As Its Stock Drops, Netflix's Employee Morale Is In Freefall, Too
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As Its Stock Drops, Netflix's Employee Morale Is In Freefall, Too

Netflix’s poor first-quarter earnings report has led to both a falling stock price and falling workforce morale.

After the streaming service disclosed a large subscriber loss in its earnings last week—triggering a roughly 40% decline in its shares since—many Netflix employees are reconsidering their futures at the company, with their confidence in its future direction shaken and their stock options looking increasingly skint, Bloomberg reported. Some employees have even requested new stock grants to make up for their losses, according to The Information.


The disappointing results have also led Netflix to evaluate its current spending levels, which will likely force employees to succeed with smaller budgets and fewer people. Bloomberg reported that Netflix is already restructuring teams in its engineering department—which have largely consisted of one leader overseeing a team of similarly-ranked people—to add seniority levels, a move considered to be a cost-cutting measure.

Other changes have already occurred in Netflix’s animation department, where the company has laid off Phil Rynda, its director of creative leadership and development for original animation, and several other employees, The Wrap reported last week.

Netflix has grown from 2,000 to 11,000 employees in the last eight years, according to Bloomberg, with most of its new hires based either internationally or in Hollywood. Co-founder Reed Hastings has boasted of a company culture based on freedom and responsibility—values that could now come under pressure amid heightened constraints.

Netflix disclosed its first net subscriber loss in over a decade in its earnings report, placing much of the blame on password-sharing—a practice it said it would be cracking down on. The company also indicated that it will be incorporating ads via a cheaper subscription tier to entice new subscribers.

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What Are LA’s Hottest Startups of 2021? We Asked Top VCs to Rank Them

Despite — or in many cases because of — the raging pandemic, 2020 was a great year for many tech startups. It turned out to be an ideal time to be in the video game business, developing a streaming ecommerce platform for Gen Z, or helping restaurants with their online ordering.

But which companies in Southern California had the best year? That is highly subjective of course. But in an attempt to highlight who's hot, we asked dozens of the region's top VCs to weigh in.

We wanted to know what companies they wish they would have invested in if they could go back and do it all over again.

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Ben Bergman

Ben Bergman is the newsroom's senior finance reporter. Previously he was a senior business reporter and host at KPCC, a senior producer at Gimlet Media, a producer at NPR's Morning Edition, and produced two investigative documentaries for KCET. He has been a frequent on-air contributor to business coverage on NPR and Marketplace and has written for The New York Times and Columbia Journalism Review. Ben was a 2017-2018 Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Economic and Business Journalism at Columbia Business School. In his free time, he enjoys skiing, playing poker, and cheering on The Seattle Seahawks.

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The Pandemic Has Changed the Music Industry Forever. Meet the LA Music-Tech Startups Poised to Reshape It.
Image courtesy of Wave
  • The pandemic has ravaged the music industry, but music-tech companies are poised to drive its growth into an industry where a music company is much more than music.
  • Los Angeles is home to a bustling ecosystem of startups empowering musicians through a variety of next-generation technologies.
  • The Takeaway: Innovations in music-tech offer new tools to independent artists to help them create music, manage money, reach fans and share their music in vivid, immersive ways.
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Sam Blake

Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake

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