Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17% • Hacker News Board

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#371

Post by jklinger410 » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

spaceywilly wrote: post #367

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…

I would caution against drawing grand conclusions from these recent layoff rounds. Companies overhired during the pandemic, and now they are trimming that fat. It’s not necessarily a sign of any big strategic mistakes beyond “we hired too many people”

> Companies overhired during the pandemic, and now they are trimming that fat

Citation needed

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#372

Post by cbozeman » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #328

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that makes sense to you.

I grew up with someone who is now in the C-Suite of one of America's largest corporations - a company that has been in the Fortune 100 for decades. He has bounced from directorship to C-Suite in Fortune 500s for the past 12 years, and I asked him about this phenomenon over cigars about six months ago, he said this:

"cbozeman, you have to understand these people. Most of these people making these decisions are raging narcissists. What do you think sounds better?

'I managed and led 500 people.'

'I managed and led 5000 people.'

And when you compound that on top of essentially free money, and then you also throw in the desire to lock up the best talent so your competitor can't have them, you have a recipe for indiscriminate hiring."

This person has been working in a high-level capacity in the corporate world for over 15 years now. He has seen some truly reprehensible shit, and shared quite a bit of it with me when we meet up once a year for ice fishing. I can tell you right now, not only is not "nonsense", it's perfectly logical - just not to you, and not to a lot of other HN users, because entirely too many people think in the logic of 1s and 0s, and not in the logic of people. High-level business decision makers - the kind who make these decisions - don't think like you. They don't value what you value. They see engineers and programmers as expendable and easily replaceable - and many of them are. For every 10x or 100x engineer / programmer, there's 500,000 no-namers who can be slotted in and out without much trouble.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#373

Post by azemetre » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #331

capableweb wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify is a public for-profit company with shareholders, the purpose of their organization is not to make profit so they can redistribute it, but to increase the share value as much as possible in order for the shareholders to benefit. Sometimes that means that they need to increase profits, but not always, there are other ways to increase the share value besides profits.

Such as?

Reducing operation costs (labor), selling valuable assets are two that immediately come to mind.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#374

Post by ghaff » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #357

crote wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass firings like these are not normal. In countries with functional labor laws, it's straight-up illegal unless you're basically going through bankruptcy. Mass firings should only happen if either 1) there's a very significant economic crisis going on, or 2) the company is doing so poorly its immediate future is uncertain. The Silicon Valley style mass-hiring followed by mass-firing style of management is indicative…

Or, if you want to win big, you have to make big bets. This applies to both employers doing mass hiring and employees choosing to work at employers aiming for explosive growth. It is not poor management, it is simply a different tactic. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. The fact that Silicon Valley has succeeded in producing the most profitable companies in the last few decades seems to be relevant.

You wouldn't think that most people here would be campaigning for companies to hire much more slowly, conservatively, and probably at salaries more in line with the market as a whole.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#375

Post by madeofpalk » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

dustedcodes wrote: post #158

I have never had Spotify and would like to understand what people like about it? Admittedly I pay for YouTube Premium which comes with YouTube Music, so I use that for music. YouTube is kind of an integral part of life I find, everybody uses it. It has so much useful content, it has educational content, product reviews, how to guides, and then of course all the entertainment content. So assuming that probably most pe…

> So assuming that probably most people subscribe to YouTube Premium

Why would you assume this?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#376

Post by eps » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #308

selfmodruntime wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering what it is that they're doing all day. The spotify app randomly changes, and if so, rarely for the better. I'd wager spotify could benefit from X' style layoffs.

The X layoffs are too soon to make a judgement call on, look at the advertiser fight X is involved in now. Its up in the air if they kept enough people to make advertisers happy or moderation. Moderation has become a real problem on X, Ive sent reports that were clearly a problematic account, sometimes even fake accounts that are stealing identities, and the X UI sends me a message saying "nah all good"

The advertiser fight is primarily caused by Musk's inane comments, not layoffs or the lack of moderation. They do contribute, but to a way lesser degree.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#377

Post by gedy » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #336

pachico wrote: post #304

Firing people is business as usual. I don't know why this is usually taken with such surprise. It's part of the life cycle of many companies to hyper-hire when money flows in, and cut lots of jobs when they "re-adjust". I don't think this is good, I personally don't like it, but I learned not to be surprised anymore. We like cloud because it scales in and out: often management don't see workforce differently.

Mass firings like these are not normal. In countries with functional labor laws, it's straight-up illegal unless you're basically going through bankruptcy. Mass firings should only happen if either 1) there's a very significant economic crisis going on, or 2) the company is doing so poorly its immediate future is uncertain. The Silicon Valley style mass-hiring followed by mass-firing style of management is indicative…

> 1) there's a very significant economic crisis going on

There is of sorts, with high interest rates and inflation. This is shaking the foundations of how a lot of companies have operated since 2008.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#378

Post by kibwen » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:39 PM UTC

camillomiller wrote: post #316

kibwen wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seemingly every company in the "tech" industry is just an advertising company shambling around in the rotten skin-suit of a legitimate business.

Not Apple, IBM, Microsoft and many other that don’t make money as data merchants

Apple made $5B in ad revenue in 2022, which was double their ad revenue from the year before. Apple is already being devoured from within by ads. If you think Apple will never stoop to putting ads in the OS like Microsoft does, ask yourself: where are Apple users going to go to escape ads? Linux? No, they'll just deal with it and keep buying Macs and iPhones. Apple is not your friend, they are a company designed to make money at all costs, and they're not going to leave ad revenue on the table.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#379

Post by draw_down » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:39 PM UTC

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #354

"..Spotify had taken advantage of cheap borrowing during 2020 and 2021, when central bankers cut interest rates sharply in response to coronavirus pandemic lockdowns" > “Embracing this leaner structure will also allow us to invest our profits more strategically back into the business,” > invest our profits more strategically back into the business why didn't they do this in 2020 when they got zero interest loans and…

[dead]

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#380

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:39 PM UTC

pachico wrote: post #304

Firing people is business as usual. I don't know why this is usually taken with such surprise. It's part of the life cycle of many companies to hyper-hire when money flows in, and cut lots of jobs when they "re-adjust". I don't think this is good, I personally don't like it, but I learned not to be surprised anymore. We like cloud because it scales in and out: often management don't see workforce differently.

[deleted]