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is super interesting to think about. As I've said, as my career has progressed, I
feel really cognizant of how awesome it is to have a great team. And once you
have a great team, you want to keep that team. So to me it's very interesting
to think about the factors that cause people to move on. Especially here in
the Valley, where there are so many interesting opportunities and where any-
body on my team could jump ship and find another super-interesting position
somewhere else very easily. So why they stay at Netflix, and how I can keep
them engaged and wanting to stay rather than jumping into something else—
I'm really interested in understanding those factors.
I think it's really hard, because people in this day and age—in the Valley
anyway—are sort of trained to move every couple of years. That's how you
progress your career. It's by doing some other new, exciting thing. So, it's
been interesting working on this side project as an advisor and studying the
problem from a data perspective. It's essentially using the LinkedIn API to
study and try to understand at what point people churn, and whether you can
predict that from things like their LinkedIn data.
Gutierrez: Are there any interesting insights that you've been able to apply
to your team here at Netflix?
Smallwood: A few. Whether the model is right or wrong about somebody—
predicting that somebody is a risk has caused me to have conversations with
my own team that I might not have otherwise had. It's probably those conver-
sations that mattered the most. It really helps to make sure you check in with
people and ask, “Are you happy and engaged? If you're not, let's talk about it,
because I can't promise you we can change it, but we can certainly talk about
it and try.” So I think it's very easy in a fast-paced business to lose track that
a whole year has gone by and you don't know if people are happy or not.
That's a dangerous thing to let happen if you want to make sure your team's
engaged.
Gutierrez: You're incredibly proud of the team and really enjoy the cama-
raderie that you have. Is this something you've instilled in your team, or is it
something that you look for when you hire?
Smallwood: I think it's both. It certainly has a lot to do with the characteris-
tics of the people that you hire. And it's also about having common goals and
things you're excited about as a team. Having people feel like they can really
trust one another and be inspired by one another is a big part of it as well.
I also think some of it is my own experience from decades of working in this
space. I've learned to appreciate things like team camaraderie more than I might
have earlier. When I was five years into my career, I probably didn't nearly
appreciate the depth of what it is to have a great team as much as I do now.
 
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