We just sort of came off a pandemic into what seems like another pandemic.
Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
301–310 of 495 posts
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'…
Why do you think that mass broad spectrum layoffs are random holes? From what I've seen they follow exactly the structure you're describing - there's a company-wide search for projects that aren't pulling their weight, those projects are shut down, and the employees whose roles no longer make sense without the projects that will be shut down get laid off.
> would you suggest saving data storage costs by deleting 6% of files? would you suggest reducing compute by turning off 6% of jobs?
I would, and I've seen mandates like this achieve good results multiple times in my career. It's very rare to have a team that can't make do with 94% of their data storage footprint, but it's very common to have a team who would find it temporarily inconvenient or would rather prioritize other work over reducing it.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unions often have coasters and quiet quitters. As an experienced developer I would never work with people like that.
you'd rather work harder and for less money than work with people who phone it in? I don't really buy the meritocracy argument that 'good devs get paid more'. It hasn't really panned out in my experience, except for less than 1%, probably closer to .1% of devs who are really, truly exceptional AND will fight aggressively for their keep.
Well, that's rather obvious, isn't it? I prefer working in smaller organizations. Growth there is a factor of personal growth and the company succeeding strongly enough that you have something bigger to grow into. It's not enough for me to work for $x for 2 years, have the company go under, and then go work somewhere else for $x for another 2 years, rinse and repeat with some number of coasters killing off firms.
I want what I got: company goes through hyper-growth and my own personal growth has some meaty problems to latch onto so I can apply myself. You can put my Ducati on a frozen lake and it's not going anywhere. Powerful engine wasted on frictionless surface. What I got when I was young was that if I applied myself I got better. And the company got better around me. And that meant I got bigger responsibilities which I could actually do.
Plus the obvious factor that I want my peer group as bought in as I am. My morale is high. Every idea I bounce off gets improved. Mistakes I'd make are caught. I am improved tenfold.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#304Side note but every year Spotify's app gets worse and worse as they remove features and try to 'simplify' the UI. Has anyone been able to use the home screen where recommendations are offered successfully? They want people to listen to podcasts but can't even build a useable interface for browsing podcasts. All the Spotify playlists have the same songs over and over. Their proprietary shuffle algorithim is stupid because it doesn't actually shuffle. Why can't they offer a true random and also their shuffle algorithim? Music discovery is falling off as they are forced to promote record labels point of view.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#305As a long time user of Spotify (almost two decades in a couple of years...), this is my biggest gripe with Spotify: https://i.imgur.com/wfSka2H.png More and more playlists are starting to look like this, which is starting to piss me off. I don't really care if it's the record companies fault or whoever, and I blame 100% myself for getting into this situation in the first place. Started to use Bandcamp more and more l…
Well they’re owned by Epic now, so that may not be up to them anymore.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#306Unrelated but, does anyone have a good universal solution of what music you "like" or "own"? I want to move off of Spotify but I want to make sure all my music is playable from some platform or locally. A decade ago I moved off the good iTunes and foolishly lost my complete library of metadata of songs, so I want to avoid that again.
When you say "own" what do you mean? CD's? Or some digital purchase? I believe modern iTunes is DRM free so you can keep all your purchases safe that way. Alternatively Youtube Music allows you to upload all your local music so you can their service to stream it. I've bought things on iTunes and then uploaded them to Youtube Music.
Sorry I should have been more specific. I care less about the actual song content itself than having a synchronized list of the names (i.e. metadata) of all the songs I like/save/listen to.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#307I 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…
I don't think it is that complex. Who benefits from these mass layoffs? Everyone at the top benefits, and everyone at the bottom suffers. You are spot on when it comes to impact of layoffs. If you want to destroy productivity, firing people is a sure proof way of doing that. To your point, I can't take any executive seriously if they're not self reflecting on their own failure. Mass layoffs should equal a new board i…
> If you want to destroy productivity, firing people is a sure proof way of doing that.
In Spotify’s case, the business not making money, and hence not having a stock price that keeps up with the market, is also a way to destroy productivity. Higher productivity people are probably not going to want to work at a charity.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it is that complex. Who benefits from these mass layoffs? Everyone at the top benefits, and everyone at the bottom suffers. You are spot on when it comes to impact of layoffs. If you want to destroy productivity, firing people is a sure proof way of doing that. To your point, I can't take any executive seriously if they're not self reflecting on their own failure. Mass layoffs should equal a new board i…
> If you want to destroy productivity, firing people is a sure proof way of doing that. Not as sure proof as paying people to do nothing. Or worse, paying people who are actively working against the interests of the company, intentionally or otherwise.
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Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thing is though, I have probably thrown 3K into Spotify, If I cant get a "Flat rate subscription for All / Most of the music out there" - > I will 100% just go back to downloading discographies of the artists I like. People saying "Support the artists" - I don't care about the artists, I just want to listen to whatever takes my fancy, and if they can't do that at my price point, they will end up getting nothing from…
$3k is a lot of money to rent music. It's kind of odd to realize people have spent that kind of money to rent music and have nothing to show for it without continuing to spend money. $3k would still buy a very large physical collection. Most people didn't have that kind of money into a physical collection back in the day. Vinyl prices are a joke, but CDs are often cheaper than a digital download if bought new and the…
The large collection is an asset to you, but to many of us, it's a liability.
Almost everything I own I do because it is not cost-efficient to rent (which is what I would prefer to do). i.e. if cost-efficiency were even, I would rent things like books, movies, or music.
Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
#310I've seen some good analyses lately showing spotify's business model just can't survive in the long run with the way things are going in the economy and the record companies are squeezing them while simultaneously maneuvering to own them/buy them over time. Apple/Amazon/Google are diversified giants that can seemingly get away with running things without a need to make as much money as Spotify/Tidal/Whatever which ju…
Thing is though, I have probably thrown 3K into Spotify, If I cant get a "Flat rate subscription for All / Most of the music out there" - > I will 100% just go back to downloading discographies of the artists I like. People saying "Support the artists" - I don't care about the artists, I just want to listen to whatever takes my fancy, and if they can't do that at my price point, they will end up getting nothing from…
how have you spent $3k on Spotify? the company is 17 years old and if you were subscribing from day 1 for $10/month that would only be 2k.