Tag: Hr

Exit Interviews Are a Trap

It’s tempting to air your grievances at your exit interview. Don’t. There’s almost no upside to speaking up, and tremendous potential downside. Avoid exit interviews if you can. If you must go, be totally bland; say nothing negative.

April 4th, 2022 • career exit interviews hr jobs

Book Review: Powerful (Patty McCord)

Patty McCord was Netflix’s first head of HR and a member of its executive team for 14 years. She (along with Reed Hastings, Netflix’s founder and CEO). She’s probably best known as the co-author (with Hastings) of Netflix’s famous Culture Deck, a 125-slide deck that lays out Netflix’s unusual culture. Powerful is a deep examination of that culture and its ramifications. It’s one of the better dissections of what “culture” really is and how it works. I recommend it to anyone in a position to influence company culture. You may or may not want to mimic Netflix, but thinking through which parts of Netflix’s culture you do and don’t want to mimic is an excellent exercise – it certainly was for me.

January 18th, 2022 • books culture hr management netflix

Dear Potheads, You Can Work for the U.S. Government, Maybe

If you’ve used marijuana, can you still get hired by the Federal Government? Yes, but it’s complicated. I’ll try to explain…

October 25th, 2021 • 18f drugs hr jobs marijuana policy public service

The limits of "unlimited" vacation

Obligatory Disclaimer: this post discusses unlimited vacation policies. My employer (Heroku) has one such policy. However, this post isn’t really specifically about Heroku’s policy; it’s about the concept in general, not any specific implementation. As is always the case, on this site I speak for myself, not my company or anyone else.

Many companies, especially tech companies, have adopted “unlimited” vacation policies — instead of a set number of days of paid time off (PTO), employees are told something along the lines “take as much time as you need”. For example, here’s what Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on vacation, from his famous and influential slide deck on Netflix’s employment culture:

March 18th, 2014 • hr vacation