Spotify reducing employee base by about 6% • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#251

Post by bananapub » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #156

phamilton4 wrote: post #127

I get needing to keep a company lean and that businesses operate to make money... But most of these recent layoffs really make me feel uneasy. Spotify is a little different because AFAIK they are still operating at a negative net income, but still let's take a look at this. They're going to let go 600 people.. that's maybe an annual 90 million in savings (150k salary). The company's revenue is about 9 billion with -3…

It's very naive to think these huge orgs don't have dead weight which is much bigger than 6%. If you start figuring some of your moonshot ideas aren't hitting their OKR's, you have a few options: * Just let them keep doing whatever without delivering what they claim they can * Create new moonshots for them just because * Move them to other products, but that doesn't mean they'll create more value as an org with (now)…

>It's very naive to think these huge orgs don't have dead weight which is much bigger than 6%. If you start figuring some of your moonshot ideas aren't hitting their OKR's, you have a few options:

there's been so many versions of this low quality comment on every tech-company-mass-firing article. why is so little thought put into it? if the company feels it can save on salaries then:

1. close down projects that aren't effective/profitable/whatever

1. fire people who aren't effective/profitable/whatever

mass broad spectrum layoffs like these are not that, they're "oh, let's just randomly put holes in the org chart to save X% of salary and see how it goes". would you suggest saving data storage costs by deleting 6% of files? would you suggest reducing compute by turning off 6% of jobs?

edit: and presumably a counter argument to the above is "firing people in an optimal way is hard", to which I say lol of course it is? work harder, then, before firing people. "it's hard" isn't an excuse to do some random unrelated and useless thing instead.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#252

Post by Ekaros » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:19 PM UTC

nsteel wrote: post #208

Kiro wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't tell mods to change something if you're not sure what you're talking about. Base here refers to people, 600 to be exact, so it sounds like you're wrong.

I think you've misunderstood the parent comment. They were saying the current title could be misinterpreted to mean "base salary is being reduced by 6%". I didn't think that, but I can see where they are coming from.

That was my first skim on it as well. Which to me sounded horrible considering inflation rates.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#253

Post by guelo » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:20 PM UTC

nebula8804 wrote: post #238

guelo wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey those 90 million will help pay for Joe Rogan's 200 million.

I thought the Joe Rogan deal was 100 million. Many people have been stating he was seriously underpaid but I think he was one of the first major deals so maybe there wasn't any strong metric to gauge what he is worth. Furthermore, they play multiple ads during his podcast regardless of if you are a paying customer or not. This one really grinds my gears. If they haven't made back their money yet then I'd be shocked.

"two people familiar with the details of the transaction" told NYT that it was at least $200 million for three and a half years. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/arts/music/spotify-joe-ro...

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#254

Post by mvdwoord » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:20 PM UTC

danjac wrote: post #87

mrweasel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still a ton of jobs out there, depending on where in the world you're able to work. They might not be as exciting, the companies aren't as well known, but they still pay fairly well and it's stable. I do feel bad for those who are losing their jobs, it's not their fault. Many of the companies currently firing people simply had too many employees to begin with. Daniel Elk even admits it: "I was too ambitious i…

What's weird is that all of these CEOs are saying the same thing: "I hired too many folks a couple years ago, welp, guess I was wrong". You would think some companies hired too many, some hired too few, others more or less just stayed the same. Instead we're seeing this groupthink of these so-called geniuses of the industry moving this way and that like a flock of sheep.

It is almost as if the low interest rate stimulated frivolous spending by investors..

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#255

Post by nytesky » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #217

nytesky wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The layoffs aren’t about actually saving the cost of those specific employees. Instead, the threat of being laid off is being used as a stick to bring the remaining employees in line — productivity has been lower the last few years, and leadership has no real way to measure on an individual level or how to improve it, so putting the pressure on employees is a tried and true tactics. Further, they can make lower TC of…

> productivity has been lower the last few years Any statistics to back that up? I've read both narratives (this one and the one that conflicts it) countless times over the Internet the past few years. I have no idea what is true. A lot of people defend work from home and say it makes people more productive/work more overall. If that were the case, why are some of the brightest companies like Google/Apple against it?

Not sure about stats, but it’s definitely the impression of companies leadership.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/31/productiv...

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#256

Post by bumby » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

phamilton4 wrote: post #202

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also I suspect that $150k as the mean TC of those being let go is low. Probably not low. It's an enormous salary for a developer outside of the Valley and Spotify has plenty of employees which are not in the USA.

TBH I think the average Sr. Developer is ~130k in the US. Of course this varies so much depending on the role and company.

The average software developer (not sure that it's pertinent to constrain it to "senior" devs) is $120k in the US. In San Francisco, the median is $161k [1]

[1] https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/15-1252.00

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#257

Post by woeirua » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

rurp wrote: post #246

woeirua wrote: post #164

This is an unpopular opinion, but history from the DotCom crash tells us that the layoffs are just getting started. Turns out you can’t run at a loss forever, and when the going gets rough the fastest way to increase profitability is to cut costs. Say what you will about Elon and Twitter, but he definitely proved that the majority of the engineers at Twitter were adding no value to the company. That is probably true…

> Say what you will about Elon and Twitter, but he definitely proved that the majority of the engineers at Twitter were adding no value to the company. Unless you care about revenue, which has been crushed due to Elon's actions. The company is less healthy than a year ago and still coasting on reserves of previous work and network effects. Musk is spending billions, and refusing to pay valid debts, just to keep the l…

I never said it was a well run business. You’re also going to have to untangle Elons antics, laying off the account managers and laying off the engineers from the downturn in revenue.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#258

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

phamilton4 wrote: post #215

CydeWeys wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Levels.fyi supports me at least: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/spotify/salaries

I commented above, whether the salary is 150k, 250k, 500k... the impact doesn't change 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.33%. Not sure it really matters. Again I'm not defending lazy employees or saying employers are bad for doing this. I feel there is a hidden cost of layoffs from my own experience of being at a company doing round after round of layoffs.

Agreed it doesn't matter much in this case, but it is a common misconception that employees don't cost nearly as much to employers as they actually do, so I wanted to step in and correct that.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#259

Post by apercu » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

phamilton4 wrote: post #127

I get needing to keep a company lean and that businesses operate to make money... But most of these recent layoffs really make me feel uneasy. Spotify is a little different because AFAIK they are still operating at a negative net income, but still let's take a look at this. They're going to let go 600 people.. that's maybe an annual 90 million in savings (150k salary). The company's revenue is about 9 billion with -3…

If the end game is suppress salaries and increase control (by forcing people back to offices), maybe the morale hit is worth it over a couple years.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#260

Post by netheril96 » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

When I read the title "Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%", I thought Spotify was reducing the base compensation of all employees instead of laying people off. How wrong I was.