Something to readReviews & performance
Netflix culture memo
An essay in which Netflix spells out who stays and how they're paid
Why it’s worth your time
Every employer has rules for who gets paid what and who stays, and they aren't always written down. Netflix's memo spells out its version. Reading it can make the rules where you work easier to see, and easier to ask about.
How the Netflix keeper test works
The essay · 10 min · Free
How to get it
Opens their site. We don’t copy it here; we’d rather they get the read.
- Read the memo.
Slow down in the Dream Team section, where the pay approach and the keeper test sit side by side. Notice the paragraph right after the keeper test, which encourages people to talk with their managers regularly about what's going well and what isn't.
- Write down your own company's version.
Answer three questions for where you work: how is pay set, how is performance judged, and what happens to someone who isn't working out? Mark each answer as known, guessed, or unknown. Take one guess to your next 1:1 as a question.
Good moments for this: before a reviewwhen you're weighing an offerafter a reorg
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Top-of-market pay with less job security is a trade some people would gladly make and others wouldn't, and the same person may answer differently at 25 and at 45. The memo itself says Netflix isn't for everyone.
What might make this harder
Ask how the pieces fit: if decisions about people are fast, what's the pay approach and what happens on the way out? A culture copied in parts can carry the pressure without the trade that came with it.
Questions people ask
What is the Netflix keeper test?
A question the memo asks Netflix managers to apply to each person: would I fight to keep them if they tried to leave, and would I hire them again knowing what I know now? A no, in the memo's view, means parting ways quickly is fairer to all involved.
How does Netflix decide pay?
The memo says it pays what it calls personal top of market: its judgment of what that person could earn in a similar role elsewhere, and what it would pay to keep or replace them. That's one company's stated approach, not how pay is set everywhere.
Does Netflix have a vacation policy?
The memo describes its vacation policy as two words, take vacation, and its expense policy as acting in Netflix's best interests, as part of keeping rules to a minimum.
When was the Netflix culture memo written?
The memo traces itself to a first culture deck in 2009 and calls itself a document that will keep changing.
What it says, and how it holds up
Netflix's culture document has been through several versions, and the current one, headed The Best Work of Our Lives on its jobs site, rests on four principles: a dream team of high performers, people over process, uncomfortably exciting work, and being great while always getting better. Its use to someone at work is that it says, in plain sentences, how one company judges performance, sets pay and parts ways.
The core is a comparison: Netflix wants to be a professional sports team, not a family, which means picking the best person for each position even when that means replacing someone people like. It sets pay high and asks managers to apply the keeper test. The memo also sets limits on itself: managers are meant to judge the whole record rather than single mistakes, to stick with people through short-term bumps, and to keep no one who doesn't treat colleagues with decency. Elsewhere it describes managers giving context rather than control, and an informed captain who owns each significant decision.
It's the company's own account, and it admits Netflix doesn't always live up to it. The memo also concedes that the keeper test can sound scary in the abstract. Employment rules, from notice to severance, also differ by country and state, so none of this describes what an employer can or must do where you are.
If you're reading this because your own job feels shaky, another company's memo will tell you little about your position. Your manager's read on your work, your company's recent results and how it has handled cuts before are closer to the question, and they're things you can ask about.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.