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SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

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Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#372

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 e…

I worked for SoundCloud for about a year, I can attest that SoundCloud was a huge mess, mostly because the two founders (both Swedish) had no clue how to manage the business.

I think every nationality represented in the company gave a good contribution to make the place both good and bad.

I can't say the Brazilians there were an issue, but I can see how some folks, especially in the infrastructure team, wouldn't like them.

I personally had a lot more issues with German people, both in the company and outside of it, to be honest.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#373

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.

Hi Aaron, sorry to hear that :(

Prefer(https://prefer.com) is looking at hiring both frontend engineer and product designer in both NY and SF. We are a Benchmark-backed company working on rebuilding the service professional marketplace.

Feel free to reach out, my email is siong [at] prefer [dot] com.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#374
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you open to remote work?

I am really curious as to how you'd work a robotics job remotely.

...me too!

I actually did it for a while. I started my career in biotech and worked on an instrument. When I told them I was moving they wanted to keep me on and sent a couple of scanners to me.

I do realize that's a special case. They knew me for eight years prior, not nearly the same thing... but I thought I'd ask. There may be a fair amount of work that can be done via simulation, or applications level stuff, but yeah, a long shot.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#375

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 e…

I hope you understand that you sound fairly angry and biased (no pun intended).

By being a director and having this sort of blaming outlook on other people, you most likely have a good share of responsibility for the downfall of the company.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#376

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 e…

Vai tomar no teu cu Aladdin!

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ain't no way I'm listening to mixes on YT when they put brickwall-compressed ads cutting in on un-normalized audio every 10 minutes. It's a non-starter; when I see those little yellow dots I hit the back button.

Have you used YouTube Red / the YouTube music app?

God no. The only way I'll consider paying YT a single red cent for anything they make is if I can permanently turn off annotations on videos, and I haven't been able to find anything that indicates a yes or no to that question, so I have to assume their stance is "GFY."

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#378
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That says a lot. German labor laws protect their citizens strongly. I'm pretty sure they would always choose to get rid of other country staff first.

More likely the German engineers cost half as much as the New York ones. No health insurance and much lower CoL and market rates.

I think you're probably right about overall cost, but just a note: German employers do pay into the health insurance pools, too.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#379
post #16

Soundcloud started dying when they decided to be more like Spotify and less like the independent music discovery service they started out as. Now they have an app and experience that is not particularly good at either.

I've worked at a few places that died this way. CEO: "We're #1 in $NICHE. But growth is the only way, so we need to compete in $BIG_MARKET." [months of de-focus later] CEO: "We're only #10 in $BIG_MARKET and now we totally lost $NICHE!!" Resume writing ensues...

I approve of the dollar prefixed variable names.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#380
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points are understandable. But what would your plan be to keep the doors open? They need to make money somehow. Not being sarcastic, am genuinely interested.

I'm a heavy SC user, listen to my "manually curated" (for lack of better words) timeline in background for hours a day (using global shortcuts in chrome to skip what I don't like), but what if I want to buy a song I like? I have to give my money to Bandcamp! Also, 10 bucks to remove ads is ridiculous, their catalogue is tiny and with overwhelmingly obscure/indie music (at least for me), AND I have no idea if the arti…

Why would you buy a song you like if you can listen to it for free?
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