REVIEW
Former Netflix chief talent officer Patty McCord explains Netflix’s innovative hiring, firing, talent evaluation and compensation culture with verve, directness and no-nonsense prose. She offers this memoir of her experiences at Netflix as a guide to both start-ups and long-standing businesses. McCord makes clear that everything she did was in pursuit of a loyal, high-performing, innovative culture. She explains the hard-nosed choices needed to sustain such a culture, including telling employees – despite their brilliance or superlative job performance – that when they outlive their usefulness to Netflix, they should move on. McCord walks a singular tightrope as she describes the need for company loyalty to employees and employee loyalty to the company, even as both know their connection isn’t permanent or even necessarily long-lived. Her blunt, commonsense and forward-looking advice will be useful to those who work in HR and to anyone starting a company or trying to revitalize one.
