Netflix said Wednesday it would lay off about 6% of its workforce, or about 1,000 workers, according to a memo obtained by CNBC.
Job cuts will affect product, technology, legal and HR teams.
“Our mission — to entertain the world — is ambitious, and delivering it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people and our resources,” Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters wrote in an email to employees. “Our business is strong and growing, and we remain on track to deliver our full year forecast. We will continue to invest aggressively in high impact areas to improve our services and further drive growth and innovation.
“Doing so means making business-focused choices so we can continue to deliver for our members, partners, employees, and investors,” the note said.
Netflix said it had no additional comment beyond the co-CEO memo. The company is due to report its monthly earnings on October 20.
The layoffs come just weeks after Sarandos told attendees at the Bloomberg Screentime conference that the company was “not growing as fast as I would have liked.”
Netflix has faced a paradox in recent months. It continues to generate solid profits and remains the biggest player in the streaming world, but viewing time has stalled and the main driver of new subscriber acquisition is the crackdown on password sharing and the launch of lower, ad-supported tiers.
Netflix’s biggest threat is YouTube, but it’s on the horizon Skydance. The joint entity of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery has plans to combine the two companies’ streaming platforms, Paramount+ and HBO Max.
Netflix has diversified its content in recent years, expanding live sports, documentaries and video games to compete for consumers’ attention. At the same time, there are no water-cooler type hits like “Stranger Things” and “Squid Game” that previously increased the growth and audience of subscribers.
And Netflix isn’t the only company looking to cut costs in the media space. Last month, Disney said it would lay off about 300 employees, with the majority of the cuts coming from human resources and technology roles.
– CNBC’s Julia Boorstin and Stephen Desaulniers contributed to this report.