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Reed Hastings: I Was Still Coding at Night With 50 People. Someone Told Me to Take a Shower.

By Reed Hastings · Leadership · 1 min read

At 50 people, I was still writing product at night and trying to be CEO by day. Sleeping at work. Someone finally said — shower, it's gross. And by the way, when there's bugs in your code, it's really hard to get you to fix them.

Key Points

In the first couple years, you do everything — dishes, coding, marketing, customers, investors
Every 5-10x in size, you have to evolve your management style
At real scale, you do vision and culture — not the work itself

Someone said to me — shower. It's gross. We don't want our leader to be gross. We get that you're working hard.

The First Few Years: Do Everything

Hastings: The role of CEO varies by stage. In the first couple years, you do everything. You're doing dishes at night. Coding. Writing marketing materials. Dealing with customers and investors.

You have so many disadvantages as an irrelevant little nothing as a company that you have to make up for it with talent, hard work, and brute force. If you're lucky, that's only a couple years.

In the first years you do everything. Dishes. Code. Marketing. You're an irrelevant little nothing.

The Shower Incident

Hastings: In my first company — I was 33, about 50 people — I was still trying to code at night and be CEO by day. Sleeping at work. I wasn't careful enough about taking showers.

Finally someone said — shower. It's gross. We don't want our leader to be gross. We get that you're working hard. And by the way, when there's bugs in your code, it's really hard to get you to fix them because you're off doing other things. I was trying to hold on too long to the dual roles.

50 people and I'm still coding at night. Someone said — shower. It's gross.

At Real Scale: Vision, Culture, Inspiration

Hastings: Each 5x or 10x in size, you've got to adapt. Be more strategic. You used to know every person — now you don't.

At real scale, most of what I do is vision — what markets should we be in? We should go global. We should do originals. But I'm not picking countries and I'm not picking shows. Vision in terms of culture — the rules of the road, the character of the firm. Vision. Focus. Inspiration. You can't do much of the work — it's just too big.

Vision. Focus. Inspiration. You can't do the work anymore — it's just too big.