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17% is a huge cut. More than that and you end up damaging operations. Look what is happening to X / Twitter. PS. Spotify had already two layoffs, once 6% in Jan 2023 and 2% in June. This combined seems like a 25% ish cut.
It's seeing more use than ever with a fraction of the staff?
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Because of money? Quite the opposite, the problem is that Spotify is not making enough money. I think Rogan was paid a ridiculous amount of money due to fantasies of some executives, maybe influenced by bad politics or something.
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I feel neither positively nor negatively about Rogan himself (I've never listened to him) but it was plainly a very stupid investment on Spotify's part. Anyone could have predicted (and most of us did) that only a fraction of his audience would follow him behind the paywall and removing him from mainstream free outlets would instantly diminish his cultural relevance.
‘Diminishing his cultural relevance’ may have been the goal. Reducing his audience, censoring his most controversial past episodes and preventing certain conversations from happening in front of his large audience in future?
I wonder how those losing their jobs feel about Spotify's reported $200 million investment in Joe Rogan now.
Joe Rogan brings in 10s millions of listeners. On the other hand it's not clear what value those employees who were let go brought. The software behind Spotify is pretty generic. Listening experience isn't much different between say Spotify,YouTube Music and Amazon Music. Software engineers might not want to hear it, but content is more important than software used to consume it. Book vs book's cover.
I wonder how those losing their jobs feel about Spotify's reported $200 million investment in Joe Rogan now.
I wonder how those losing their jobs feel about Spotify's reported $200 million investment in Joe Rogan now.
Joe Rogan brings in 10s millions of listeners. On the other hand it's not clear what value those employees who were let go brought. The software behind Spotify is pretty generic. Listening experience isn't much different between say Spotify,YouTube Music and Amazon Music. Software engineers might not want to hear it, but content is more important than software used to consume it. Book vs book's cover.
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Why do they need to invest? They can also just keep being the most complete music streaming service. That is a low margin business, but it’s a business, and you probably don’t need a lot of people to run it.
their moat is exploiting the copyright system with monopolistic contracts with record labels
All things considered, the note seems honest - lays out the facts and considerations. The severance package seems quite generous as well.
I guess it depends a bit what they mean by `the average employee receiving approximately five months of severance` (and also where you are seeing it from, maybe its seen as more generous when seen from the US). In Sweeden the notice period for the employer is between 1 and 6 months, depending on how long the empoyee has worked there. If they count that period in as part of the severance package, it could wery well be "the legal minimum" or "the legal minimum + 2 months", which sounds less great than 5 months :-p
If its "the legal minimum + approximately 5 months" then it's generous.
In the other developer-downscalings I know about here in Scandinavia (Norway if it matters) the most common deal has been 6 months, either "work for the remaining notice period, then 6 months pay" or "6 months pay, you work out the current month". I say "deal", because its a deal where the employee gets that pay, and then resigns voluntarily. If they don't take the deal they only receive the legal minimum, but they can then fight the firering, which can get expensive and complicated (I have never heard about anyone not taking the deal).
I wonder what amount of money will be saved doing these layoffs and how that compares to the overall spending of the company, given that the content streaming rights are probably a huge (the largest?) expense for the business.
If they were worried about efficiency, they would not have grossly over hired during covid. That's why we need unions.