Netflix Fires Hundreds of Employees In Light Of “Slower Revenue Growth”
Netflix hasn’t gone broke from getting woke, but it certainly seems to be hurting from it, as the streaming giant has just fired hundred of its employees due to what they describe as “slower revenue growth”.
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Speaking to Deadline on June 23rd, a Netflix spokeswoman confirmed that, “Today we sadly let go of around 300 employees.”
“While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth,” she said. “We are so grateful for everything they have done for Netflix and are working hard to support them through this difficult transition.”
The entertainment news outlet further noted that according to their sources, while the cuts mostly impacted teams in the United States, it also effected the company’s offices for the Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Latin America regions.
This news comes on the heels of Netflix showing the door to a number of personnel in May, at the time sacking approximately 150 full-time employees and severing ties with dozens more part-timers and contracters.
“As we explained on earnings, our slowing revenue growth means we are also having to slow our cost growth as a company,” the streaming giant explained in a statement issued alongside the news. “So sadly, we are letting around 150 employees go today, mostly U.S.-based. These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them especially tough as none of us want to say goodbye to such great colleagues. We’re working hard to support them through this very difficult transition.”
Further, as part of a marketing department restructuring undertaken in April, Netflix also previously laid off 25 editorial staffers and contractors from their Tudum fan-site division.
Notably, all of these staff reductions came after Netflix reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers during the first quarter of 2022.
Amidst these continuing cuts, some have questioned what role, if any, Netflix’s embrace of ‘wokeness’ has played into their current financial troubles.
While there are likely multiple factors that are causing viewers to leave the streaming service, their production and antagonistic promotion of such productions as Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Cuties, Dear White People, and Cowboy Bebop, it seems that their turn towards identity and gender politics may be playing an even bigger role in than even they seem to realize.
Netflix’s troubles are even more interesting when put into the context of the industry as a whole, as though the company remains the streaming service with the most subscribers, it isn’t the unchallenged champion it once was.
With the rise of such streaming services as Disney Plus, Crunchyroll, Paramount Plus, and even Peacock have provided Netflix with more that its fair share of increasingly stiff competition – a concept that to the streamer once seemed all but impossible.
However, it wasn’t just them.
In May 2021, media mogul Barry Diller shared his opinion with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin that Netflix has won the streaming wars “several years ago“.
“They’re the only ones who have the scale and momentum to keep making these somewhat lunatic investments in programming,” he said. “You cannot compete with the momentum, the scale, no one will ever be able to do that.”
Yet much has changed in the year since Diller made those remarks, as after years of seizing upon Netflix’s and learning from occasional difficulties, the aforementioned competition has slowly altered the streaming landscape in their favor.
And wokeness has been a meaningful factor in all of it.
Ultimately, with the news of these latest firings, some will argue that this round of Netflix layoffs are but the latest sign that people are starting to reject the general concept of wokeness in their entertainment.
While they are right to a certain degree, it would be forward to claim that things are about to change.
After all, the woke run society, and so wokeness in Hollywood is here to stay.
What do you make of these latest round of Netflix cuts? Let us know your thought on social media or in the comments down below!
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