We're a family here: what it means at work

We’re a family here in job ads

Put “we’re like a family” in a job ad, or say it in an interview, and 62.5% of job hunters lose interest. They’ve met families. It’s the fifth of eight application red flags, 0.2 points behind a board or about page with no diversity on it. Employers get told to drop the word unless the business is run by an actual family.

Other job-ad buzzwords put off far fewer people: winner’s mindset 36.7%, hustle 36.3%. Of all the corporate jargon in a job ad, family is the one job hunters take most personally.

How often job ads say it

Less than you’d think. In 1.4 million US and UK job ads, “like a family”, “rockstar” and “wear many hats” barely turn up. In the UK ads, “like a family” appeared nine times, 0.01% of them. The red-flag phrases that did show up were “fast-paced environment”, in 0.7% of all the ads, and “competitive salary”, in 3% of the UK ones. The family line mostly lives in the interview, where nobody counts it.

A team, not a family

The best-known pushback came from Netflix. Its culture deck of August 2009, by Reed Hastings and Patty McCord, is most quoted for the line “We’re a team, not a family”. Netflix’s 2024 culture memo keeps the idea and compares the company to a professional sports team. How long the original deck was depends on who’s counting. Netflix says 125 pages, others say 175 slides.

You don’t fire family

Airbnb’s Brian Chesky ran into the word’s limit in 2020, when Airbnb laid off 1,900 people, almost a quarter of its staff. In 2024 he said Airbnb used to call itself a family, then had to fire people, “and yeah, you don’t fire members of your family”. His summary: “It is true that a company is not a family.”

What it means day to day

Take the company at its word. Plenty of real families also want your Saturday, borrow things they never give back and make you feel bad for leaving early. Nobody said which kind of family.

Family talk blurs the edges of a job. Staying late turns into loyalty, saying no turns personal, and resigning feels like skipping Christmas. Asking for a raise goes the way money talks go at home: a promise to circle back. All that unpaid extra effort has a name, the “passion tax”.

When the family line comes out

It usually arrives with a request. The holiday overtime rate gets cut, volunteers are asked for, and the memo afterwards is surprised and disappointed that nobody was a team player. The record year gets a pizza party at one slice each, a branded lip balm and a thank-you post from the CEO in fluent LinkedIn speak. And in this family the presents go upward: the envelope going round in December is for the boss’s gift.

Sometimes the family is literal. The owner’s son runs sales, his cousin runs IT, and you find out which one to ask by asking the wrong one.

The rest of the list

Lists of job-ad red flags put “we’re a family” beside rockstar and ninja, two titles that belong on a list of funny job titles. Fast-paced environment, work hard play hard and unlimited PTO are on there too. Unlimited PTO can work in your favor. People with unlimited leave take about 16 days a year, against 14 on a fixed allowance. That’s two whole extra days.

Questions to ask in the interview

• “What happened the last time someone turned down weekend work?”
• “How many people left this team in the past year, and why?”
• “Is overtime paid, or does it come back as time off?”
• “What did the team get the year the company had its best results?”
• “What does family mean here on a normal Tuesday?”

An onboarding message with we’re a family here

#welcome, Monday 9:02 am

Everyone say hi to Marco, joining Customer Success today. We’re a family here in on Saturday, so don’t be shy. Heads up that the quarter-end push means most of us are online Saturday. The card for Gary’s birthday is at reception, $20 suggested.

The offer letter at the end of The Application, a job application game, signs off the same way: “Welcome to the family”.