That they fire people rather arbitrarily is being written about in a national publication. So someone applying for a job has a good chance of understanding it going into the process. That's a pretty high degree of transparency about how they do things.
That's not really what we're talking about when we're talking about 'transparency' her. Just because it's known that something happens doesn't mean it happens in a transparent fashion. Transparency of process is important, too, and required before you can really call something 'transparent'.
As it stands, the person making the decision could be doing so for totally arbitrary reasons. It doesn't appear that there's an established process or criteria in place beyond "I don't feel like I'd hire X now" -- the rationale "Because Executive Y says so" is not transparent in the slightest.
I think the part that is transparent is that you're not going to build your career and retire at Netflix, you know it's a stint. It may be arbitrary and capricious otherwise, but you know that in advance and can decide if it's worth it. I would not mind being in such an environment for a stint, myself.
I think the part that is transparent is that you're not going to build your career and retire at Netflix, you know it's a stint.
But anybody who has been paying attention has known that any job is "just a stint" since at least the 90's, if not the 80's. A big part of the Re-engineering[1] push of the 90's involved reducing costs, at least in part by reducing head-count. And before that, you had the 80's LBO[2] craze, which resulted in dramatic layoffs at many companies.
As a Gen-X'er who grew up in the 80's, I have never expected to have a life-long career at a single company, and I can't imagine many - if any - of my peers imagining that either. In this regard, there's nothing unique at Netflix. All jobs are essentially "temp" jobs in this day and age.
There are varying levels of job security, and the loyalty part in technology especially just means that you have to voluntarily leave to another company to get treated better. I'd rather work somewhere that had little to no job security but where everyone was on the ball. Otherwise, the detritus starts to pile up when they aren't mobile within the market.
