I'm not sure we disagree all that significantly. ;)
I didn't mean to imply that we don't work in, join or even thrive in "teams." I meant the elite sports team analogy is a bad idea, usually. That's the analogy I netflix is going for, I believe. They meant it in that context, as you said:
There's no shame in getting cut, and you should be proud that you had the talent to perform at our level for the time you did.
All this has to be thought of as a management philosophy, because that's what it is. A Theory Of How We Do Things Here." Most os the time, work isn't sports-like. Objectivity is one fundamental difference, and actually running things like a sports team requires it. Hackathons are done to create sports-like scenarios on occasion. Trying to go past that, objectivity ends up biting you. ... you'll end up with productivity measures or some other low-autonomy management style.
This was my point about taboo. It's an example of reality leaking into the metaphor, making it unsustainable. Companies mostly don't operate in objective scenarios. Contribution is very difficult to ascertain, especially for the kind of work that requires elite performance.
Ultimately, a sports team is the way it is because of what it is. A team of artists shouldn't try to organise like a team of rowers or a software team like a sales team.
Incidentally, many sales teams run exactly like netflix aspires to... and without much effort. Their reality is objective. A 10X salesman can actually earn 10X, like an elite athlete does. There are elite teams and it is prestigious to have a stint there, even though most don't last.
I didn't mean to imply that we don't work in, join or even thrive in "teams." I meant the elite sports team analogy is a bad idea, usually. That's the analogy I netflix is going for, I believe. They meant it in that context, as you said:
There's no shame in getting cut, and you should be proud that you had the talent to perform at our level for the time you did.
All this has to be thought of as a management philosophy, because that's what it is. A Theory Of How We Do Things Here." Most os the time, work isn't sports-like. Objectivity is one fundamental difference, and actually running things like a sports team requires it. Hackathons are done to create sports-like scenarios on occasion. Trying to go past that, objectivity ends up biting you. ... you'll end up with productivity measures or some other low-autonomy management style.
This was my point about taboo. It's an example of reality leaking into the metaphor, making it unsustainable. Companies mostly don't operate in objective scenarios. Contribution is very difficult to ascertain, especially for the kind of work that requires elite performance.
Ultimately, a sports team is the way it is because of what it is. A team of artists shouldn't try to organise like a team of rowers or a software team like a sales team.
Incidentally, many sales teams run exactly like netflix aspires to... and without much effort. Their reality is objective. A 10X salesman can actually earn 10X, like an elite athlete does. There are elite teams and it is prestigious to have a stint there, even though most don't last.