A lot of cool technology, no doubt. Unless they start writing scripts, directing, acting, editing it might not help.
It’s a bit like if a hospital had a really cool IT department, highest paid engineers, latest database tech and hardware. But it’s not enough, as their surgeons are not as good as ones from the older hospital across town.
If I were Netflix I'd probably divest the technology side of the business (which is arguably the best in the market) and sell that "software product" as a white label streaming platform to the myriad of media houses across the world trying to get into streaming.
Netflix consistently made their UX worse, they started far beyond Prime Video, nowadays, it’s a tossup. I canceled Netflix for that reason alone.
They are probably still a bit better than prime (showing shows both in keep watching and other categories, but in the other categories it’s specific seasons ignoring your last watched status; sometimes shuffling subtitle state or language for fun), but all those issues were not a thing a few years ago.
The Netflix tech lead, if it matters much at all at this point, is perpetually shrinking. There's only so much that shuffling what-to-watch-next algorithms on the Titanic deck will do for you. Disney has an epic amount of money to throw at anything they want to, so do Apple and Amazon. Netflix stands zero chance of keeping a magic lead via a couple thousand very highly paid engineers; there is only so much those engineers can do to make a difference, only so much to optimize in that product, and they can do absolutely nothing to bolster the biggest value proposition: content wins out.
I've been a Netflix subscriber for a very long time. I can't name anything they make that I care about or have watched recently. I can't name a single mega show I permanently associate with them (like I might the Sopranos with HBO etc). I agree with most everyone else in this thread, Netflix is first on the chopping block, because their content sucks. A streaming product has to be exceptionally bad to lose in the market if you have superior content (with a reasonable price); the largely tech superior streaming product that Netflix has had isn't going to be enough to beat their competition unless their content is stellar too.
They're a studio with a streaming platform.
That said, it doesn't matter much because HBO's crappy app is the only way to watch their content so I put up with it.
I'm not saying that they are, but now that streaming seems to be basically solved (it has become a commodity) this is the quality that will likely make the winners.
Why do you think they've been investing so heavily in their own content?
That was Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer of Netflix in 2013, so they 'realized' at least a decade ago.
They've really pivoted amazingly from dvds to streaming other folks content to creating their own in the last 20ish years.
Netflix PE ratio is 47x.
Paramount is 8x.
Universal is 12x.
My money would be on Netflix. They’ve done it at least twice already; it’s in their DNA.
In streaming subscriptions you can very much fail from bad tech, but better tech won't make any difference over good enough.
But engineers are not product managers tho. I think this is exactly what they were doing.
That entirely depends on the company. In my experience, the higher the quality of engineers a company hires, the more influence those engineers have.