Netflix’s ownership and accountability culture enables people to learn from their mistakes truly. However, it requires a lot of groundwork to create this culture.
Learning from mistakes is different from admitting failures and sharing learning publicly. The difficult part of Netflix’s culture is the transparency level.
The required transparency and discomfort zone are high, but they are constructive. We are adults, and we take responsibility. If we are proudly taking these responsibilities and publicly stating them in front of people, we have to take learnings and accept and admit failure publicly. There is no shame in admitting failures. Postmortem Analysis Documents and meetings are good examples of taking responsibility in software engineering.
