Netflix Lays Off 15+ Employees

Bloomberg reports that Netflix is laying off more than 15 employees:

The cuts, which began before earnings were announced on Oct. 24, are mostly in human resources, where Netflix had hired in anticipation of faster growth and the creation of separate companies for its mail-order and streaming businesses, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

A Om Malik from NewTeeVee notes, it's hardly news (although we do feel for the people who were laid off) when a handful of employees out of more than 2,000 staff members are eliminated. 

Comments

[Jonathan Trillo]

How will the USA cope with such an influx of unemployment! I blame netlfix for the entire recession.

[Keith]

UUUGGGGG 15 people really that makes the news???
Maybe I should report I went to McDonalds for lunch today?? Im sure someone would find that facinating!!

[What?]

In other news, studies suggest that people sometimes read articles in which they find no value and consider them a complete waste of time...then proceed to waste more time by commenting on them.

This inexplicable behavior seems to continue to recur over and over despite the fact that there are more articles available to read on the internet than any one person can possibly read in 100 lifetimes.

[Nathan]

"More than 15"? LOL - so, like, 16?

[Marshall]

The HR people were temps anyway. No company keeps a large HR staff anymore. They hire them at start up then move them to other office jobs or let them go. HR is done on corporate levels now, except when it's outsourced in it's entirety. Hiring is done by other middle managers and benefits are done via internet.

[Jezpako]

15? I think something isn't being reported here. I live in Michigan and a good friend of mine was trying to be hired by his friend who worked in customer service. My friend said more and more people are quitting because of Netflixs recent decisions, and others are getting fired because of the lost of customers. It was a lot more than 15, but I think more people are quitting than are getting fired.

[Anonymous Temp]

How does 15 make the news now when the 137 that got laid off over the Qwikster fail didn't make it into the media? So now the Qwikster casualties are 152 - and I'm sure actually more than that, and rising.

[NFLXtotheMAX]

@Marshall The HR people weren't temps, they were probably FTEs. Otherwise it wouldn't be a newsworthy layoff...temp contracts end all the time, even in large numbers.

I think the more telling thing here is what is going to happen to the company in the near future. They must have split the company internally a long time ago in order to prep for the launch of Qwikster, so they probably had to hire up a whole bunch of people at Qwikster and Netflix to replace the new holes. Now they brought Qwikster back in. What does that say about all the duplicate positions? I sense a bigger layoff in the future, and wouldn't be surprised if it's something like 20% of the company. Especially considering how much of HR got let go. They are the first step to be cut, considering they were either in recruiting or people management.

Still, I hope the company is just trimming the fat and will keep on pushing through, as it always seems to do.

[CLC]

15???? More like almost 300. They downsized the DVD Hubs alone by almost 100, then let go all the whole Qwikster div of 150 and these were not temps.

[gir]

Doesn't it seem like there's something more going on here? Price increase in January, another (rather outrageous) price increase in September, investor guidance adjustment, qwikster announcement, qwikster retraction, and now lots of layoffs.

Other than the January price increase all of these things seem more than a little desperate, and too many of them are directly money related. What's going on?