Insecure Job Alert: Netflix’s Tudum Is Hiring

The media industry may be in the middle of a hiring slowdown, but as the Labor Department jobs report showed last Friday, new positions are popping up everyday. One of those is at Tudum, the Netflix-run pop culture website about Netflix shows, named for Netflix’s proprietary Netflix logo sound. According to a job listing noticed on Twitter, Netflix is looking to fill one position: “Writer.”

Netflix launched Tudum less than eight months ago, in a bid to create an editorial extension of their TV and movie programming. It was supposed to be sort of like DVD “Extras” — interviews, behind-the-scenes material, etc. — mixed with news and more involved features, written by established critics and reporters. They lured several prominent culture writers away from full-time positions with the promise of tech money and tech job security.

But earlier this spring, Netflix announced they had lost subscribers for the first time in years. Netflix’s stock plunged, its market cap dropped by billions, and, in what was perhaps a related move, Netflix laid off 25 staffers, mostly from Tudum, just months after they signed onto the site. That was in April. But the cuts don’t seem to have stopped Netflix from head-hunting just 10 weeks later. The company did not immediately return our request for comment, but the job post appears to have been up since at least June 29, according to Wayback Machine archives.

Interesting. Also interesting — for a company whose own staff revolted after it aired Dave Chappelle’s lazy anti-trans jokes — is the application’s inclusion of this question: “Are you a person of transgender experience?”

Update 7.12.22: After this post published, a Netflix spokesperson got back to us. “Our fan website Tudum is an important priority for the company,” they wrote. The application question, they explained, is part of a voluntary information collection Netflix put in place two-odd years ago. “It's only reported back to us later in aggregate numbers, and not at an individual candidate level,” the spokesperson wrote. “That means someone’s answer to that question will never be indicated in their job submission - we receive the information in aggregate later.”