Netflix said on Tuesday it was laying off around 2% of its staff in a bid to save money after slowing growth in the hitherto booming streaming TV industry. “These changes are primarily driven by business needs rather than individual performance, which makes them particularly challenging because none of us want to see such great colleagues leave,” a spokesperson for the company said. Netflix to AFP. Nearly 150 employees were thanked, most of them in the United States, said the spokesperson. On social networks, many of them shared their astonishment and dissatisfaction with this sudden decision. A significant loss of speed A few weeks before this decision, Netflix announced a loss of subscribers for the first time in more than ten years. “Slowing our revenue growth means we also need to slow our expense growth as a business,” the spokesperson explained. At the end of the first quarter, the streaming television service had 221.6 million subscribers, slightly less than at the end of December. To explain this erosion, Netflix cites the suspension of its services in Russia because of the war in Ukraine as well as than the fact that some subscribers share their account with people who do not live at home. Nearly 222 million households pay for a subscription, but accounts are shared with more than 100 million other households that do not subscribe to the service, estimates the streaming giant. The company’s growth is also suffering from intense competition from Apple and Disney. Netflix is also considering adding a new ad-supported discounted subscription, a model Mr. Hastings has long ruled out.
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