Justin Singer: Person

Reason #1004 why Reed Hastings is my favorite public-company CEO

Henry Blodget (Business Insider): Lastly, I have a couple questions about Netflix’s culture. I was fascinated by the presentation you did about that a couple of years ago. For example, the fact that you have no set vacation policy company-wide—that folks can take as much vacation as they want. When I broached that idea here asking if it was a good idea and if we should do that, people freaked out because they said “No, what’ll happen is everyone will work around the clock and I will feel like I can never take a vacation.” Why do you have the no vacation policy?

Reed Hastings (Netflix CEO): I would say we don’t have a “no vacation” policy, that’s a little ambiguous. Instead, we have no policy on vacation. Perhaps because I take lots of great vacations it sets a good example. If you [Henry] were more visibly on vacation and then when you asked the question about it, everyone would probably relax. To the degree that you hardly ever are seen to take vacation, that might scare people.

BI: So it’s my fault?

RH: I think so. 

BI: And the other thing you said that jumped out was “We’re not a family, we’re a professional sports team. Therefore, we’re going to try to have the best players at every position, and that means that folks who are B-players are going to be working elsewhere.” And when I raised that as a possibility here, people said “It’s ridiculous. There are lots of players who are B’s who want to be A’s. It’s just much too harsh.” What’s your reaction to that?

RH: You’re over-simplifying with A’s and B’s. There’s a lot of graduations in terms of how someone performs. We’ve often had someone who was performing OK at one job so we move them to another job and they do fantastic. So it’s not even that much a reflection on the person. But in general, a sports-oriented model is “If you want to win the championships, you have to have great players who can work together.” You need both of those, and so that’s what we focus on: getting great people who can work together.