SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices • Hacker News Board

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#181

Post by josteink » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

gorkonsine wrote: post #152

josteink wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use streaming services all the time, but this is why I buy albums from artists I like and keep a self-hosted plex library. Should anything I like ever be taken down, I can still listen to it. The good thing about music is that it is ultra portable so mixing music from many sources, services and providers is hardly a problem. And you can clearly see that in how the market for online music works. Unlike video, which…

I think it's great you have a two-pronged approach (buying stuff you really like, so you're not out of luck if the streaming provider folds like this), but I have to question your assertion about online video: Netflix is clearly a success story I think. Maybe the only real standout, but still it exists. Lots of people are signed up for it. There's also Amazon video; I don't know how successful it is, but people do re…

But those are closed services, closed silos letting me stream content through closed source apps running on a extremely tiny subset of the digital devices out there capable of playing digital video.

Hardly any service lets me buy and curate my own videos, without DRM, from several sources and build my own library which I can play on all digital devices out there.

It's just a few big giant services, each with their own DRM and limited platform support.

It's nowhere near a real market where I can pick and choose and providers compete on merit.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#182

Post by socrates1998 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

Do any of the most popular music streaming services make money?

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#183

Post by ukd1 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:43 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

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.

Sorry to hear this news. We have a position for a Senior Software Developer at Rainforest QA. We're looking for several years with Postgres (or other SQL experience) and Ruby-on-Rails (or similar technology). We're a distributed team so you can be based in the Bay Area or anywhere in the world. More here https://www.rainforestqa.com/jobs/ or reach out directly. Best of luck to you all.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#184

Post by shallot_router » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:45 PM UTC

dustinmoris wrote: post #22

They also laid off the entire New York team and at least some individuals in Berlin: https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947 https://twitter.com/katalunia_/status/882992899893460993 > Well, SoundCloud just laid off all of its New York engineering > Literally the entire payments and subscriptions team, ads-eng, monetization engineering, everybody > Not really clear to me how the execs think this company…

It doesn't sound like they plan on running the company for very much longer.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#185

Post by thowaway999 » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:46 PM UTC

I was a director of an engineering department for SoundCloud for a time and left several years ago. Frankly none of this should be surprising: nobody there could figure out a product definition nor a monetization plan. What is more: the engineering organization at SoundCloud at large was completely fractured and suffered from in-fighting. Nobody trusted anyone across organizations. There was no shortage of bullying even. Taking that in mind, SoundCloud's downfall was to be expected. Because of caustic environment even before the financial crunch, they couldn't execute. Blame the incestuous Brazilian boys club there for it (I'm male, by the way); they bullied just about everyone.

As for Berlin, I am sorry to say: I had high-hopes for the tech culture there, but to call it Mickey Mouse would be a charitable statement. It was laden with confused hipsters who couldn't differentiate between language du jour and its monads and delivering a product.

When I applied, the warning signs were strong. Nevertheless I ignored them — to my own peril. Needless to say, I won't make those mistakes again!

Right before I resigned, it was revealed in a private leads meeting that 18 percent of the engineering force had resigned in that given quarter. Was I surprised? Not in the slightest. That knowledge gave me resolve to get out, which I hadn't yet announced.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#186

Post by Theodores » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:48 PM UTC

kayoone wrote: post #27

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

420 still seems like a rather unreasonably large number (to me) for something that is basically a file hosting service with a couple barely maintained mobile apps and a web site. Quite a few artists I follow are on Soundcloud primarily for new material. I would happily pay for Soundcloud if they'd bother to update their app for Android Auto and Android TV.

420 is total employee count, only a fraction of that (i believe substantially below 100) are devs, which for a site of that size is adequate i guess. They also have quite a few engineers working with the data instead of product development.

What is the max dev (+ engineer) to other office worker ratio?

Even in tech companies with no physical product to get out the door it is easy to get a 1:10 ratio. You just need an army of sales, press, marketing, social media managing, customer service, HR, management, legal, design, print design, accounting, finance, office management and other random people with important jobs to do.

How about a 1:75 ratio?!?

With three offices you are going to need nine receptionists at a bare minimum if you are to cover reception for an hour either side of when everyone turns up. At a minimum the IT guys that plug people in and get them setup on 'Exchange' are of a similar number if all the offices are to be covered.

So there must be a 'dev to total headcount' ratio, a maximum sustainable upper number, any higher and the company is doomed to 'miss the web' and get totally stuck in 1990's ways of working. I have seen a 1:75 ratio 'tech company' and saw great opportunity in changing it, although a long way off the desired 1:10 or lower.

There must be companies where the ratio is the other way around. A programming concern with little of the normal sales/marketing requirements could be a 3:1 company.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#187

Post by schneidmaster » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:48 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

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.

Aha! is always hiring quality folks to work on our Ruby on Rails and Javascript (React) application. We are fully remote (work from anywhere in North America), profitable, and we offer excellent benefits.

http://www.aha.io | email: engineering-jobs@aha.io

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#188

Post by bluetwo » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

mitchellshow wrote: post #136

bluetwo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

*IAC Unfortunately for SC, IAC tends to price acquisitions based on historical revenues...

Thanks. Fixed.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#189

Post by jameshush » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

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.

NFL is hiring in Los Angeles. We get to work with a lot of bleeding edge JavaScript and have a few popular open source projects like React Helmet that we actively maintain https://github.com/nfl/react-helmet. Drop me a line and I can get your resume to the right place (james.hush@nfl.com)

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#190

Post by nowarninglabel » Thu, Jul 06, 2017, 6:52 PM UTC

aaronlevin wrote: post #19

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 (Kiva) are hiring SRE / DevOps or Security folks in San Francisco https://www.kiva.org/careers Would love to have some SoundCloud people join us :)