Software that treats people like people, not like cogs in the machine

We believe that Netflix employees fundamentally want to do the right thing, and, as a company, we give people the freedom to do their work as they see fit. As we say in the Netflix Culture Deck, responsible people thrive on freedom, and are worthy of freedom. This isn’t just a nice thing to say–we believe people are most productive and effective when they they aren’t hemmed in by excessive rules and process.

That freedom must be respected by the systems, tools, and procedures we design, as well.

By providing personalized, actionable information–and not relying on automatic enforcement–Stethoscope respects people’s time, attention, and autonomy, while improving our company’s security outcomes.

If you have similar values in your organization, we encourage you to give Stethoscope a try.

Education, not automatic enforcement

It’s important to us that people understand what simple steps they can take to improve the security state of their devices, because personal devices–which we don’t control–may very well be the first target of attack for phishing, malware, and other exploits. If they fall for a phishing attack on their personal laptop, that may be the first step in an attack on our systems here at Netflix.

We also want people to be comfortable making these changes themselves, on their own time, without having to go to the help desk.

To make this self service, and so people can understand the reasoning behind our suggestions, we show additional information about each suggestion, as well as a link to detailed instructions.