The network architect who designed Netflix’s internal data center network was among staff axed in the streaming giant’s mass layoffs.

Around 6% of its workforce were laid off, representing about 1,000 roles, its largest round of layoffs in over four years.

Brian Rettke confirmed he was among those affected via LinkedIn. The Phoenix-based exec joined the company back in 2019, and helped develop compute, storage, and network as well as enterprise networks for the platform’s media and content creation teams.

Rettke said “a lot of my stunning colleagues” were impacted by the layoffs, with tech teams joining human resources and legal teams in job cuts. Rettke's exit provided an insight into the behind-the-scenes at Netflix, ordaining its infrastructure stack as “the continually moving frontier," adding: “All those items that would break models and defy standardization, until we worked out how to do so. The hopper of these challenges never emptied, and it was glorious"

“For seven years, this is what thrilled me about heading into work each day. I flexed a bit of project management, some scripting (eventually vibe coding), and digital reams of documentation. I got to run tech summits, work with a varied group of stakeholders to determine business need, and translate that into technical designs. It was a novel experience teaching AI the skill of sifting through high-level designs and deployment guides, and having it decide if something would require accommodations, and the overall level of effort attached,” Rettke wrote.

Alongside architects, software engineers were also hit. Senior exec Vivi H was among those confirming they were impacted by the cuts. She worked on the streaming giant’s search experiences, including its voice control search feature.

“Over the past decade, I’ve had the opportunity to work at Amazon, Twitter, TikTok, and Netflix building large-scale backend systems and solving complex distributed systems problems," Vivi wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Netflix leadership described the layoffs as “organizational changes” coming amid a period of what company leadership perceives as stagnant growth. Co-chief executives Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters notws: “Our mission – to entertain the world – is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritize our people and resources.”

The platform remains reliant on subscriptions, with Netflix unable to “find another line of major revenue,” eMarketer senior analyst Ross Benes told the BBC. That’s despite an aggressive push into gaming while opening up the platform to ads during films and shows, even for paid subscribers.