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Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

newsroom.spotify.com

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Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#321

Post by cedws »

dijit wrote: post #282

Reminds me of: "Nobody ever got fired for buying cloud". Spotify was a stand-out, almost no large tech company bought into cloud like they did, and everyone said the same thing: "It's not our core competence, it would require more people". I get it, it's not sexy at all to deal in infrastructure, but I've seen their cloud bill and it's significantly higher than 1,600 peoples jobs, even with the discounts they got thr…

This is why I'm bullish about Oxide (who are building hardware to make it easy to essentially run your own cloud.) Nobody wants to deal with the nasty parts of running servers but if a company can take some of that complexity away, you could save a tonne of money over AWS.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#322

Post by thomastjeffery »

oblio wrote: post #273
glimshe wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are likely not charging enough for their costs. A lot of unsustainable businesses are like that. Users love it because of the low prices and high perceived value - think Uber.

Anyone remember Grooveshark? Great service :-D

Spotify basically started as a P2P Grooveshark that promised to pay royalties. Now they are a CDN that pays royalties. The problem is that they refuse to accept the reality that there is an end to growth.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#323

Post by broast »

myspy wrote: post #257
deelowe wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this response a lot on these threads. Why is it so hard to accept that two digit inflation over the past couple of years and interest rates well above 5% could be a major factor?

Well how about thinking stakeholders first and shareholders second? Firing your employees because you are incompetent leadership and management without good foresight should result in letting you go. Why the high compensation for leadership when it doesn‘t know what it does? Braun didn‘t get the design leader in the past because they threw out their team, they got there because they kept the team together. The more y…

I tend to think the overhiring was not a "mistake" but planned. They still get to keep all the intellectual output of the people they let go.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#325

Post by dijit »

ctvo wrote: post #319
dijit wrote: post #282

Reminds me of: "Nobody ever got fired for buying cloud". Spotify was a stand-out, almost no large tech company bought into cloud like they did, and everyone said the same thing: "It's not our core competence, it would require more people". I get it, it's not sexy at all to deal in infrastructure, but I've seen their cloud bill and it's significantly higher than 1,600 peoples jobs, even with the discounts they got thr…

Where in the article did you see cloud costs being the reason for this layoff? > Spotify is cutting almost 1,600 jobs as the music streaming service blamed a slowing economy and higher borrowing costs in the latest round of redundancies at big tech companies. It clearly states later that in a zero interest environment Spotify borrowed heavily and over hired, in this environment it’s no longer sustainable and they had…

Cost's don't exist in a vacuum.

it's easier to lay people off than to save millions in cloud spending when you've already committed to $x-billion over 5 years.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#327

Post by [deleted] »

sho_hn wrote: post #200
amatix wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spotify reported that it had 9,400 employees at the end of the third quarter of 2023. It had already cut back employee numbers by 6% in January and by a further 2% in June.

I'm also curious what they need 10k people for. What of the business is so labor-intensive?

[deleted]

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#328

Post by lupire »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #263
byyll wrote: post #248

Can someone explain to me why a company that is about streaming mp3s needs 9500 employees? That just sounds extremely inefficient to me. They don't even have native desktop apps.

All of these hp tech start-ups/scale-ups overhired when money was cheap to signal growth and confidence to investors, even if they didn't need that many workers, nobody cared, as long as "line goes up".

This is nonsense. They hired people to grow users, usage revenue, not to brag about employee counts. Companies brag about maximizes revenue per employee.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#329

Post by throwaw12 »

dijit wrote: post #282

Reminds me of: "Nobody ever got fired for buying cloud". Spotify was a stand-out, almost no large tech company bought into cloud like they did, and everyone said the same thing: "It's not our core competence, it would require more people". I get it, it's not sexy at all to deal in infrastructure, but I've seen their cloud bill and it's significantly higher than 1,600 peoples jobs, even with the discounts they got thr…

> Spotify was a stand-out, almost no large tech company bought into cloud like they did

Isn't this what made Spotify success? Yes, they could have build their own datacenters, but someone else could outcompete them in the meantime.

They have traded off something for another thing.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#330

Post by nemo44x »

byyll wrote: post #248

Can someone explain to me why a company that is about streaming mp3s needs 9500 employees? That just sounds extremely inefficient to me. They don't even have native desktop apps.

Because managers that manage managers need more people to justify hiring more managers.
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