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Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

newsroom.spotify.com

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Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#431

Post by mikhael28 »

bastardoperator wrote: post #344
lotsofpulp wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So I guess you really dislike people in the OSS space who are considered the most productive of us all and essentially give all their work away for free, kind of like a charity. Spotify is a jukebox. You put money in and music plays. It's not a new concept in the slightest capacity. If they haven't figured out how to turn a profit now will they ever?

OSS is amazing. But needs to figure out how to make money, otherwise it's not sustainable.

You ever hear the phrase 'theres no such thing as a free lunch'?

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#432

Post by mikhael28 »

silveroriole wrote: post #53
dataengineer56 wrote: post #15

The Spotify app constantly frustrates me and I miss the old Google Play Music app. - I listened to 5 minutes of one episode of a podcast once, decided it wasn't for me and stopped, but ever since then I have an entire pane on my homepage dedicated to my apparent love for that podcast. - The first 4 sections of the homepage recommend me exactly the same things - I have the last 6 albums I listened to at the top, then…

I think the most amazing mistake Spotify made was that recently all private playlists suddenly became public, because they changed the meaning of private and public to introduce some weird third level of privacy. I now have no idea what the privacy settings do. Second most amazing was when they made the scrollbar literally two pixels wide and therefore unusable. It’s not even that these are huge errors but it just ma…

It's so they could sell your music preferences. You got got.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#433

Post by mikhael28 »

EastSmith wrote: post #89
silveroriole wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most amazing mistake Spotify made was that recently all private playlists suddenly became public, because they changed the meaning of private and public to introduce some weird third level of privacy. I now have no idea what the privacy settings do. Second most amazing was when they made the scrollbar literally two pixels wide and therefore unusable. It’s not even that these are huge errors but it just ma…

WTF? I just checked all my private playlist are now public! WTF Spotify?!?

They probably made a good chunk selling your now public playlist music preferences to advertisers.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#435

Post by calebh »

TingPing wrote: post #333
xiwenc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify should serve both audiences: consistency and discover new ones. I think Apple Music got it right. I like how you can start a radio of any song. Or just play your own favorites.

Spotify has always had "Song Radio".

For me song radio simply plays songs that I've already listened to but are similar to the current song. Completely useless for discovering new music.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#436

Post by krono »

niij wrote: post #68
krono wrote: post #11

No mention of who is taking full responsibility for the situation! Edit: The CEO takes full "accountability" instead, further down the original announcement[0] [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230123124201/https://newsroom....

Do we have to have this same conversation on every single one of these threads?

My comment was posted mostly in jest - my stance on it is mostly neutral, but considering the level of engagement it still generated even though this meme is admittedly getting old, there is or was clearly more to be said on the subject.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#437

Post by expazl »

fleddr wrote: post #50
krono wrote: post #11

No mention of who is taking full responsibility for the situation! Edit: The CEO takes full "accountability" instead, further down the original announcement[0] [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20230123124201/https://newsroom....

In the tech sector, "taking responsibility" means admitting your decisions led to the situation yet you'll externalize the consequences to employees. In other words, it means nothing. Taking actual responsibility could include stepping down, canceling bonuses, reduced compensation for leadership. It could include steps to become better at forecasting rather than randomly guessing. It could include ironing the busines…

> yet you'll externalize the consequences to employees.

If a F1 driver admits his driving led to them loosing the race even though engineering did everything right, it's still the entire team that doesn't get the price. And if the entire team doesn't get enough funds in from their endeavor they might have to carry out layoffs. And you can be sure they'll lay off one of the 40 engineers before they lay off the driver.

That does not mean the driver can't mean it when he says he's sorry and taking responsibility. Trust me, he would rather be on the podium than loosing.

The mob mentality of "fire the driver first" will only leave you with 40 engineers starring at a car in a lot. You might say they need to change the driver, and that's certainly what's going to happen if management sees an opportunity for a better driver, but they can't just switch drivers between every race, imagine the spectators outrage at this team that's completely unpredictable and only ever keeps a driver for multiple races when he's first on the podium. And what driver would ever want to sign such a contract? Leave which ever team they are on for the chance at a higher pay, conditioned on getting 1 every time, otherwise the contract is void.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#439

Post by lotsofpulp »

floor2 wrote: post #425
bastardoperator wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess you really dislike people in the OSS space who are considered the most productive of us all and essentially give all their work away for free, kind of like a charity. Spotify is a jukebox. You put money in and music plays. It's not a new concept in the slightest capacity. If they haven't figured out how to turn a profit now will they ever?

> If they haven't figured out how to turn a profit now will they ever? The corporate entity Spotify will never turn a major profit, but that's by design. Spotify made a deal with the devil to come to terms with the record labels, and is now fully baked into a "Hollywood Accounting" set of terms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting ) which ensure the real money goes to the power players of RIAA cartel.…

There is no reason for conspiracy theories. Spotify simply made a bet in being able to be more than a commodified middleman, which has not yet (and may not) pan out.

Warner/Sony/Universal music groups are also not opaque, they are all publicly traded companies, just like Spotify. It just so happens that they have more negotiating power than Spotify, so they can dictate more favorable terms.

Also, artists are free to make deals directly with Spotify/Google/Amazon/Apple if they want to bypass the record labels.

Re: Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%

#440

Post by flyingpenguin »

dataengineer56 wrote: post #45
fleddr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How can such a simple concept (listen to music) get so many basics so wrong and have such glaring bugs?" Spotify internally has a model where they have a large number of small teams where each is responsible for only a tiny part of the experience. Possibly this leads to a lack of a coherent experience. The other factor may be the constant experimentation. Frankly, 20-30 year old media players were better. So what th…

The constant moving of the Netflix "currently watching" pane is a huge annoyance for me, especially because it looks the same as every other pane ("horror films", "British comedy" etc). My grandma can't figure it out, she needs to be able to press the same buttons every time she goes on the app and Netflix doesn't let her do that.

Not going to defend it because I agree.

But if you are interested in the why of "currently watching" moving all over the place, you'll notice its harder to find the longer its been since you opened netflix combined with the faster you start looking for it.

Different part of Netflixes backend respond at different speeds. The call for "Top in the US" is likely cached and up to date, the call for "What did dataengineer56 stop watching" is probably cold and slow.

This leaves netflix with a few options, and what they seem to have settled on is "Show everything that has loaded, and quietly insert the stuff that loads later into parts of the screen the customer isn't looking at, so our entire app seems to load instantly"

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