Netflix will be firing around 1,000 of its global employees, estimated to be 6% of the company’s entire workforce.
Employees were informed of the departures Wednesday morning through an email sent on behalf of Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
“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. Our business is strong and growing, and we remain on track to deliver our full-year forecast,” the CEOs said, according to reports.
This round of layoffs is the biggest in Netflix’s history, and it comes amid developments in Netflix’s standing as a company. In the last year, Netflix’s stock price has gone down 40%.
Sarandos recently voiced concern about the growth of his company, saying “Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to” in a conference hosted by Bloomberg. Additionally, Netflix raised the prices for all its plans by at least $1 earlier this year, just a month after its co-founder Reed Hastings stepped down from the board.
Netflix will face additional challenges, as two of its biggest competitors, Paramount+ and HBO Max, plan to merge after Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Paramount Skydance predicts that the merger will seriously improve their standing in the streaming service competition.
Netflix has recently made ambitious moves in hopes of driving engagement and maintaining its status as the streaming platform with the most subscribers. The streaming titan’s efforts include investing in AI, hiring podcasters and other content creators and expanding to live streaming events such as sports matches.
“We’ll continue to invest aggressively in high-impact areas to improve our service and further drive growth and innovation,” said both CEOs in the statement sent out to employees. “Doing that means making focused choices across the business so we can keep delivering for our members, partners, employees, and investors.”
Netflix has not made any public statement regarding this recent round of layoffs.
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