You know, for a company making, at minimum, nearly $200 million a month, you’d think Netflix wouldn’t be characterized as “teetering on the brink” and in real trouble. But if you listen to, say, CNET, or Ars Technica, you’d think the company was screwed. Additionally, Wall Street analysts are advising investors to dump their Netflix stock.
Of course, then you read about “schadenfreude” and realize what’s going on here: people are still butthurt over the monthly rate increases and the Qwikster debacle, because it’s important to cling to your first world problems.
It’s true Netflix has some problems: the CEO has admitted that expanding their operations overseas and losing 800,000 customers due to the worst thing that has ever happened to white people means they’re going to be operating in the red for a while. And it’ll have to regain customer trust.
Still, pretending it’s screwed because you’re bitter over something the CEO apologized for is the dictionary definition of crappy. Let it go, guys. Let it go.
In other Netflix news, the New York Times reports today that company CEO Reed Hastings ignored the one warning sign every CEO should heed: the protestations of a friend in a hot tub.
Reed Hastings was soaking in a hot tub with a friend last month when he shared a secret: his company, Netflix, was about to announce a plan to divide its movie rental service into two — one offering streaming movies over the Internet, the other offering old-fashioned DVDs in the mail.
“That is awful,” the friend, who was also a Netflix subscriber, told him under a starry sky in the Bay Area, according to Mr. Hastings. “I don’t want to deal with two accounts.”
Mr. Hastings ignored the warning, believing that chief executives should generally discount what their friends say.
It’s like my father always told me: If you’re not going to listen to the advice of the friend you’re in a hot tub with, why get into the hot tub with them in the first place. Or something like that.