[HN Gopher] Netflix lays off 300 additional staff
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Netflix lays off 300 additional staff
Author : t3rabytes
Score : 43 points
Date : 2022-06-23 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| cheriot wrote:
| The Verge article is a summary of this one:
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflix-c...
| ssiddharth wrote:
| Any idea which departments the 300 being let go are from? Would
| be interesting, in a rather morbid sense...
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It could also tell us customers a bit about what kind of impact
| to expect from this. Content -wise if it's buyers. Or
| reliability wise if it's tech people.
| onphonenow wrote:
| There were claims that the last round significantly impacted
| folks working on some critical intersectional across race /
| ethnicity / gender identity type programming.
|
| There were some articles about the layoffs last time and the
| major backlash that resulted. Protocol covered this, noting
| "Protocol identified at least 40 people from marginalized
| backgrounds who lost their jobs in the latest round of cuts."
|
| Interestingly, as I read this Meta announcement a settlement
| on similar discrimination claims:
|
| "Discrimination in housing, employment and credit is a deep-
| rooted problem with a long history in the US, and we are
| committed to broadening opportunities for marginalized
| communities in these spaces and others," Roy Austin Jr.,
| Meta's vice president of civil rights, wrote in a blog post.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It was people working for _marketing_ related to gender-
| and race-based programming that Netflix also mostly dropped
| in the past year when it decided to shift from targeting
| niche audiences to going for the pure-blockbuster play
| (i.e., from Babysitters Club to Squid Game).
| morelisp wrote:
| > targeting niche audiences to going for the pure-
| blockbuster play (i.e., from Babysitters Club to Squid
| Game).
|
| Well played.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Hopefully they spend more resources on better content. I
| personally find many netflix originals to be template series not
| worth watching unless you stretch your imagination well beyond
| sanity and suspend disbelief with the aid of some kind of
| medication.
|
| Having said that, in my experience their app and streaming
| quality is just perfect. Unlike hbo's. It would be a shame if
| these layoffs would be among tech departments because i imagine
| their engineering is awesome. As a bonus i read somewhere that
| they use freebsd and that's a huge plus in my books. Shows that
| they understand tech well beyond the basics.
| MonkeyClub wrote:
| > with the aid of some kind of medication.
|
| In other words, they found a couple of plot recipes that
| stoners like, and are cashing in on that.
|
| Which isn't reprehensible or anything in itself, it's just not
| worth so much of the hype it's getting, but that's hype after
| all.
|
| But I do dislike the overall cultural dumbing down.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| yea, absolutely ! Im tired of teens with super or supernatural
| powers !
| puranjay wrote:
| Increasingly found that HBO is the only service worth paying
| for. They're the only ones capable of putting out high quality,
| well-produced shows. The rest are all 80% misses, 10% hits, and
| 10% "I got time and nothing else to do"
| lovich wrote:
| Apple TV has been putting out quite a bit of art in the
| decent to great category at the moment imo. I think that
| might be a function of trying to buy their way into a crowded
| market so I guess we'll see how long it lasts
| sumy23 wrote:
| We might simply be at peak content. Better content requires
| better talent. The pool of talent is finite. Perhaps there
| aren't enough talented writers and producers to make better
| content happen.
| bergenty wrote:
| pstuart wrote:
| I don't think everyone feels the same way you do about
| women.
| bergenty wrote:
| I don't think anyone likes to be force fed content that
| instantly breaks immersion because it doesn't mirror
| reality at all.
| marssaxman wrote:
| If that's your perception of reality, perhaps it's good
| that you're being pushed out of your comfort zone.
| bergenty wrote:
| I don't think it's a matter of perspective, it's the
| bending of objective facts.
| lovich wrote:
| What "woke" content is bending objective facts? The only
| one I can think of in the past few years was The Wheel of
| Time keeping the family trait and bloodlines plot
| line(including one character recognizing another
| characters heritage based solely on their looks) while
| not keeping that casting consistent.
|
| The other end is shows like Foundation which might look
| like a woke cast at first but if you pay close attention
| you'll realize that the galaxy spanning Empire has the
| diverse population due to being diverse while all the
| smaller planetary kingdoms are ethnically homogenous in
| casting which I thought was a clever attention to detail
| while satisfying politics.
|
| Netflix is pretty smack in the middle in that they
| produce content for the woke crowd, but that's just by
| focusing on including diverse characters. They tend to
| not get into complicated plots that are defeated by
| casting.
|
| Unless my take on that is wrong I can't see how
| minorities' or womens' existence can be bending any
| objective facts
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Wheel of Time is on Amazon Prime Video not Netflix
| [deleted]
| hulitu wrote:
| There is enough "better content". Unfirtunately it is not
| available on Netflix.
| quartesixte wrote:
| There are definitely enough talented writers, it's just that
| the Hollywood system is notorious for gatekeeping good
| writers, and thats if the writer had the perseverance and
| material support to even finish a spec script.
|
| It's a pool with a lot of constraints on it, many of which
| are artificial.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| Netflix started to disrupt Hollywood, but it looks like
| Hollywood figured out how to manage Netflix. Rumours abound
| of conflict between the tech branch and content branchs
| (which is mostly Hollywood types now) of the company.
| sumy23 wrote:
| > There are definitely enough talented writers
|
| Based on? There aren't even many good technical writers,
| which is a lot easier than writing fiction.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Based on the extremely low number of available writing
| jobs.
| dekhn wrote:
| One thing I realized from "Everything Everywhere All At Once"
| is that although I never heard of the directors before
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniels_(directors)), and
| never would have predicted that movie and it content, the
| moment I started watching it, I realized there was another
| pair of people to put on the List of People I Trust To Make
| Good Stuff. For example, I'd like them to go back and make
| Cat's Cradle, or even better, Sirens of Titan.
|
| How many other second-tier directors who could make great
| films are out there not getting funded?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| They're already spending countless of billions. Higher quality
| artistic output isn't primarily a question of money, you really
| can't buy yourself originality and creativity.
|
| The entire structure and model of the business leads to produce
| exactly what Netflix makes. Season after season of mediocre TV
| that keeps people subscribing, using the same formulas over and
| over for more growth. Just like traditional TV at this point.
|
| Occasionally they'll get a good indie hit but that's about it.
| It's telling that much of the best content, like Dark or some
| of the South Korean shows is not coming out of the typical
| studios.
| acd wrote:
| Exponential forever growth in startups was false.
| mads wrote:
| My credit card expired last month and I forgot to update Netflix
| with the new one. They remind me every time I open Netflix, but I
| haven't bothered to update it, since there is nothing I really
| want to watch myself, but mostly because nobody in my family has
| complained yet.
| jahnu wrote:
| As soon as Better Call Saul is finished I really don't know
| what's going to keep me there.
| aluminussoma wrote:
| Netflix has the ability to automatically update the card number
| after it expires. It is a service that certain credit card
| issuers offer.
|
| These days, I would not count on an expiring credit card to
| automatically cancel services.
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