Hastings bypasses provided references to find backdoor sources loyal to him
Reed Hastings · Netflix Founder Reed Hastings on Scaling High-Trust Culture & Bold Judgment · Jun 10, 2025 · at 12:25
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings discusses executive hiring techniques and reference checking strategies with Shane Parrish.
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“Yeah, I mean, we rarely ask people for references because those are so anodyne. So then it's climbing through LinkedIn histories, finding cross things going to quite some lengths to get references that are more loyal to me than they are to the candidate.”
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