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Comment by SilverBirch | Hacker News Reader

Here is the problem: What you're doing is describing ways that Netflix can be a good media company. Netflix is valued as a tech company and pays tech workers like a top tier tech company. At some point they either have to do some innovative new tech that separates them from the competition, or they have to become an excellent media company- and that probably starts with firing all the fat and happy tech workers.

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Describing engineers as "fat and happy" is really derogatory. Their spend on tech employees is a tiny fraction of total content spend. Also, an even tinier fraction of what they spend on services like AWS. If they want to cut costs, there's a ton more low hanging fruit than letting people go. In fact, revenue per employee is the highest compared to other FAANG

If you look at the complaints about Netflix, most of them relate to content, not tech. This suggests that they've under-invested in content, and over-invested in tech.

Disagree, total content spend the last 4 years has been ~18bn/year compared to ~500m/yr on all employee R&D. That's shows there's a content quality problem not a content underinvestment.

According to their latest annual statement (2022), they spent 2.7 billion USD on "Technology & Development". Where are you getting the 500 million figure?

https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/ar... page 23

I think the tech side of Netflix is great, they do a great job. But it’s simply not what makes money for Netflix anymore and they are extra-ordinarily well paid.

Netflix is very unique in that they put significantly more stock (and subsequently, capex) in making data driven content decisions than other studios do.

I don't know how the gamble will play out, but if it works well for them, I imagine they'll continue to pay top tier.

So while we may hate all their weird reality tv shows or wonder why good stuff gets cancelled why other things continue, it may have a lot less to do with a single individual's decision.

Also note, Netflix is known to pay significantly more than the rest of FAANG at this point, though they hire much less frequently.

> Netflix is very unique in that they put significantly more stock (and subsequently, capex) in making data driven content decisions than other studios do.

> I don't know how the gamble will play out, but if it works well for them, I imagine they'll continue to pay top tier.

This would've made sense a little under a decade ago. The last few years have shown how badly the idea works or Netflix's models are.

And for anybody who is keeping score Amazon who is often not data driven, but rather driven by random opinion of random empowered employees. The result are worse not better.

Who’s to say the proposed $300M in cuts won’t touch tech? They may be still trading as a tech company, but it looks like they may be firing some of those engineers anyways.

So worst of both worlds?

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