Netflix Offers Not Only Unlimited Rentals, But Also Unlimited Vacation
In this age of decreasing perks, it's semi-refreshing, semi-enraging to discover that Netflix salaried employees get unlimited vacation. Workers can fly the coop for more than a month at a time without checking in.
This isn't a new development by any means — Netflix has had the policy since early this decade and the Oakland Tribune did a story on the phenomenon back in 2007 — but the revelation is more resounding in today's economic climate, with its increasingly harried workforce. Those lucky enough to have a job today are afraid bosses will be all too happy to grant permanent vacations if they ask for excessive time off.
Netflix's time off rules - or lack thereof - are part of a broad culture of employee autonomy instilled in the company when Hastings founded it a decade ago. The executives trust staffers to make their own decisions on everything - from whether to bring their dog to the office to how much of their salary they want in cash and how much in stock options. Workers are treated, as Chief Talent Officer Patty McCord likes to say, as adults.
One problem with the seemingly dream setup: Employees sometimes return all scratched up and unplayable.
Vacation policy at Netflix: Take as much as you want [BNet]
(Photo:Marike 79)
Post a comment
Comments:
The high definition employees also return with slight cracks at the edges.
Wow...treating educated grown ups responsible for your success like adults! That is an outrage!
As a manager I always try to offer as much flex as i can, within the limits of policy (and sometimes out of policy). You would be amazed at how much flak i get from the old line. Even with better than budget performance, high staff and customer satisfaction and low turnover. I constantly get smacked around for letting grown ups act like grown ups. There is a reason the old guys need to get out of the business ASAP. Tech savvy newcomers just dont enjoy being treated like idiots.
Wow, I want to work for Netflix.
So they get paid for any time off they take? What if someone takes a few months off to travel? They still get paid?
I can take unpaid time off at my job if I want to travel too. The only difference is that my I bill my hours so I would have to make them up during the year. Bleh.
Check in with them when legitimate competitors emerge. Or just ask Googlers where tea service went after the stock dropped a few hundred points. All it takes is five seconds of legitimate hardship and all of this non-standard stuff goes away completely.
So if I take a job with netflix, i can take vacation every morning from 9-10:30am?
Wait wait wait... the company trusts its employees? Really? Without micromanagement?
Holy crap, how do I apply?
My guess is 99% of employees will be fair, honest, and "adult" about using these perks. Unfortunately, for us normal, law-abiding "adults", there's always one who has to buck the system, get more than they give, abuse the system, and ruin it for everyone.
I really wish those 1% would be treated as a minority instead of ruining it for everyone. I never did get why that happens (mass punishment for the act of one or a small few who abuse the system).
Bravo to Netflix. Let's hope they have no problems dealing with those who will abuse the system eventually.
I work in a department of three, and love to travel. We arranged it a few years back to all be involved in each others' work, and use one email for clients to send.
the result is a more "help desk" work environment, which lets one person leave early, come in late, take days off without needing to notify the whole world or have work missed, because another one of us will just take over and cover without the ouside needing to know.
people don't like taking vacations because of the prep work and worry - but since we've transitioned to that workset nobody cares when or where we go - and our boss is cool with us maximizing our time - and then some
@ADismalScience: Actually, I've heard Google still treats their employees pretty well, even if not as well as they used to. Also, GoDaddy treats their employees VERY well.
They do okay. The point is, it's all fun and games until a lean competitor forces your board to answer uncomfortable cost questions at a shareholder meeting.
@citking: I bet they fire those 1% pretty quickly. If that's the case, thent hey really ARE treating them like minorities.
@ADismalScience: I think NetFlix will be fine. They've been doig this for a while, yes? And there is no real direct competition out there for NetFlix, and I don't see any competition coming any time soon.
I normally refrain from pointing out typos, but... "fly the coupe?" Unless you're literally talking about flying cars -- in which case where do I get one? -- the expression is "fly the coop."
And yes, I wish I worked for a company with a vacation policy like that.
Well, they're sitting there with costs that most companies just don't have. If I'm Google, I'm looking at offering video on demand - they have the infrastructure and the YouTube brand, after all. Why not sell a premium service?
If I'm Amazon I'm thinking about taking them on. I have the huge delivery infrastructure, the prime service, and the network capabilities to both stream video and deal with packages - why not?
It's a profitable market space. Competition is inevitable now that the business model has proven success. I guarantee you that there are big-money people out there looking to take Netflix on. And when they do, let's see what happens to those bennies!
Fly the coupe, huh?
Seems like a bad business model to work in a car.
This sounds great. I could see it being annoying though, depending on the corporate culture. I'd hate having to guess how much vacation a passive aggressive boss really thinks is ok. If you want me to wear 27 pieces of flair, tell me to wear 27 pieces of flair!
@citking: It's because no one knows who will be in the 1% until they've already abused the system.
Suppose the company fires all those people, and also has some normal losses due to people finding jobs elsewhere. They have to hire a new batch of people... and it's inevitable there will be a couple of people in that group who abuse it as well.
There's simply no way to offer flexible benefits like that without people taking advantage of it. In a perfect world (for example), movie theaters would stop paying people to sell and check tickets, and lower the ticket price because of it. Instead they could put a box outside where people would deposit the correct amount of cash. Everyone wins and money is saved on both sides.
But since people suck, if that happened in the real world everyone would just go to the movies for free and someone would steal any money that was actually left in the box.
@nakedscience: Lets not forget that ten years ago nobody thought Blockbuster could be brought down. Then, seemingly in a blink of an eye, some upstart rental company appeared out of nowhere and has nearly destroyed them with a better model.
Who was that company?
There is always a better model.
And in my job, I'm afraid to take vacation.
I would wager most employees end up taking less vacation, and those that take more vacation days than they otherwise would have still get their work done. When employees have a set number of vacation days, especially when those days are lost if not used, you can bet an employee is going to take all the days they can, and probably not worry too much about missing the work when they aren't there.
@humphrmi: The thing is, NetFlix is unique. Blockbuster wasn't. NetFlix offers a LOT more than just online DVD rentals now.
I currently work for a company that has the same policy. It was announced that this would be our new vacation policy, and that some big name companies had already instituted this policy with great success so we would be following suit.
All told, it's worked out fine so far. Everyone behaves like adults, and no one disappears for 3 months at a time. I like being able to take as many days off as I need (it's really great when you're sick and you don't have to worry about conserving those precious few sick days you typically get per year).
The *only* disadvantage that I've been able to discern from this policy is that you don't get that nice payout when you leave the company, for accrued but unused PTO. That's kind of a bummer.
And when you leave, how much vacation do you get paid for?
@barb95: I bet they don't get unlimited paid vacation. I don't work for Netflix, but I imagine that they have some sort of vacation-time bank you can accrue hours to, and get paid for. If you want to take extra time off after that, that's probably up to you, but without pay.
@ianmac47: A friend of mine works for a company with a similar policy and says this is exactly what happens. No one wants to be seen to be taking more time off that others, so overall people take fewer vacation days. It makes her company look all cool and flexible, but in reality it causes a lot more angst about taking vacation than if there was a set number of days each year.
@RandomHookup: We have this policy at my place of employment. You don't get any payment since you don't accrue vacation time. It looks really good on the books for the company since they don't have that financial liability hanging over them all the time.
@Magspie: You nailed it right on the head. That happens where I work since we have this policy. It's pretty fantastic.
/sarcasm
I doubt this is exactly as it appears. My employer (another high tech company who draws from the same set of prospective employees that netflix does) also offers "unlimited time off" as a benefit. But, if we want more than six weeks a year, we have to ask permission from our manager, and then his manager. Who knows if you'd actually get the permission or not, I don't think anyone I know has been brazen enough to ask for more than the allowed six weeks.
So despite the "unlimited" policy, it's really a six-weeks-a-year policy, in practice. Not that I'm complaining, six weeks isn't bad.
If any of my employees left for a month it would probably occur to me that I don't need them...
@ADismalScience: meanwhile, as the linked article states quite clearly, other strong companies at the time (2007) were also adding benefits even in the face of competition.
Meet the new business, not the same as the old business. Hope you're used to change!
@Magspie: Well technically, 27 is the minimum number of pieces of flair. You don't want to do just the minimum, do you?
IIRC, Xerox employees get unlimited sick time, which includes time off to care for sick kids and other loved ones. While unlimited vacation seems like a great concept, I can't help but think like ianmac47 - many of my coworkers would turn this into a nut-off to see how few vacation days they take per year. After all, the company can't spare the really important employees for weeks at a time.
Unlimited sick days, though, would keep contagious employees from spreading the SARS/Hamthrax/disease of the moment to their coworkers, and also reduce stress levels of parents scrambling to find alternate arrangements for sick children. Add in work-from-home flexibility, and that's a company culture I'd apply for.
awesome yet sucks at the same time!
As I stated, these benefits are a FUNCTION of being a strong company - they disappear in adversity and competition. Your counter is circuitous. Controlling costs isn't just "stodgy" or "old-school," it's the finest hedge available. You can succeed during the idylls by claiming that pampering genius, entitled employees is key to your profits, but that fantasy has a way of ending badly. Just ask someone who works at Yahoo or Microsoft.
I haven't had a day off since I was hired except for Christmas and New Years.
Is Netflix hiring?
@chocobo: Kind of like the Halloween ritual where someone isn't home and is told to take 1 piece of candy out of the dish. I do understand that.
Perhaps the smart, honest people should devise some sort of trap to catch these people and do like a Logan's Run: You get caught (instead of old), your hand turns red (red handed, get it?) and we hunt you down and kill you or something.
This is probably more due to the fact that companies have to carry accrued vacation time as a liability from an accounting perspective.
"Unlimited" vacation means that there is no set amount of vacation that the company has to pay out when you quit either.
Realistically, people still have to listen to their managers and it's unlikely that they can take off for a month like that.
The progressive thought is that a month to go on a refreshing trip will reap multitudes more in benefits, in the form of a productive, refreshed employee.
@Mobius: But what if you get screwed over by a manager who won't let you take vacation? I don't argue that you are right, but I'm not sure our laws have caught up with creative ways of doing business like this. I could see a judge awarding someone vacation pay anyway.
Some studies have shown that workers in other countries are more healthy because they get to take more vacation and rest time. American workers are some of the most overworked in the world, and have the vacation time below a lot of 3rd world countries. We are absolutely terrible at preventative medicine...both physical and mental. Is it a wonder we are also the most over-medicated?
@ADismalScience: Perhaps their benefits are one of the reasons they ARE a strong company. When everybody wants to work for you and you have your pick of employees, and when your employees don't want to leave because of the great benefits, that's good for your company. People who abuse the system or weaken the company through taking advantage of it know they have a hundred others waiting for their job, and what's out there is worse.
@ADismalScience: What about Zappo's? They're actually in a fairly competitive market, and their culture still is pretty generous toward employees.
My old job didnt have unlimited paid time off, but I was given so much that I couldnt possibly do my job and use all of it within the year. (a believe me I tried). My first year there, I took over a month paid time off over the course of 12 months. The thought is that as long as you can do your job, there is no problem with it. I was a systems admin, so even when away I could remote in and fix things with a company provided laptop and a company paid for sprint broad band card, or they could call me on my company paid for phone, which also got email all the time.
There were caps on how much vacation you could have stocked up at once, I think it was like 32 days for your first year, once you hit that cap, you had to use some and then you could accrue back to the cap, so you ouldnt take more than a month straight off, although it is likely that if you did, you would be fired for not doing your job anyway.
They also gave a 6 month paid sobatical for employees 10 year anneversary, and by your 5th year, you accrued paid time off to work 4 days a week, taking the 5th as paid time off every week, and still have enough for a 2-3 week vacation.
The cut these benefits dramatically right before I quit (part of quitting was the cut in benefits, since they pay was lower than average for the position, but when I took the job the benefits made up for it)
@nakedscience: I agree with you, but I would substitute "first to market" for the word "unique". When someone else comes to market with something even more "unique" or a lower price, NetFlix will either adapt their model or be forced to cut costs to remain competitive.
@ianmac47: thats how my old company was as well. For salary positions, you could take pretty much as much time off as you wanted, and even if you hadnt accrued the time off you could request Paid time off if you have a vacation or something coming up. Salary positions were typically those where people actually care about their job and are responsible, so they dont take off for 2 months for no reason, so it works out.
"Employees sometimes return all scratched up and unplayable"
Bravo. Bravo.