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Comment by qeternity | Hacker News Reader

> The endless pursuit of revenue to suit shareholders.

I don’t really understand these comments. Do you think Netflix is a charity? “Endless pursuit of revenue” is how they stay in business, employing people and yes, generating profits to shareholders.

Imagine turning this same thinking around at other groups I’d imagine you sympathize with like unionizing workers: “In their endless pursuit of revenue, workers have demanded pay increases”. Like wtf?

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Compromising your products and services for profit is a slippery slope under normal circumstances, but streaming is a rather competitive market. What Netflix is doing is baffling, they are in the middle of a race for dominance.

I think Netflix was too late to realize that they need to become an entertainment company like Disney or HBO and not a tech company, because that's Amazon and the world is too small for another Amazon, just as it is too small for another Google. It doesn't matter how good their CDN is or how good they are at writing JavaScript libraries, they will keep losing subscribers if there is nothing to subscribe for.

I always hate to see it as well, when companies degrade their product for the tiniest bit of extra profit. It's the classic one-less-olive-in-airline-meal story. Remember when a Big Mac was actually a big burger? It's a very small burger, these days.

Netflix is somewhat ahead of this slippery slope here, in that when they started producing their own content it was third-rate from the start, very much quantity of quality. They were always going to fall off a cliff once subscriber numbers stopped growing, since eventually existing subscribers will tire of the crap they try to force-feed them, and decide the service isn't worth the price.

> Remember when a Big Mac was actually a big burger? It's a very small burger, these days.

And yet in spite of this, McDonald's Corp has never been more valuable.

See my point?

You can get away with it when everyone is doing it. Most of the food and beverage industry compromises quality or quantity in one way or another. McDonald's is actually one of the better ones, they compromise the quantity, but otherwise they are consistent, innovative and good at observing customer trends and behaviors.

And it has also never been more synonymous with garbage food which makes you feel bad. Just because its profitable and "good for the company" doesn't mean it's good for product image and users.

> What Netflix is doing is baffling

I wouldn't agree with this, and apparently neither would they. But none of this answers my question.

Trading customer goodwill for chump change is rarely the winning strategy, but it's sure a losing strategy in the middle of the streaming wars when other companies are trying their best to cater to their customers.

> I don’t really understand these comments. Do you think Netflix is a charity?

That next marginal dollar of revenue in the short term is often at the expense of subscriber goodwill in the long term. Rebuilding burned goodwill is very hard to do and dooms the business in the long run.

Sure, that may be the case. But that's the risk Netflix runs.

How does that answer my question in the slightest?

False equivalence, companies want to increase profits sometimes at any cost, ethical or monetary. Workers want fair compensation.

What?!? Workers want as much compensation as possible, and rightly so, as any rational actor would.

Yes all companies seek profits. All employees want more money. But all else being equally I support businesses that talk about what they can do for me, not what I can do for them. Same goes for employees I want to hire. I will happily pay money for someone to enthusiastically provide me a service. I will not be happy when that service declines and they respond by trying to nickel and dime me.

The two pieces of news I’ve heard about Netflix this year are stranger things season 4 is coming out and this. Why do I want to support a business who’s major contribution to the media landscape for 2022 is a new customer-hostile billing model?

Who doesn't sympathize with unionizing workers?

Anyway, what they meant was "chasing short term profit bumps unwisely at the expense of long term satisfaction due to temporary economic stress"

People always say this, but there are plenty of companies that have been "chasing short term profits" for decades and are now worth hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars.

Plenty of armchair CEOs on this site who simply don't appreciate the market position and power of the companies they judge. I'm not saying this won't be bad for Netflix long run, I'm saying I simply don't know. But I would bet that Netflix management have spent a lot more time than either you or I to understand the implications.

I see that you are trying to argue with someone else through me, when I had to explain what they said to you

Why does a company necessarily need to grow by a certain percentage each year. That is called exponential grow and not realistically sustainable.

I have an endless pursuit for food. Whenever I eat, I end up eating again only hours later. I've given up on fixing this greedy habit.

Do you eat anything that comes in front of you?

Do you have a business plan to eat 10-15% more year-over-year on an ongoing basis?

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