Netflix CEO's Glassdoor Rating Drops to 76%

Glassdoor, an employer rating service, has an interesting story that looks at CEO ratings based on the proximity of the employee to the CEO. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has a HQ approval rating of 92%, but a non HQ rating of only 55%, which could account for his drop from 91% approval to 76%. Hasting is still one of the top CEO's on Glassdoor with more than 50 reviews, coming in at #13.

Comments

[Dacker]

Netflix has their major call center up here outside Portland, OR. From what I hear through the local grapevine, the comments and complaints on Glassdoor about Netflix management inaccessibility and their employment practices are spot-on.

As a long-term customer with interest and skills to work on the Watch Instantly technology, I've been waiting for an appropriate job posting. I'm revising my thoughts about possibly employment as I hear and read more about these issues.

[Seth]

Reed's employment ideas only work in an ideal setting. It's great to hire all the best employees and build a utopian company. However, it's not reflective of the real world. It's more difficult to run businesses where not any everyone is a star.

Reed's system also doesn't account for chaos theory, i.e. in a large company where a variety of workers are employed, some workers will unexpectedly succeed and innovate in areas that are not "star systems."

Does Netflix look for stars amongst its hourly workers? Are there any stories of someone Netflix would have never hired for management going up the ladder? If not, they may be missing out on an additional ingredient for their success.

(No, I am not talking about myself. I'm not an unappreciated worker. I do think that companies that hire all "stars" sometimes miss some people that are very talented but far off the radar).

[chicken]

I'm not surprised at the findings. AS someone else said - all customer service is outside Portland, OR - and they have a really high turnover rate and management is hired from the "outside" and it's all about numbers and metrics and not about customer service, developing the employees or empowering them to do what's best for the customer. It has lost the "Reed" touch and policies and philosophies are built on "we don't care if people stay, we can always find new, uneducated bodies to talk to our cusotmers." Mangement is now built on a culture of fear and the employees are not allowed to truly share any best practices or really aid a complex customer.

[fiver]

The customer service center outside Portland was a place Reed used to visit often along with other company brass. That has changed and I cannot agree more with chicken's comments. The turnover is astounding. Netflix advertises for customer service and graveyard customer service help every other week. It's a fact that the average employee is there less than six months. Portland's population cannot support that type of turnover-the talent pool has been exhausted and I wouldn't be surprised to see the call center relocate to another region to drain another untapped resource. It's a great way to keep dvd subscription rates down, which we are all in favor of.

[ihavenoname]

i worked for Netflix before they moved their customer service to OR. i would say it's one of the worst companies i've ever worked for.

chicken said "Mangement is now built on a culture of fear and the employees are not allowed to truly share any best practices or really aid a complex customer."

i know for a fact it was not that way when Customer service was in Sunnyvale, CA. They (the reps) were told to take free reign over the call and do whatever necessary (within reason) to make the customer happy.

[chicken]

i agree w/ ihavenoname- from my friends who work & worked there - they used to have free reign to use their own judgment to do what they needed to to help the customer & retain the customer - not anymore. now it's focused on get in , get out & don't give anything away.