Has Netflix’s staggering rise been because of the way the company is run, or was the world ripe for streaming TV and movies? According to this book about its corporate culture by CEO Hastings and writer and academic Meyer, it’s entirely because of the radical approach the company takes to rules. Or rather, to not having rules.

No Rules Rules is an interesting glimpse into the inner workings of this secretive company that’s never made viewer numbers public, and who extol a radical internal transparency, telling any employee who cares to know about anybody’s salary. A good example is its annual leave policy. There isn’t one, everybody is encouraged to take as much time off as they need whenever they need it. Ripe for abuse, you might think? Netflix agrees, but says the positives that emerge from a policy of staffing positions with the highest of high achievers and paying them above-market rates outweighs any negatives.

More than once Hastings and Meyer talk about the need to treat people like adults rather than micromanaging them. Everyone is encouraged to make large bets, fail often and improve from the experience – playing it constantly safe is the sackable offence.

But while it all sounds like Shangri-La, there are counterarguments to all the Kool-aid drinking going on here. Is Netflix so successful because it has these extreme practices or because it’s making so much money it can all be run like an out-of-control train with little negative effects?

More than once Hastings and Meyer talk about adopting the metaphor of the company being a high-performance sports team rather than a family – where you can be fired at a minute’s notice if you’re not the extreme high performer they thought you were, or business conditions change and render your skillset useless. It reminded me of the 2018 story, ‘Netflix’s culture of fear’, from online publication The Week, which talks about the constant atmosphere of terror most people have for their jobs.

It’s illuminating and full of radical (maybe ‘great’, maybe not) ideas about how to run a global corporation but it’s very American, full of buzzwords (talking about mistakes and failures is called ‘sunshining’). An irony is that, while purporting to be about not having rules, it seeks to make an algorithm out of every aspect of corporate life, from giving feedback to colleagues both up and down the chain, to entering a new market and managing the cultural differences.

In fact, at one point Hastings talks about how chief lieutenant Ted Sarandos is the creative guy and how Hastings himself came from a software and systems background. With all their maps and meetings and formalised structures to tell people what they’re doing wrong and rewarding them for trying, he’s trying to systematise everything – even human relations.

You’ll roll your eyes at a lot of it, but who are we to judge a company whose share price has gone from less than US$50 to $550 in 10 years?

Reviewed by Drew Turney