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Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

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Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#491

Post by lettergram »

nojvek wrote: post #472

Post-pandemic, the trend of Corporations raking in higher and higher profits, while needing fewer and fewer staff scares me. The most obvious and likely outcome is it drastically separates the ultra wealthy from middle class. With rise of AI and automation, that trend will likely accelerate. The top 10% hold more than 50% of wealth. It's likely in a few decades, the top 1% will hold more than 50% of the wealth. They…

The poor today are the middle class of 15-20 years ago and the kings of 300 years ago.

It’s not perfect but a rising tide does raise all ships.

Regarding the ultra wealthy, the disparity was actually greater in the past.

All that said, you distribute wealth by reducing taxes on the poor and increasing it on wealthy. Alternatively, shifting the growth differential such that the poor grow faster than the wealthy (hard in a capitalistic economy). That said, I don’t see the wealth disparity as a problem itself; if you have the top 1% gain more wealth but it’s easier to become the top 1% or the top 1% rotates out often it’s probably better

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#492

Post by rightbyte »

fullshark wrote: post #436
scarab92 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the pointless redesigns was a pretty clear sign that they had excess engineering headcount.

I saw it as a sign that they needed to find ways to get people to spend time listening to anything that is proprietary (podcasts, unique recommendation algorithms) to avoid just being the middle man for music streaming and getting squeezed by the publishers for all their revenue. Edit: By proprietary I mean - owned by Spotify.

The music is propertiary. Even recordings of Mozart is unless the recording is older than an ever increasing limit of a bazillion years.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#493

Post by fullshark »

Hakeemmidan wrote: post #445

Why do these mass layoffs keep happening in the software industry? Or is this a global phenomenon that exists across all industries?

It's the end of the internet service software business cycle. This plus a ton of unprofitable VC funded companies unable to get the funding they were hoping to get with interest rates up lead to a massive pullback.

Will things change next year? Maybe if some IPOs hit and the VC pump and dump pipeline gets back up and running.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#494

Post by eythian »

Scarblac wrote: post #439
htrp wrote: post #425

>Severance pay: We will start with a baseline for all employees, with the average employee receiving approximately five months of severance. This will be calculated based on local notice period requirements and employee tenure. Is this a super vague way of saying we're letting go of the senior people with tenure first. The average severance being five months implies that most people being let go probably aren't the p…

Labour laws will apply, they probably can't just pick who they lay off. Maybe they have to let go the same proportion of people at all levels of seniority.

Yeah, where I live (NL), it's required to be something like "group people into roles, then let people go in reverse order of seniority (i.e. LIFO) within those roles."

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#495

Post by jmarchello »

Anytime I see layoffs like this, All I hear is "We hired for the sake of hiring when money was cheap and we wanted to signal 'growth', But now reality has set in and we need our employees to serve a purpose beyond simply headcount".

In my opinion they did these employees a disservice by hiring them in the first place. We need our companies to act more responsibly regardless of the price of capital. Innovate sure, but don't fill up your tank when gas is cheap just to do doughnuts in the parking lot.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#496

Post by varjag »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #462
maxglute wrote: post #102

Should have fired 80% of their employees years ago when service was reasonably feature complete. Not that I don't sympathize with people getting laid off, but feels like past a certain point, more heads changes products faster than can be fixed, and sometimes moving fast degrades what shouldn't have been changed in the first place. NPR acquisition drama aside, pocketcast has like 25 employees that makes the service s…

At every company I've worked at, there are things we want to do that nearly everybody think are a good idea. But we can't do them all, because we have limited capital. So we have to be very strategic. Spotify has developed a huge surface area, because they are attempting to be the one-stop shop for all things audio. The thesis is that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that's what they're selling to…

10000 employees with let's say 40% overhead translates into 2000 3-ish lean teams. Certainly some would be far larger than 3 person but even then. Is Spotify surface that huge really?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#498

Post by fullshark »

rightbyte wrote: post #492
fullshark wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw it as a sign that they needed to find ways to get people to spend time listening to anything that is proprietary (podcasts, unique recommendation algorithms) to avoid just being the middle man for music streaming and getting squeezed by the publishers for all their revenue. Edit: By proprietary I mean - owned by Spotify.

The music is propertiary. Even recordings of Mozart is unless the recording is older than an ever increasing limit of a bazillion years.

Yeah but it's not owned by Spotify, at least the most popular music isn't. I mean: they want you to listen to things they own, not things they license.
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