Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

I wonder if there will be any long term reputational repercussions for Netflix because of this. Amongst SWEs, Netflix is known for hiring the best people and their streaming service normally seems very solid. Other streaming services have definitely caught up a bit and are much more reliable then in the early days, but my impression still has always been that Netflix is a step above the rest technically.

This sure doesn't help with that impression, and it hasn't just been a momentary glitch but hours of instability. And the Netflix status page saying "Netflix is up! We are not currently experiencing an interruption to our streaming service." doesn't help either...

From what I've heard, Netflix has really diluted the culture that people know of from the Patty McCord days.

In particular, they have been revising their compensation structure to issue RSUs, add in a bunch of annoying review process, add in a bunch of leveling and titles, begin hiring down market (e.g. non-sr employees), etc.

In addition to doing this, shuffling headcount, budgets, and title quotas around has in general made the company a lot more bureaucratic.

I think, as streaming matured as a solution space, this (what is equivalent to cost-cutting) was inevitable.

If Netflix was running the same team/culture as it was 10 years ago, I'd like to say that they would have been able to pull of streaming.

Were they not able to hire enough top-skilled people? If not, why not?

Or did they have a lot of needs that they decided didn't require top-skilled people?

Or was this a beancounter thing, of someone deciding that the company was paying more money on staffing than they needed to, without understanding it?

My observation is that Netflix is one of those places that brags about how they do so much with so little employees.