Ever since it was founded in the late 1990s,

Netflix has tried to build a special work culture.

Think about it as sort of a corporate anti-bureocracy utopia.

So there's a lot of transparency.

That's our colleague Jessica Tuncle. She says that Netflix trusted employees with a lot of leeway. Everyone could access strategy plans and could

weigh in on things. You know, the expense policy was like act in Netflix's best interest. So if that meant flying business

class, go do it. If it means taking your team to a five-star restaurant, go do it. Like, it was,

there was no red tape on anything. Netflix also gave out really generous benefits when it came to

things like vacation.

And in 2015, the company added a perk that was especially unusual, even among tech companies, a whole year of paid parental leave.

So the idea behind this was, look, we're looking at tech companies all the time.

We're trying to recruit from them. Google was one that they talk about a lot. Google's policy at the time, I believe, was 18 weeks, paid leave, which is pretty significant. And they said, let's do better than that. Let's say people can take up to a year

unlimited. And so they did. But as the company has grown, it turns out that what you put on paper

isn't always what happens in practice.

And Netflix has been pulling back on some of its generous benefits.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knudsen.

It's Monday, January 6th.

Coming up on the show, The Cultural Reckoning at Netflix. This episode is brought to you by Curry's Business.

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