Netflix Employees Now Enjoy a Full Year of Paid Time Off To Welcome Newborns

What are your company’s benefits like? Do you get the typical 8-12 weeks of time off to enjoy your new born? Think that’s a great deal? Well Netflix just announced yesterday that their employees who become new parents are free to take up to a year of paid leave after adopting or having a child.

In a statement by Tawni Cruz, Neflix’s Chief Talent Officer, the streaming video giant said, “Parents can return part-time, full-time, or return and then go back out as needed. We’ll just keep paying them normally, eliminating the headache of switching to state or disability pay.”

The statement also explained that Netflix employees are already enjoying what is quite possibly the most generous vacation time policy ever. They do not have the typical 2 or 3 weeks of paid vacation each year. Nope. Netflix employees enjoy “unlimited paid vacation time off”. Cruz explained the reasoning behind the company having such generous time off policies by stating that they want to keep the most talented people on board.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings, explained that offering this level of benefits (which are practically unheard of) to his 2000 or more employees, requires “mature, responsible employees who care about high-quality work.”

Hastings explained, “We want responsible people who are self-motivating and self-disciplined, and we reward them with freedom. At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn’t matter as much to us. We care about great work. During the trying time for Netflix last year, our culture helped us hold everything together. When we moved too quickly for our customers and the backlash hit, there was a lot of strength and resilience on the management team. ”

While the salaries at Netflix can vary widely, it typically ranges from about $15 per hour for customer service reps fielding inquiries from their 65 million subscribers around the world, to more than $200,000 annually for software engineers.

But that’s not all! Most Netflix employees also receive stock options, which have been incredibly profitable in the past few years as the company’s shares have soared. On Tuesday, Netflix’s stock closed at $121.15, almost 16 times more than its price just three years ago.