobs we would pay one incredible employee at the top of her personal market, instead of using that same money to hire a dozen or more adequate performers. This would result in a lean workforce. We’d be relying on one tremendous person to do the work of many. But we’d pay tremendously.

This is the way we have hired the majority of employees at Netflix ever since. The approach has been remarkably successful. We have exponentially increased our speed of innovation and our output.

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At most companies, the boss is there to approve or block the decisions of employees. This is a surefire way to limit innovation and slow down growth. At Netflix, we emphasize that it’s fine to disagree with your manager and to implement an idea she dislikes. We don’t want people putting aside a great idea because the manager doesn’t see how great it is. That’s why we say at Netflix: DON’T SEEK TO PLEASE YOUR BOSS. SEEK TO DO WHAT IS

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“INNOVATION CYCLE STEP 1: FARM FOR DISSENT . . . Finally, one VP said to me, “You’re so intense when you believe in something, Reed, that I felt you wouldn’t hear me. I should have laid down on the tracks screaming that I thought it would fail. But I didn’t.”

The culture at Netflix had been sending the message to our people that, despite all our talk about candor, differences of opinion were not always welcome. That’s when we added a new element to our culture. We now say that it is disloyal to Netflix when you disagree with an idea and do not express that disagreement. By withholding your opinion, you are implicitly choosing to not help the company.

HastingsNo Rules Rules
p.140-141

I can’t make the best decisions unless I have input from a lot of people. That’s why I and everyone else at Netflix now actively seek out different perspectives before making any major decision. We call it farming for dissent. Normally, we try to avoid establishing a lot of processes at Netflix, but this specific principle is so important that we have developed multiple systems to make sure dissent gets heard.

HastingsNo Rules Rules
p.142

The big guys, Neil and Reed, were set against the idea publicly and privately. At most places this would be end of discussion. But Todd Yellin, VP of product, (who worked for Neil) had doubts. He discussed with Zach Schendel (senior user experience researcher) about running some tests to find out if Neil and Reed’s claims were accurate. Zach remembers it like this:

I thought, “Neil and Reed are against this idea. Is it okay to test it out?” At any of my past employers, that would not have been a good move. But the lore at Netflix is all about lower-level employees accomplishing amazing things in the face of hierarchical opposition. With that in mind I went ahead.

MeyerNo Rules Rules
p.147