Live data from Hacker News

SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

techcrunch.com

91–100 of 455 posts

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#91
post #50

This is a perfect example of how strong software engineering from competitors can result in you getting completely left in the dust. YouTube and Spotify have great algorithms for suggesting new songs - I feel like when my current song is done, I have a really high chance of hearing another song that I've never heard, but will enjoy. This is not the case on SoundCloud, where I'm almost always jolted back to reality wh…

Neither Youtube or Spotify make any real money. Recommendation algorithms are the least of Soundcloud's worries as the platform just doesn't have any real business plan and just can't play the "growth game" anymore.

There is just no real money in selling access to or hosting digital music.

Soundcloud used to be a place for DJs. They died when they tried to go mainstream instead of focusing on DJs and selling them services.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#92
Come work with us at Atrium in SF (Portero) and disrupt the legal industry. Cofounders: Justin Kan, Bebe Chueh, Augie Rakow, Chris Smoak. Atrium is hiring for Senior Full-Stack Engineers, Senior Backend Engineers, Frontend Engineers + more. See postings here! We want you! https://www.atriumlts.com/

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#93

SoundCloud employee here. If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.

We're looking for a senior UX Designer to work on this:

https://www.thirdlight.com/chorus

Cambridge, UK.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#94

SoundCloud employee here. If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.

We (Tungsten Labs) are hiring in Berlin:

Lead Backend: https://tungsten.workable.com/jobs/481949

Product Owner: https://tungsten.workable.com/j/B89A0EA7A1

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#95

It's been a downhill trend ever since trending likes were replaced by reposts. Trending likes actually showed which tunes my friends found most interesting. Reposts allowed a single user to spam a feed with their personal taste. Then repost bots were allowed to require repost to unlock a free download and now discovery on SoundCloud is almost dead. My friends who are successful producers but refuse to play the bot an…

Iterface not changing in years makes me think it's ripe for an acquisition from Barry Diller's IAC. They specialize in sites that don't update their interfaces for years at a time.

(Apologies to those that work for one of those companies.)

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#96
post #76
post #50

This is a perfect example of how strong software engineering from competitors can result in you getting completely left in the dust. YouTube and Spotify have great algorithms for suggesting new songs - I feel like when my current song is done, I have a really high chance of hearing another song that I've never heard, but will enjoy. This is not the case on SoundCloud, where I'm almost always jolted back to reality wh…

Exactly this point came up in a conversation with non-technical friends recently, everyone agreed. The nice thing soundcloud has is the ability to host mixes, which can last hours.

And that‘s exactly what they should have focused on. I never saw them as a service for listening to tracks and albums or storing my collection. It‘s not a Spotify or Apple Music competitor. It’s a great place for DJ mixes, sets and live recording, though I think Mixcloud is the better product - unfortunately I see way less engagement over there. That might change when Soundcloud goes down.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#97

SoundCloud employee here. If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.

We're hiring developers of all sorts at SharpSpring. I'm the CTO. Feel free to ping me if interested travis [at] sharpspring [dot] com.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#99

SoundCloud is my go-to for music while programming. I've spent countless hours curating my likes, playlists, follows, etc. I'd be quite upset if the service shuts down, 1) for the artists that have gained large followings through the service and 2) for all the personal time spent that will in the end mean nothing. I think I'm reiterating what has been said before, but the reposting is horrendous. It's made the listen…

I would unfollow an artist that was reposting too much.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why they decided to remove them from GitHub already [1] when they were given a 90 days notice [2]. [1] https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882983954059595776 [2] https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882981765064871937

Maybe to limit the damage notified (and thus possibly upset) employees can cause.

That must've been an interesting calculation. Now they're paying dozens of employees that literally aren't able to work three months worth of salary.
Post reply on HN