Fast Company unearthed a 2007 parody video of Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, and the Griffin team – a group of designers and programmers who were making a “Netflix box” that later spun off into Roku. The box was to be made at Foxconn and, in the style of the then-popular Lost, Hastings and the team made a silly video featuring productivity tips they learned from Foxconn workers – namely sleeping on the job.
To be clear, the workers were napping as the assembly line was being spun up for business and weren’t dozing on the job. However, Hastings and Netflix Internet TV lead, Anthony Wood, are shown trying out various sleeping positions set to a soundtrack of “Far East” music so familiar to kids, racists, and the culturally insensitive.
The plight of the Foxconn worker – however you want to look at it – wasn’t big back in the go-go aughts, but presumably someone should have known better. That said, it’s an interesting look inside a company that, of late, has become little more than a storehouse for documentaries, MegaShark vs. Octotransformer, and My Little Pony episodes. Spinning off Roku rather than keeping it in-house was probably the best decision Hastings made in the last decade. Making this video was probably the worst one.