Netflix kings Hastings and Sarandos made slightly fewer millions of dollars last year

This, despite the company posting its highest stock prices ever in 2021

Netflix kings Hastings and Sarandos made slightly fewer millions of dollars last year
Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos Photo: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images

Today, in “Oh, so that’s how much money you get in exchange for wiping out The Baby-Sitters Club” news: Variety reports that Netflix has revealed how much cash Netflix head honchos Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos pulled down over the last year: $40.8 million for Hastings, and $38.2 million for Sarandos.

This is per the company’s annual report to the Securities And Exchange Commission; the two men are currently co-CEOs of the streaming service, which is annoying in so far as we had this little joke queued up where we were going to refer to Sarandos as Hasting’s sub-honcho in the previous paragraph, but he got elevated to an equal role with the founder back in 2020, thus ruining that minor linguistic triumph.

Anyway: The most interesting thing about the news—aside from the general reminder that either man could probably pay you and everyone you know’s annual salary in roughly a single week of work per year—is that both men’s compensation dipped a bit in 2022; 6 percent for Hastings, and 2.7 percent for Sarandos. That’s not because Netflix’s board cut either man’s take-home, though—despite Sarandos inserting himself directly last year into the controversy over the company’s ongoing support of Dave Chappelle and the transphobic material he performed in recent Netflix-produced stand-up specials, leading to widespread criticism from both within and without the company’s offices.

As far as we can tell, the dips—which are there across the entire senior leadership of the company—have to do with how the value of each man’s hefty stock compensation is being calculated. Which is odd, in that 2021 was the best year the company’s ever had in terms of stock price, hitting a peak in November. But, then, we are mere peons and not Succession characters, and thus are not gifted with an instinctive understanding of how the big big numbers move around the balance sheet. It’ll actually be more interesting to see if those drops stay consistent in 2022, since Netflix has seen its stock price drop in recent months, and is reportedly currently struggling to find more ways to squeeze money out of markets, like North America, that are already completely saturated with subscriptions. (Hence recent price hikes for the service, and efforts to crack down on password sharing.)

 
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