Netflix Cuts 1,000 Jobs Then Ousts Its Content Chiefs

Netflix is cutting about 1,000 jobs, roughly 6% of its staff, with product, tech, legal and HR taking the heaviest hit. Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters sent that news in a staff memo on October 14, and a company representative had no comment.

By October 19 they had also ousted chief content officer Bela Bajaria and film chief Dan Lin. Third-quarter results are due after the close on October 20, with a companywide town hall set for October 21.

A 1,000-Job Memo Hit Product, Tech, Legal and HR

The October 14 note from Sarandos and Peters framed the cuts as “organizational changes,” not a crisis. Product, tech, legal and HR would take “the greatest impact,” they wrote, while the company stayed “on track to deliver our full-year forecast.” Film, television, marketing and the company’s physical attractions were hit as well, and several dozen global product staff had already been let go earlier in 2026.

Decisions like these are never easy, and we don’t take them lightly. Our top priority today is to support those who are leaving Netflix.

Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, co-CEOs, October 14 staff memo

The annual report for 2025 lists approximately 16,000 full-time employees, with about 10,900 in the United States and Canada, 2,500 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 1,900 in Asia-Pacific and 700 in Latin America. Against that base, a 6% cut is the company’s largest since 2022. The same filing shows streaming revenue of $45.18 billion in 2025, up 16% from $39.00 billion the year before.

Sarandos and Peters still called the business “strong and growing.” They told the people who remain that this is “one of the most dynamic times in the history of entertainment,” and that it is “on us to step up and meet the moment.” The memo did not name a dollar figure for savings, and it did not say how many roles would be refilled.

Then Sarandos Fired the People Who Make the Shows

The headcount note was only the first blow. Bajaria, who joined Netflix in 2016, built the unscripted operation, and became chief content officer in January 2023, was told late on October 14 that she was out, hours after she had been asked to help carry out some of the dismissals. The company announced the change on October 15 and named Peter Rice, the former chairman of Walt Disney Television and a longtime Fox executive, as her replacement.

THE WEEK THE SLATE LOST ITS BOSSES

1. October 14: Sarandos and Peters tell staff that roughly 6% of colleagues, about 1,000 people, are being let go. Bajaria is informed that evening that she is leaving.
2. October 15: Sarandos names Rice as chief content officer and tells staff he sees “an opportunity to take our slate to the next level,” especially in the United States and Canada.
3. October 19: Dan Lin, the film chief who joined in 2024 after Scott Stuber, exits. Netflix confirms the move and says Rice will choose the next film leader.
4. October 20: Third-quarter results are due after the market close.
5. October 21: Sarandos and Peters host a companywide town hall, billed as mostly questions and answers.

Other names left with them. Doug Belgrad, a vice president in film, is gone. So are television executives Lisa Lang McMullen, James Oh, Carolina Garcia and Andrew McQuinn, and film executive Sheroum Kim. The person who helps run a round of cuts is often the next to go, because anger then has a former boss to land on. That is what happened to Bajaria in a single day.

Lin’s own note was brief. “It’s been a great privilege to lead this incredible team and work with amazing filmmakers and talent to bring their movies to the world,” he said, thanking Sarandos, Peters and Bajaria. Rice will run film until he names a replacement. Upcoming titles still on the books include David Fincher’s The Mis-adventures of Cliff Booth, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La Bola Negra, and Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, which is due in Imax in February 2027 before a wide release.

Why a Profitable Company Cut This Deep

Netflix is still growing revenue at a double-digit pace and says it will hit a full-year forecast of between $51.0 billion and $51.4 billion, with a 31.5% operating margin against 29.5% in 2024. The cuts are aimed at a different number: first-half viewing hours rose only 2%, to 97 billion, and the stock is down 25% this year, more than 40% over the past year, after trading near $70 against a 52-week high of $125.

THE BOOKS VERSUS THE HOURS

The June 10-Q shows $12.56 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 13.4% from $11.08 billion a year earlier, with operating income of $4.19 billion. Net income was $3.40 billion. Technology and development spending still rose to $1.01 billion from $0.82 billion, which is why a tech-heavy layoff inside a growing expense line landed as a choice about priorities, not payroll.

Content additions in the quarter were $4.93 billion, with $4.31 billion of amortization. Capital spending for the first half was $414.8 million. Sarandos and Peters can say, accurately, that the P&L is not the reason 1,000 people lost their jobs. The reason they gave staff was discipline: keep pouring money into “high-impact areas” and stop funding the rest.

The 2022 Reset Was Supposed to Be the Last One

Netflix has walked this path before. After it lost 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, the first drop in more than a decade, it cut about 150 jobs in May and about 300 more on June 23, including 216 in the United States, 30 in Asia-Pacific, 53 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 17 in Latin America. The two rounds totaled about 450 people on a staff of about 11,000.

A spokesperson said then that costs had to grow in line with slower revenue. Reed Hastings, then co-CEO with Sarandos, told staff the company planned to “return to a more normal course of business going forward,” and even talked about adding 1,500 people, to 11,500, over the next 18 months, with more of the growth outside the United States. That was the reset. It did not hold.

Headcount still climbed to about 16,000 by the end of 2025. Advertising launched in 2022. The password crackdown followed in 2023. U.S. prices rose again in March 2026, the second hike in a little over a year. Live sports, video podcasts and creator shows were added on top. None of those moves produced a new Stranger Things or Squid Game. The company just came off a third-place finish at the Emmys, behind Apple TV and HBO, and many returning series have posted season-to-season drops. A 2022-style correction is now larger, and it reached the people who commission the work.

U.S. Hours Stalled While Live Sports Ate the Budget

Sarandos said the quiet part in late September at Bloomberg’s Screentime event in Los Angeles. “Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” he said, then added that the business is “great and growing fine.” He described a service growing on 200 billion hours of watching, with a 2% rise in the last reported period. That 2% is the same first-half gain that took viewing to 97 billion hours.

THE VIEWING MATH

• First-half hours: 97 billion, up 2%, the figure Sarandos called too slow.
• Live sports mix: about 5% of a $20 billion content budget, and about 1% of viewing.
• U.S. cancels: 2.1% in September, still the lowest in streaming, per Antenna, which also found no net monthly U.S. subscriber gain in 2026.
• Time per member: Jefferies puts average monthly viewing at 49 hours in the first half of 2026, down from 66 hours in the first half of 2023.

Apptopia’s figures are harsher on the U.S. app: churn up 16.6% year over year in the third quarter, and downloads in the United States and Canada down 20%. Antenna’s 2.1% cancel rate still makes Netflix the stickiest paid streamer, and it does not count some wholesale bundles. The direction is the same in both datasets. Americans are giving the app less of their month.

Live events are the chosen fix, including NFL games on Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas Day and the Tyson Fury versus Anthony Joshua fight. Sarandos has said live is good at sign-ups, at holding members, and at giving advertisers something to buy, even if it is a poor way to fill hours. That trade is now company policy. It is also why a service built on on-demand catalogs is reporting theatrical box office numbers and putting films in theaters for 45 days before they hit the app, while it shrinks the product and tech benches that built that app.

Jeff Bock, a box-office analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co., put the contradiction in one line: technology can predict behavior, but it cannot manufacture cultural relevance. Netflix spent years arguing the opposite. The October 2026 cuts, and the movies now headed to Imax before the homepage, are the walk-back.

Peter Rice Inherits a $20 Billion Slate With No Film Chief

Rice is the linear-TV veteran hired to make U.S. shows feel bigger. At Disney he oversaw ABC, FX, Hulu, National Geographic and Disney Channel, a pile of more than 300 series a year. Sarandos listed The Simpsons, American Idol, Modern Family, The Bear and Abbott Elementary, plus the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals and the World Cup. At Fox Searchlight he worked on Slumdog Millionaire, Little Miss Sunshine, Sideways and Juno. He left Disney in 2022 after Bob Chapek pushed him out, then produced films with Alex Garland, Danny Boyle, Chris Rock, Jason Reitman and Aaron Sorkin.

I also see an opportunity to take our slate to the next level, especially in UCAN where we have an outsize impact in creating big, buzzy hits that our members love and drive conversation around the world.

Ted Sarandos, co-CEO, October 15 staff memo

That sentence is the job description. Bajaria’s decade included the Queer Eye reboot, You, Lupin, The Diplomat, The Night Agent, WWE, the NFL, Squid Game and the Tyson versus Paul fight. Sarandos thanked her for expanding unscripted, live events and sports, then said the United States and Canada still need “big, buzzy hits.” Rice’s first task is that gap. His second is a film group with no chief, a $20 billion content budget, and a staff that just watched 1,000 colleagues leave.

WHO LEFT WITH THE 1,000

• Bela Bajaria: Chief content officer since January 2023, at Netflix since 2016, told on the evening of the layoff memo.
• Dan Lin: Film chief since 2024, out October 19, with Rice to name a successor.
• Film deputies: Doug Belgrad, vice president of film, and Sheroum Kim.
• TV deputies: Lisa Lang McMullen, James Oh, Carolina Garcia and Andrew McQuinn.
• The benches: Product, tech, legal and HR took the heaviest share of the 1,000 roles.

Series still due include The Hunting Wives season 2, The Diplomat season 4, the final season of Emily in Paris, Pride and Prejudice and Lupin part 4. Those titles now roll up to a new boss who has not yet named a film chief, inside a company that just told Wall Street the last slate was not loud enough.

Earnings After the Close Will Test the New Story

The October 20 call is the first time Sarandos and Peters have to explain the week on the record. Analysts already trimmed forecasts after Bajaria’s exit; Brian Pitz at BMO Capital Markets cut his third- and fourth-quarter revenue estimates by about 1% each and his 2027 revenue view by about 1.5%, and said his model does not assume a U.S. and Canada acceleration until 2029. Disney, which is also profitable, has had three layoff rounds in 2026. David Ellison’s new Skydance group has already warned of “difficult decisions that affect our workforce” after the Paramount and Warner Bros. combination.

Netflix’s own forecast still calls for revenue of between $51.0 billion and $51.4 billion this year and a 31.5% operating margin. That is the sentence the co-CEOs want the call to end on. The questions will be narrower. Who runs film. Whether Rice is being hired to spend more on fewer U.S. shows. Whether a 2% rise in hours can sit beside a 13.4% rise in revenue for another year. Whether the 1,000 jobs in product and tech were spare capacity, or the people who were supposed to make the app harder to leave.

Sarandos and Peters will take those questions at the October 21 town hall. Rice still has to name a film chief. The 1,000 people already gone will not be on that call.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of Netflix’s workforce and leadership changes and is for information only. It is not investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell Netflix shares, or a forecast of the company’s October 20 results. Readers who are considering a trade should consult a licensed financial adviser before acting. Headcount, earnings guidance and share-price figures reflect the company filings, internal memos and market data cited here and can change when Netflix publishes its third-quarter results.