Netflix interview: culture, candour and the bar you are measured against
· 7 min read
Many companies publish a "our values" page nobody rereads. Netflix publishes a culture document its interviewers genuinely use as a grid. Reading it is not a bonus: it is the minimum, and not having read it shows within three questions.
Do you really need to read the culture document before applying?
Yes, and not diagonally. It describes a precise operating model: high autonomy, little process, direct candour, and an openly stated performance expectation. Almost every interview question flows from it. A candidate who has not read it answers questions correctly without having understood their intent, which produces right-but-irrelevant answers.
What exactly is meant by candour?
Not bluntness, and that is the most common misreading. What is valued is voicing disagreement at the right moment to the right person, rather than afterwards in a corridor. In interviews this becomes questions like "tell me about a disagreement with your manager". A good answer contains three things: what you said, that you said it directly to them, and what you did once the decision went against you.
What is "the bar" and why is it discussed so much?
- The company openly aims for small teams of highly experienced people, with the trade-offs that implies.
- Very junior roles are rare: they hire people able to decide alone, not to be supervised daily.
- Pay is generally high and so is the expectation of results — the two go together and are announced as such.
- In interviews this becomes a recurring question: what did you decide without asking permission, and how did it turn out?
How do the interviews actually run?
The format varies by team and country, but the outline recurs: a first conversation with recruiting, then several rounds with the manager and the team, often with a role-related exercise. Exchanges are direct, sometimes abrupt for the unprepared, and follow-up questions come fast. It is not aggression: it is the house conversational tempo.
How should you answer a question about failure?
Without cushioning. The classic mistake is choosing a harmless failure, which reads as evasion. Tell something that genuinely cost, say what you decided to do differently, and above all what you told the people involved at the time. The STAR method still helps structure it, provided you do not water down the R.
Candour is not saying everything you think. It is not keeping to yourself the thing that would have changed the decision.
Finally, prepare the pay conversation: offers are often negotiated directly, without multiple rounds. See negotiating your salary and difficult interview questions.