EDIT: changed the title to a question and make it an Ask HN instead of a Tell HN. My source told me it was a mass layoff but it might be smaller in scope than I was lead to believe. Apologies for the FUD here if so.
When you're on a team you know you can be cut at any moment. It's ruthless over there and the recruiters will make sure you're aware of that early in the interview process. Netflix was never known as a good place to work which is why they pay outrageous salaries and the average employment length is a little over a year.
I love this one: "Selflessness. You seek what is best for Netflix, not yourself or your team". Sounds like something a cult leader would have you commit to.
Plus, that page is insanely long.
Statements like this imply that doing the best thing for the company won’t be rewarded in the best way for individuals. Why not?
I think part of it is that they believe you are compensated well enough that you don't need extra rewarding.
For 400k, I can look the other way for a couple of years to build up a safety net, then peace out to a company with a better work-life balance.
I imagine that's what a lot of people are doing with FAANGs.
Cults and FAANGs offer a similiar vision of a rosey future that will not come to pass for the average person.
Not saying they are common, but they do exist.
Just an example. My dad who works for a small construction company as a steel detailer, when all the construction work was put on hold during covid, the company told the employees to go out and find places looking for volunteer workers, and the company would pay them their normal salary to do the volunteer work.
They have shown time and time again through the years (and he's been with them basically his whole professional life) that they do everything they can to help their employees.
Doing what's best for the company long term is generally what's best for employees in the long term. Sometimes layoffs are what's best. Companies that deeply care about their employees will still have layoffs.
At my “WLB friendly” company, they’re addicted to cost-cutting by off-shoring. Less pay but stability was the draw.
As soon as the tech-hiring boom was over they started finding ways to gas-light:
- If you’re not delivering/under-delivering, it’s certainly a red-flag.
- If you’re “overworking” that’s a red-flag.
- If you’re phenomenal and young, they’ll keep you and look the other way.
- If you’re off-shore, they’ll also look the other way.
- And raise concerns, and I get red flagged (honestly, I don’t have the right skillset here).
Source: Watching my US team slowly get dismantled, while my manager says otherwise.
Is that a past market leader semiconductor company now struggling to get it's act together?
Company is about the upside
Ofc they are different.
Edit: for the doubters, the stock market is clearly pricing in inflation dropping, your current analysis doesnt take into account any data that hedge funds and investors are trading on
lots of tech companies just have too many employees
it takes fewer people to maintain something than to build it...and arguably Netflix has saturated its markets
No, it means that the rate of price increases has slowed.
Some useful links from the Fed:
- Inflation calculator: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=200001...
- Recent CPI Summary: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
Yes, historically this is how it works. High inflation leads to higher prices which then settle, an higher salaries etc. lag but roughly catch up.
It's more useful to think of inflation as a rate of reduction of the value of money than as an increase in prices. Tools like the CPI baskets are attempts to find a measure of the "real" loss of value, but this is inherently flawed. Tools to affect it (e.g. federal rates, QE, etc.) are inherently ham-fisted and only indirectly coupled to the economic drivers of inflation, so also flawed. Companies take advantage of the variability to be more aggressive with price experiments, etc., etc. - so it's complicated.
And so it goes.
So if your COGS are shifting you have to respond to that, but in most cases price variability is going to cause you problems (e.g. you aren't a financial market, you are selling goods) and your competitors movements are also, so you are trying to strike a balance. And maybe you are bit greedy and see an opportunity in the variability to end user, but maybe you are more worried about collapsing margin.
> And maybe you are bit greedy and see an opportunity in the variability to end user, but maybe you are more worried about collapsing margin.
"And maybe you are bit greedy" -- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/retail-price-gouging-lowes-amaz....
And this "profit" is a number derived from an price that is set to attain some difference that is "allowed by the market". Greed is baked in always, else a business cannot continue; but the smoke-screen of inflation is what is discomforting.
I guess I'm objecting to "arbitrary" rather than "how markets work".
I think we are both agreeing that there are parts of e.g. consumer grocery store prices that are inherently inflation driven (and unlikely to go down) and parts that may be opportunistic or defensive (and might) but the key think is literally nobody actually knows how to separate that cleanly. There is some hope that competition will drive out some of the additional price increase over time relative to actual value, but usually the way this happens is by letting inflation eat it, not actually re-pricing lower. We will see, but until then we'll see reports like you've linked, and others claiming otherwise, and not really know until the dust settles.
Consumers must have reduced purchases but companies don't want to backtrack on the price, thus they're always on sale without actually bringing down the base price.
I wonder if that affects inflation measurements as I don't know if the inflation basket is calculated based on individually marked prices or actual consumer spending.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNDCON5MUSA [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N
I think the tipping point was that I got sucked into quite a few low quality crime documentaries, which were not doing anything for me, and probably hurting.
The Madoff one was actually good, but there were 10 others that in retrospect I regret watching.
Even Tiger King was like that. It's more colorful, but ultimately a waste of time ... If you look into it, basically all the characters there are very bad people (i.e. they abuse both animals and people).
IMO it's kinda poisonous to watch too much of that stuff. To take it lightly and brush off other people's misfortunes as entertainment.
I was amazed by how bad their Web UI is. After I've watched a movie, if I want to remove it from "My List", I have to go to the list and find the movie in it (it's randomly re-ordered every day), before I can click the "remove from my list" button. Even Amazon Prime Video lets me remove a movie from my list right after I've finished watching it.
And I can't change the order of titles on my list. Why does it get randomly re-ordered repeatedly? And the thumbnails change occasionally, which makes it even harder to find what I'm looking at. What's the point, other than being gratuitously hostile to the user?
The other thing is that most of the content is just filler. Whenever a show or movie is marked with the red Netflix logo, to me it means "this probably sucks". Netflix probably thinks its something for their customers to get excited about "Ooh, produced by Netflix!" but it's the opposite.
Netflix doesn't want you to choose what you want to watch, they want to pick what you watch for you. They constantly push certain shows over and over again across nearly every category they show you while hiding shows and entire categories of content from you that they don't want you to see.
Every new thing they release is "trending" and "top 10" and "most watched" and "featured" and it will show up over and over again in the other categories because they want the numbers to look good. They don't want their new stuff to compete with old stuff, but as we've seen, pretty much everybody is watching "friends" and "big bang theory" on an endless loop anyway.
Netflix has had some good shows, but the more annoying they get the closer I get to giving up on them. You can always find netflix originals elsewhere after all
This late into the workday, the fact that there's no news about layoffs at Netflix makes me suspect there isn't a large layoff.
There might be a source of truth in there.
Things are just getting worse a bit more slowly.
But! US average hourly income is also up about 20%. Granted, that's an average - US tech income (upper-middle class) is probably flat, as is the minimum wage-bottom.
This is literally inflation – the rate of change of prices.
I opt against the quixotic battle for language, people typically skim such pedantry.
Also... one could argue the YoY definition is "wrong" if consumers are thinking and planning based on a longer time period. Why report YoY instead of a rolling 2 years? 5? Or perhaps different windows for specific items within the basket?
but it’s always growing
Honestly trying to get you to reevaluate your world view to be less catastrophic. Money isn’t real anyway, it’s just a convenient fiction to enable complex trade of goods and services, which are of actual value.
Unless you are in Russia, Turkey or Argentina, then please carry on with the gloom.
This is a nonsensical view with no empirical backing behind it. People need things to live, they won't just stop making any purchases because their money could be worth a few percent more in future. They may buy fewer things and save more, but this is just a shift in the ratio of savings to consumption, which in the long term leads to more growth (higher savings rates lead to more growth in the long term, as there is more capital to invest).
There's not a single incidence of an economy destroyed by deflation. The depression was due to mass wage and price controls by the government, and huge tariffs, which produced all the negative effects predicted by macroeconomic theory. There are on the other hand many many economies that have been destroyed by inflation, even in recent years (e.g. Venezuela, Zimbabwe).
>Money isn’t real anyway, it’s just a convenient fiction to enable complex trade of goods and services, which are of actual value
And the fiction that inflation is good is what allows people in power to transfer your purchasing power to their buddies in the financial syatem while making you believe it's for your own good. Because purchasing power lost to inflation doesn't just disappear in thin air, it goes to the first recipients of the newly created currency, i.e. the financial system.
People buy far, far more than they need to survive. A small decrease in consumer spending can set off a major recession.
Inflation benefits anyone carrying any kind of debt. It’s great for people with mortgages and bad for anyone with bonds.
I agree deflation of value into the negatives over a long term causes its own set of issues, but after you went on a big money printing spree to deal with an economic crisis, I think something like counter deflation is possible if inflation rate is still positive.
Unless you're upset about more money being invested in vehicles like CDs and bonds. But that isn't bad for the economy at all. The money doesn't just sit in a giant vault, it gets routed to economically useful activities.
One a new price level is hit, if it is then stabilized, the price level is not inherently good or bad. The goodness or badness of prices is based on the purchasing power that people have to buy those goods. Real wages are still up, so it's not obvious that "things are getting worse."
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1216457187/wall-street-magnif...
Rate is what is relevant.
It is said to come down but haven't come down yet.
Bottom lines must be protected.
https://bleedingcool.com/tv/netflix-love-is-sharing-a-passwo...
They cracked down earlier this year on password sharing. I cancelled my account; been using disney and prime more. It was a dumb time for them to backtrack on password sharing. People were already feeling like they had too many streaming services.
I personally enjoyed Netflix more when it was a back catalog of older quality shows, and not a glut of baking/crafting/reality competition shows. If you're going to give me the same things I can get on network television it's not worth paying for, especially if they now have an ad tier.
In this most recent set of layoffs (which I'm defining as starting in 2022 since that's the dataset they have available) January is the worst month for layoffs.
Seems exceptionally cruel. Honestly I feel sick to my stomach when I think about it.
Edit: A healthy society is a high-trust society where the employee-employer relationship is more balanced due to the regular old humanity that you would expect by default from humans, rather than pure economics. You can't regulate the fundamentals of societal health. When people have less and less cultural attachment to each other and to the societies in which they operate; and less and less respect for the idea of plain humanity; this is the result. The US seems to have been historically above average in this regard, but is coming down fast. A few European countries seem to be at the top of this (highly subjective) ranking.
Being in a union involves give and take.
1. "Firms and Layoffs: The Impact of Unionization on Involuntary Job Loss" - (2003 with data from 1997) https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/03-09.html
> Results show that the impact of unionization is not significant except for (1) establishments that operate in the non-manufacturing sector; and (2) establishments operating in industries that have major collective bargaining agreements which contain moderate employment security provisions. Under those conditions, unionization decreases layoff rates; otherwise, unionization has no effect on layoff rates.
Does anyone have anything more recent about this?
I am in a non-union workspace. There's no transparency on how bonuses or stock refreshers are handed out. A union contract could codify it.
The owner class wants workers to think unions will hurt our earnings because when workers are structurally unable to shape company policy the bosses can do whatever they want...and what they want is to maximize profits. (Like Elon Musk said: You don't need a union, I'll put in an soft serve machine for you.)
1. Mandatory notice periods (3 months is customary, mimumum 1 month)
2. "Social selection", i.e. you're not allowed to lay off a pregnant person etc. unless you have demonstrated that there were no other people you could have let go instead
3. There needs to be cause. Downsizing can still mean you get laid off, but you can't just fire a team or an individual because you don't like them etc.
Of course, if you left a company because you didn't agree to their rules instead of being laid off, none of these protections apply to you - why would they?
Preparation isn’t free, and even if you’re prepared, you’re still harmed. This isn’t some moral lesson on independence and discipline. Companies don’t need any single employee as much as that employee needs their job.
I am a lucky person, but I see it for what it is, not that I am special or exceptional. A lottery ticket is not something you can base broad policy on, most especially considering the aggregate harm being incurred.
If you are not interested in a union, that is fine, it only takes a majority to win a union and 30% to hold a vote. Do you think 51% are making outsized comp and vote no? I'm interested to find out too as someone very curious.
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections
https://newrepublic.com/post/175274/gallup-poll-two-thirds-a...
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-closing-gender-...
So yeah, my bank account might be lower, but I don’t need nearly as much as I did in the US so it feels like I actually have more.
I'd like to have "fuck you" (or even "screw you") money, but the healthcare system makes it pretty tough.
Tech workers and their lifestyles are not sustainable if the Tech actually does that.
Do you give Netflix 180 days notice or additional payments when you quit their service?
I am a W2/FTE and I have a job that I can leave with zero notice or consequence. If I was to get laid off I would imagine I would get some type of severance - even if only two weeks as that would be more than agreed upon.
There is no whip if I fail. No debt incurred if I fail to deliver on my "promises". I could definitely harm my employer with substantial consequences and I think the worst they could do is report my activities to the authorities.
If the month of the year in which you lose your six figure engineering job is a personal factor: you are very plainly saving too little, spending too much, or both. In this economy you should have a minimum of 4-6 months of expenses in savings in cash.
This is rolling over in submission for evil men, thinly veiled in the language of badass cynicism.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38629355
Some of the people being fired will have been at Netflix less than a year and 6 figure of college debt and a hard-to-break lease on a $3000/month apartment -- do you expect them to have 6 months of salary saved?
Also one of the reasons companies fire them before the end of the year is if company pays bonuses and you are an employee at the end of the year you get said bonus even if you aren't employed at the company when they pay them out. I think a few states have laws saying you can't get around that by firing them a few days before the end of the year but I am not sure which ones.
That's called lack of labor laws.
I don't see why this has to be some kind of common stance in the tech community. Yes many of us make decent money, but you have no idea what peoples life circumstances are. Learn some empathy before you comment.
You're the CEO of your life, your employer is a client, and your job is a business deal.
My advice is to do independent contracting for some time and you will have a better handle on negotiating and navigating the dynamics.
This is usually beneficial for both parties, as it gives the employer time to find replacements and the employee time to find a new job.
But we generally have far, far better worker's rights than the US.
https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/2005-06-17-62/KAPITTEL_1...
Doing them on Dec 24, yes that would be a dick move to ruin Christmas day itself.
But mid-December isn't worse than any other time. People get severance so it's not like kids are going without presents -- these aren't hourly laborers we're talking about. And you can use the holidays to take some time to think about your next plan of action.
Netflix is different though. They tend to give generous severance packages.