Netflix laid off 150 employees in new round of layoffs

Netflix will lay off about 150 employees across the company, according to an internal memo sent and received on Tuesday. hollywood reporter.

Layoffs represent 2% of Streamer’s total workforce, with the majority of reductions taking place in the United States. Netflix is ​​also changing its animation division, eliminating 70 roles in that division, as well as reducing its contracting roles across its social media and publishing channels.

Affected employees must receive termination packages within four months, although this period may be extended by the employee’s job title and length of time with the company.

“As we explained at Profit, slowing our revenue growth means we must also slow cost growth as a company,” said a Netflix spokesperson. “Unfortunately, today we have around 150 employees, most of them in the United States. These changes are driven primarily by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them particularly difficult because none of us wants to say goodbye to these great colleagues. We are working to support you during this very difficult transition period. ”

The new round of cuts comes less than a month after many employees and full-time hires in Netflix’s editorial and marketing departments were laid off.

In April, when it announced its first-quarter revenue, Netflix revealed that it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the quarter and a further 2 million in the second quarter. As growth slows, Netflix plans to roll out cheaper ad-supported tiers and start “shifting” costs to maintain a margin, though Streamer is still expected to spend $17 billion on content.

“We’re seeing an increase in our content and non-content spending,” Spencer Neumann, chief financial officer, said during an earnings call last month. “We’ve tried to be smart and prudent in terms of increasing these costs to reflect the reality of business revenue growth.”

Last week, Netflix also released an updated culture memo for the company that includes, among other changes, a guideline for employees to “spend our members’ money wisely.” While executives have used similar phrases in the past, the inclusion of this line in a cultural memo is an obvious change for a company once known for lavish spending.

After Netflix’s disappointing quarterly launch and subsequent stock slump, the company’s longstanding confidence with some of its employees has been shaken. “It looks like they really lost control of the story,” a Netflix source said. THR. “Everything is buzzing right now and that’s why they feel they need it. [send the memo]”Because the trust was broken.”