Roku’s unique culture is being tested by a surge of new employees
Roku co-founder and CEO Anthony Wood worked at Netflix in 2007, but he says his company’s cultural similarities to the streaming giant are mostly coincidental.
“The culture at Roku was the same before I worked at Netflix,” Wood said in an interview. “Just similar philosophies.”
Netflix and Roku have culture documents in which theyliken themselves to sports teams.
“Working at Roku is like being part of a professional sports team,” Wood wrote in a 2015 document that every employee receives. “We put extreme care into recruiting the best people; we pay well in a competitive market; encourage excellent teamwork, and expect everyone to perform at a high level.”
One former executive said every job at Roku is like being a “field goal kicker,” where employees are expected to accomplish specific, detailed goals. Some employees thrive under the pressure. If they can’t, they won’t be there long.
“We expect you to do a good job,” Wood said. “If you don’t do a good job, you’re going to get fired eventually.”
Wood and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings point to their cultures as a reason for their companies’ success. But both cultures can also lead to an environment of fear and confusion — though for different reasons.
At Netflix, as The Wall Street Journal explained in a 2018 story, employees formally review each other, giving blunt feedback to bosses and underlings alike. Workers “sunshine” errors, offering up public apologies and acknowledgments of failures.
“We expect you to do a good job. If you don’t do a good job, you’re going to get fired eventually.”Anthony WoodCEO, Roku
In contrast, Roku doesn’t give any performance reviews at all. Wood has also made the unusual decision of paying employees based on a market rate rather than giving raises tied to internal performance. That’s irritated some younger employees who have expected a perfunctory raise every year at performance review time, said Wood.
“We have a lot of younger employees now, and they are very focused on getting raises,” Wood said. “You know, I’ve been here a year, I should get a raise. And, you might not get a raise. Or you might. It just depends on what we think the rate is for you. Sometimes they understand and adapt, sometimes they don’t understand, and they quit and then they post on Glassdoor. So, it’s a bit of a cultural mismatch.”
It can be difficult to figure out market rate, Wood acknowledged, especially because California and New York state laws prohibit asking employees how much they’re getting paid. But Roku can glean competitive salaries because it knows what it needs to pay to poach employees from other companies, Wood said.
Read the published culture documents from Roku and Netflix
Excelling in ambiguity
Annual reviews aren’t necessary because employees should be getting real-time feedback, Wood said.
“The work is hard, but it is also rewarding, and I am given a lot of autonomy,” said Taylor Yanez, a Roku engineer. “We don’t do annual reviews, which are a huge time suck.”
But while Yanez said he was given instant feedback by peers, seven former Roku employees who left in the last 18 months said they felt confused by Roku’s culture. They spoke with CNBC on condition of anonymity, either because they feared potential backlash or because contractual language in their severance packages forbids speaking about their firings.
“I literally don’t know why I was fired,” said one recently departed manager. “It’s the strangest place I’ve ever worked.”
Former employees said while they were assigned specific tasks, bosses evaluated them on different metrics because goals frequently changed as Roku grew. In addition to no performance reviews, Roku has very little hierarchy— almost all Roku engineers are called “senior software engineers,” regardless of tenure or role. Mix in a recent surge of new employees — Roku has increased headcount almost threefold, to more than 1,900 employees, since its 2017 IPO — and the result can be confusing.
Several ex-Roku employees said their bosses told them that working in ambiguous settings was part of the job. That runs counter to the Roku culture document, which claims, “Roku teams communicate clearly, in real time with each other and with other teams across the company. Plans, milestones, and strategic context are broadly known.”
“There’s no formal training,” said one mid-level executive, “At Roku, finding information is on you.”
Roku is trying to improve some of its organizational infrastructure as it grows, including formalizing an internship orientation for the first time this year, two of the people said.
“We compete to attract and retain the best talent anywhere and treat people like adults,” a Roku spokesperson said. “We provide onboarding and training for new and existing employees and seek those who are particularly resourceful, innovative, and self-sufficient. And we have a culture of real-time feedback, which has been remarkably successful.”
Netflix with a twist
Netflix and Roku offer unlimited vacation time, giving employees the right to dictate their own schedules as long as they can get their work done. Both have purposefully flat organizational structures, deemphasizing titles and hierarchy.
But unlike Netflix and other large technology companies, Roku offers few external employee perks, such as on-site day care, daily free catered lunches, inexpensive health plans or extensive personal wellness benefits. Roku doesn’t even match 401(k) contributions.
Instead, Wood has chosen to funnel that money into workers’ salaries, believing employees should be in charge of how they spend their money. Every past and present Roku employee who spoke with CNBC said the company compensated at or beyond their expectations. It pays a base salary and grants restricted stock units, though it doesn’t give bonuses.
Given the stock’s performance, it’s easy to see why employees have been eager to stick with the company. Roku shares have gained about 2,000% since the company’s IPO.
Roku’s senior leadership website page also illustrates a lack of diversity — including no women. That will change soon. Wood said Roku just announced a new head of human resources, Kamilah Mitchell-Thomas, previously Dow Jones’ chief people officer, who will replace current HR leader Troy Fenner. Roku’s board does have three women of nine members.
But Wood said diversity for diversity’s sake won’t dictate whom he hires.
“My focus is hiring the best people I can find,” Wood said.
Wood said he meets weekly with an executive coach, Dave Krall, who was Roku’s president and chief operating officer in 2010 and, before that, CEO of Avid Technology. He defines his leadership as hiring the right people and allowing them the freedom to do their job.
“The leadership a company needs changes as it grows,” Wood said. “When you’re 15 or 20 people, I’m the product leader at that point. As it gets bigger and you hire more senior people, you don’t have to do that anymore and they don’t want you to do that, because that’s their job. I used to do our product road map. I don’t do that anymore. These days, we have new initiatives. Pushing us into new business areas and expanding our businesses are where I’m hands-on today.”
WATCH: There’s a lot of room to keep growing in the streaming business: Roku CEO
Technology
UPS shares tank 17% after weak guidance, plan to slash Amazon deliveries by more than half
Apple CEO Tim Cook greets former President Barack Obama at the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Getty Images
Apple reports December-quarter earnings Thursday after the bell.
The December quarter is Apple’s largest of the year, partially due to the holiday shopping season and also because it is the first full quarter of new iPhone sales.
While analysts are not worried about the company’s performance in the December quarter, many of them will look for what Apple signals about how its March quarter is shaking out.
Supply chain data points suggest Apple’s sales in China are weakening, and Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of artificial intelligence features, is not available in Chinese yet.
“Specifically, iPhone 16 demand is not amplified by the introduction of iOS 18 and its Gen AI features. In fact, paradoxically, somehow demand is actually softer,” wrote Loop Capital analyst Ananda Baruah in a note earlier this month, downgrading Apple to hold. “We’re again looking for iPhone units to decline for the fourth consecutive year.”
Apple does not publish its unit sales, and does not give traditional guidance. New Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh, who assumed the role earlier this month, will likely give investors a few data points on Thursday’s call that analysts can use to estimate earnings per share and revenue for Apple’s March-quarter performance.
LSEG estimates Apple’s revenue will grow on an annual basis at about 3.8% to $124.13 billion. Apple said in October that it expected “low- to mid-single digit” sales growth during the quarter.
One of the biggest things analysts will be watching for is if Apple’s mainland China sales suggest that consumers in the country are shifting their preferences to locally made and designed devices.
“We believe that a major driver of growing competition within the smartphone market is due to growing preference for domestic brands within China,” wrote Goldman Sachs analyst Michael Ng in a Jan. 23 note.
One bright spot for Apple could be its services business, which includes products ranging from device warranties to the Apple TV+ streaming service. Barclays analysts said in a note earlier this month that services could grow as much as 14% on an annual basis, which could offset lower iPhone sales.
Apple is expected to be questioned over its plan for Trump’s proposed tariffs and its overall AI strategy.
Here is what to expect from Apple in the December quarter, per LSEG consensus estimates:
- Earnings per share: $2.35
- Revenue: $124.13 billion
Analysts are expecting guidance for the March quarter of $1.66 in earnings per share on $95.46 billion in revenue.
WATCH: Apple’s superficial problem is there’s not enough demand, says Jim Cramer
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OpenAI partners with U.S. National Laboratories on scientific research, nuclear weapons security
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks next to SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered remarks on AI infrastructure at the Roosevelt room at White House in Washington, U.S., January 21, 2025.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
OpenAI on Thursday said the U.S. National Laboratories will be using its latest artificial intelligence models for scientific research and nuclear weapons security.
Under the agreement, up to 15,000 scientists working at the National Laboratories may be able to access OpenAI’s reasoning-focused o1 series. OpenAI will also work with Microsoft, its lead investor, to deploy one of its models on Venado, the supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a release. Venado is powered by technology from Nvidia and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the partnership at a company event called “Building to Win: AI Economics,” in Washington, D.C.
According to OpenAI, the new partnership will involve scientists using OpenAI’s technology to enhance cybersecurity to protect the U.S. power grid, identify new approaches to treating and preventing diseases and deepen understanding of fundamental mathematics and physics.
It will also involve work on nuclear weapons, “focused on reducing the risk of nuclear war and securing nuclear materials and weapons worldwide,” the company wrote. Some OpenAI researchers with security clearances will consult on the project.
Earlier this week, OpenAI released ChatGPT Gov, an AI platform built specifically for U.S. government use. OpenAI billed the new platform as a step beyond ChatGPT Enterprise as far as security. It will allow government agencies to feed “non-public, sensitive information” into OpenAI’s models while operating within their own secure hosting environments, the company said.
OpenAI said that since the beginning of 2024, more than 90,000 employees of federal, state and local governments have generated over 18 million prompts within ChatGPT, using the technology to translate and summarize documents, write and draft policy memos, generate code and build applications.
The government partnership follows a series of moves by Altman and OpenAI that appear to be targeted at appeasing President Donald Trump. Altman contributed $1 million to the inauguration, attended the event last week alongside other tech CEOs and recently signaled his admiration for the president.
Altman wrote on X that watching Trump “more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him,” adding that “he will be incredible for the country in many ways.” OpenAI is also part of the recently announced Stargate project that involves billions of dollars in investment into U.S. AI infrastructure.
As OpenAI steps up its ties to the government, a Chinese rival is blowing up in the U.S. DeepSeek, an AI startup lab out of China, saw its app soar to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings this week and roiled U.S. markets on reports that its powerful model was trained at a fraction of the cost of U.S. competitors.
Altman described DeepSeek’s R1 model as “impressive,” and wrote on X that “we will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor!”
WATCH: OpenAI highly overvalued
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