The Netflix memo: you knew who was leaving. They didn't.
The full Drift reading of Netflix's layoff memo: what it found, the questions only the co-CEOs could answer, and why the person writing is the last to see it.
Last Tuesday I left you with a challenge: read Netflix’s layoff memo and mark where it leaves people hanging. If you did, keep your marks beside you. If you didn’t, it takes two minutes.
It is four paragraphs, sent on Wednesday 14 October by the co-CEOs, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, to about 16,000 people, roughly 6% of whom Netflix was letting go.
The first paragraph announces “a number of organizational changes” and, as a result, letting go of “roughly 6% of our colleagues, with the greatest impact to our product, tech, legal, and HR teams”. The second puts support for the people leaving first, says “leaders will be connecting with impacted employees soon” and that the process “will vary somewhat by country”, and says to them: “If you are leaving, please know that we will support you”, before thanking them.
The third begins “For the rest of the team, we know you have questions, too”, and goes on to the mission, a business “strong and growing”, investing “aggressively in high impact areas” and “focused choices” for “our members, partners, employees, and investors”. In the last, “We know changes like this are tough, but let’s stay focused” comes before “a moment perfectly suited to a company like ours”, and it closes on “meet the moment, together, like we always do”.
In last week’s piece I wrote about three main gaps: when people would know, why it was happening, and who to ask. I promised the full Drift reading for this week, and here it is. Last week was about what the memo left out. This week I look at the words that are in it, and how each group could take them.
How a Drift reading works
Drift runs on WhatsApp. A leader opens a conversation with it about a message before sending it, and the conversation goes in four steps.
First, the context. Drift asks who is sending the message, who will receive it, how and when, what is going on around it, and what it is meant to achieve. For Netflix we gave it what the co-CEOs could have known before they pressed send: the text, who receives it, what was going on at Netflix that week, and what the memo says it is for. We gave it nothing from the earnings call six days later.
Second, the reading. Drift says back what it understood the intent to be, so the leader can correct it, and then sets out where each group of readers could take the text differently, most significant first, each point tied to the words that cause it.
Third, the conversation. It asks the questions only the leader can answer, one at a time, and a finding that depends on an answer says so.
Fourth, it asks whether the leader wants suggestions to apply themselves, or some sections rewritten for them to review. At the end it sends a report of the session.
There was no leader in this conversation, so Drift received no answers at the third step and did not discuss edits at the fourth. What follows is what Drift produced, trimmed but otherwise unchanged. Everything in italics is Drift’s own words.
The reading
It starts by saying back what it understood the memo is trying to do, and what it is assuming:
You want to tell the whole company that about 6% of colleagues are leaving, put support for them first, thank them, and then reassure everyone else that the business is strong and that this is a deliberate choice to keep investing, so the team stays focused. I am inferring that the memo goes out before the individual conversations happen, since it says leaders “will be connecting with impacted employees soon”. Correct me if that is wrong, because several of the points below depend on it.
I am not evaluating the decision itself, only how this text could land.
The findings
Compare these with your marks. The bold lines are Drift’s words too. It talks to the leader, so in its words “you” means Ted and Greg.
Everyone in four functions could read themselves into the 6%, and the memo does not tell them for how long.
“Leaders will be connecting with impacted employees soon” and “The process will vary somewhat by country” give no time and no signal for those who are not affected. … “With the greatest impact to” also widens the scope: “greatest” tells every other team that they are touched too, without saying how.
“If you are leaving” speaks to people who cannot yet tell they are being addressed.
A reader could take the thanks as warm, or could read it as a farewell to a group they may or may not belong to. …
“Strong and growing” next to the cut leaves readers to supply the reason, and they could supply one you did not intend.
People leaving could read: it was not the business, so it was us. People staying could read: if this happens when things are strong, it could happen again at any time.
“We know you have questions, too” acknowledges the questions, then answers different ones.
The questions the staying team is likely to have are personal and near: am I safe, will there be more, what changes in my team, who do I ask. The paragraph answers with the mission, the forecast, “invest aggressively in high impact areas” and “drive growth and innovation”. That is the vocabulary of an earnings update, and readers could take the paragraph as written for the market. …
One email, three audiences, and the close is read by all of them.
“Together” and “perfectly suited” could read to them [the people leaving] as a celebration they are excluded from, on the day they learn they are going. The “but” in “tough, but let’s stay focused” could read as moving past the feeling rather than through it.
“Colleagues” becomes “impacted employees”.
The shift from people to process language could be read as the moment the memo stops talking to them and starts talking about them.
The email talks to the 6% in one voice and to the 94% in another, and nobody reading it could tell from the email which group they were in. So an uncertainty meant for 6% of the company could reach all of it, and everyone could be left waiting with no way to tell where they stood, reading all of it as possibly about them: the thanks, the strong business, the rally at the end.
We write these emails knowing who is on the list, so we are among the few in the company who don’t feel the uncertainty. That kind of not knowing raises stress for everyone in the company, not only for the people who end up leaving, at the risk of making people, and the company, less effective.
Drift found two more that are a different matter.
The decision has no one making it.
“We are making a number of organizational changes and, as a result, we’ll be letting go” presents the job losses as a consequence of changes that are never named. … The memo is signed by both of you, but the text does not land who decided, or what you are taking responsibility for. Readers could read distance where you may intend care.
Most of us have written “as a result” in an announcement like this. When we write it, we know we made the decision, so it sounds to us like plain description. We don’t notice that it leaves the decision with nobody, and that readers can take it as a leader not willing to own it. A line like that only shows up when someone reads it back to us from the reader’s side.
Employees come third of four.
“So we can keep delivering for our members, partners, employees, and investors” lists employees after members and partners, in the email that tells some of them they are leaving. It is a small phrase, and a reader who is already anxious could notice the order.
Nobody sits down to decide in which order to name members, partners, employees and investors. The order comes from the way we always write about the business, and when we reread the draft we check the facts, not the order of four words. It takes a reading from the side of the person waiting for the call to notice it.
And two it left open for the leaders.
There is no single central idea …
The memo opens with support as “our top priority today”, gives the larger share of its words to the business case, and ends on focus. Each of the three could be read as the point. … (Some leaders are comfortable holding more than one idea; I would check with you before recommending simplification.)
Ask three people what our last all-staff email was about and we might get three answers. Drift doesn’t call that wrong, it leaves the leaders to say which one they meant.
Voice (open).
Several phrases are generic to the genre (“never easy”, “high impact areas”, “meet the moment”). I cannot tell whether that is your usual register without another sample … so I hold this as a question, not a finding.
We rarely hear our own stock phrases. To the person writing, “meet the moment” is simply how an all-staff email ends. Drift can’t settle this one from a single email, because it doesn’t know how the two of them usually write, but used over time, it learns how a leader writes, whether it is an email, a briefing or a speech, and then it can tell when a message doesn’t sound like them.
The conversation
This is the step where Drift asks the leader the questions only they can answer, most important first. These are the ones it asked.
- When will people know? “Soon” is the only timing in the memo. When will the people affected be told, and when, and how, will everyone else know they are not affected? Is the memo going out before or after those conversations?
- Is there a reason you can share for these four functions, and for now? …
- Is this the whole of it? Can you say whether further reductions are planned, or not?
- Where do the rest of the team take their questions? … Is there an all-hands, a Q&A, a manager conversation, a contact?
- Do the managers who will do the notifying already know, and are any of them affected themselves?
- Who else do you expect to read this? Is it written for staff only, or written knowing it will be public?
- Is this how you usually write to the whole company? …
One of these questions, whether there is a reason for these four functions and for now, came up again six days later. On the earnings call an analyst asked about the cuts, and Greg Peters, one of the two co-CEOs, began to give the reason: “there are some areas that we built quickly and we ended up over-invested in”, and “Sometimes the team needs a forcing function”. So there was a reason, and the first place Netflix gave it in public was an earnings call.
What a reading can show
Every finding says “could”, because Drift can’t know what anyone at Netflix took from the memo, and neither can we. It shows where the text leaves room for a reading the two authors didn’t intend, while there is still time to change it.
The small ones, “impacted employees” or the order of four nouns, are easy to miss when we write, while someone in product, tech, legal or HR, waiting for the call, has only the text.
The full report is laid out the way a leader receives it.
Now run it on yours
Before you send your next announcement, you can run the same reading on it. Send Drift the draft as text, a document or a PDF, or if there is no draft yet, type or speak on WhatsApp what you want to say. It reads it the way it read Netflix’s here: where your people could take it differently from what you mean, then the questions only you can answer → run Drift .
Find out where you stand
Take a Snapshot : six questions about your last high stakes moment in front of your people, to see where your message may be drifting.