Last week, we reported that Netflix was planning to lay off around 5% of its workforce, around 850 employees. That round of layoffs was announced today and was larger than expected.
According to. report from The Wall Street Journal, the company announced that it would be laying off around 6% of its workforce, totaling around 1,000 employees, in a memo sent to employees.
“Our mission — to entertain the world — is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources,” co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said in the memo. They also shared that product, tech, legal, and HR teams would be hardest hit by the move.
The last major round of layoffs at the company was in 2022, when about 450 employees were let go. That round of layoffs came after a disappointment first quarter when Netflix lost around 200,000 subscribers following a price hike in January 2022 and a crackdown on password sharing.
This time, it was thought the layoffs would be due to slow growth numbers, with user engagement only increasing by 2% in the first half of this year.
In the memo ro employees, Sarandos and Peters wrote “Our business is strong and growing, and we remain on track to deliver our full year forecast. We’ll continue to invest aggressively in high impact areas to improve our service and further drive growth and innovation. Doing that means making focused choices across the business so we can keep delivering for our members, partners, employees, and investors.”
Among those impacted by the layoffs were Lisa Lang McMullen, director of overall deals and series; James Oh, director of drama series; and Carolina Garcia and Andrew McQuinn, both directors of original series, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Netflix Q3 earnings call is scheduled for October 20, when we expect to hear more about the streamer’s plans for growth for the end of the year and into 2027.
