Apparently creating a company called “Qwikster” wasn’t the only bad idea Reed Hastings had: in an internal motivational video uncovered by FastCompany, you get a look at the CEO’s idea of humor. Let’s make fun of overworked, unconscious Chinese workers.
https://gizmodo.com/qwikster-disappears-like-the-bad-dream-it-was-5848195
The video was produced in 2007, when Netflix was experimenting with a Roku-style hardware box. Part of the gag flick involves a trip to Foxconn’s factory lines—one of the first times an outside firm was allowed inside with cameras running. You can clearly see Netflix execs demeaningly pretending to sleep on the job like Foxconn’s notoriously depleted, over-exerted laborers. And although it’s not uncommon in Chinese corporate culture to take a little power nap at work, this is pre-outrage Foxconn we’re talking about—a place with brutally long days of monotonous assembly, before international controversy tilted the manufacturing giant toward reform. Their naps aren’t exactly the leisure nap of a CEO with his feet on the desk, and having a guffaw at the expense of factory workers is never exactly classy. And that soundtrack sure isn’t helping.
According to FastCo’s Austin Carr, “The video was a huge hit at the company.” [FastCompany]
