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

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#411

Post by magicalist » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:56 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.

Let's not romanticize correlation. Silicon valley also spent years asking how many ping pong balls fit in a bus, only hired Stanford grads, and sheltered sexual harassers in executive roles. Turns out those were neither necessary or sufficient for success either. Revenue and low interest rates can hide a lot of dumb decisions.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#412

Post by RugnirViking » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

thelastknowngod wrote: post #145

Epa095 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Yeah you're not entitled to anything in the States. There are no employment contracts and you can be fired for any reason without notice. The only reason to give severance is to avoid bad publicity. There isn't any mandate that the company has to offer anything. There really should be though especially when the company in question was able to afford $1 billion in stock buybacks just 2 years ago, and when the CEO has…

for context in case you missed it, Spotify are headquatered in Sweden. Hence the GP's comment about it potentially being the legal minimum they are allowed to give.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#413

Post by rcbdev » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #387

notRobot wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is running your own cloud different than traditional bare metal?

traditional bare metal: Email IT and ask for 3 severs spun up for this small in-house project my team is working on. Email back and forth for a few days, book two meetings, and then wait 10-14 days before getting access to the servers. Cloud: log onto a web portal, select the specs I want for the servers, press OK and log in 30 seconds later.

Then wait a week for tech support in India to respond because the public load balancer was provisioned with a malformed cert and there is no way to sensibly reconfigure it.

Oh wait, that's just the IBM Cloud...

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#414

Post by nemo44x » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

myspy wrote: post #292

lotsofpulp wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much more money do you want Spotify to lose? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SPOT/spotify-techn... https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/ https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/ Shareholders have a 1.52% return since it went public, Apr 2018. A riskless investment in sp500 earned 11.7% since Apr 2018. How much more do you want shareholders to lose? They have been losing 10%+ per year for 5.5 yea…

I‘m no business major, I have no clue how to handle a company on a stock market. But the results I see is that leadership took steps that let into people loosing their jobs. Why are shareholders and management so important and employees at the branches are not? Everyone in that chain should be taken into account.

Shareholders have had a poor investment so they do share in the failure. But the way a business works is shareholders vote for a board and the board installs management. This management then installs leaders/managers to oversee the different components of the business.

These people are the business and are often compensated in large part with meaningful equity. Everyone else (middle managers and contributors) are not the business - they just work for it. They are mainly compensated with a salary and are called employees. They are hired to complete tasks for the managers.

The managers will increase and decrease the number of employees based on the CEOs and other managers plan which the board approves. Plans often have certain assumptions that everyone (managers, not employees) agrees on and sometimes it doesn’t pan out so they have to change the plan.

Sometimes the managers resign or are fired when the plan fails and it was their fault. Other times they aren’t because it wasn’t something they could avoid (economic downturn, rise in rates, inflation, etc) or other reasons (they could be large shareholders themselves).

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#415

Post by pradn » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

maxglute wrote: post #193

surgical_fire wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Relax, I was being hyperbolic. Does spotify need 20x more employees than Valve/STEAM? How's twitter working with 80% less employees? Sure it's worth less, but it works mostly fine. Yes spotify needs more than 10 employees, but did it need 10000? After these rounds of cuts, will it still need 7500 next year? I surmise it can settle much lower than what people expect, and maybe their service/product would have been bet…

New bots follow me on Twitter every day, spamming my notifications. They're very obviously a bot bc their name and lack of posts. I rarely had that problem before the downsizing. I think my follow count went up 20% in the past year, nearly all bots.

Otherwise, the service is generally reliable.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#416

Post by dvngnt_ » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

xer wrote: post #96

The elephant in the room: Will Spotify survive the coming wave of generative AI audio content? Wasn't any mentioning on that in the letter. Seems to me like they would need to ditch a lot of silly investments like original content, platform engineering on Kubernetes and scaled agile which together carry costs in the range of $100s millions, to free up resources to battle new disruptive technologies.

I would think so, people want to listen to swift and drake not some ML song with no relevance.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#417

Post by code_runner » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

rospaya wrote: post #383

maxglute wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relax, I was being hyperbolic. Does spotify need 20x more employees than Valve/STEAM? How's twitter working with 80% less employees? Sure it's worth less, but it works mostly fine. Yes spotify needs more than 10 employees, but did it need 10000? After these rounds of cuts, will it still need 7500 next year? I surmise it can settle much lower than what people expect, and maybe their service/product would have been bet…

> Relax, I was being hyperbolic I see this type of hyperbole twice a week on HN and it's getting really boring.

sounds like you must only log in to HN about twice a week in that case..... a lot of lazy/bad takes on here that equate to "large company bad". Definitely gets a reddit vibe especially if its an announcement like this.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#418

Post by ethbr1 » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #388

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…

I don't understand the question? They were able to use money more freely as it was more abundant, so they were able to take more risks. Now that money is more expensive, they need to be more careful about it.

I think parent might be overemphasizing strategic in that quote.

>> This is not a step back; it’s a strategic reorientation. We’re still committed to investing and making bold bets, but now, with a more focused approach, ensuring Spotify’s continued profitability and ability to innovate.

"Strategic" could be replaced with "efficient". They were previously optimized for growth -- now, they're optimizing for growth:krona.

Also, it is refreshing to see a head cut announcement that doesn't bury the lede: we're firing people, and this sucks.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#419

Post by mikrl » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #388

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…

I don't understand the question? They were able to use money more freely as it was more abundant, so they were able to take more risks. Now that money is more expensive, they need to be more careful about it.

More so now that it’s their own money and not yours they’re being more careful with it.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#420

Post by mr90210 » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

rapsey wrote: post #89

epistasis wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication I see is that the $200M was not worth it. I don't know their financials, but it seems quite unlikely that a single podcast would be worth that valuation.

Rogan was not making that much less on youtube. Keep in mind pre-spotify he was literally making NFL numbers for listeners+viewers per episode.

I personally think that he was better off pre-Spotify. Surely a bit of less money, but so does less drama. And Pre-Spotify he had the power to diversify himself in other platforms as well.