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

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#581

Post by freedomben » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:37 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #546

freedomben wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should the punishment be? Fines for layoffs?

Sure. There are all kinds of things that could be done to increase their consideration of moves like this and simultaneously benefit the people affected. E.g., rather than considering only percentages of unemployed/employed to set rates for Unemployment Insurance, they could also add a "capriciousness" factor for events like this. Or, they could also require funds be provided for continuing education for those laid o…

Your comment was pretty good, but didn't need the weird potshot at libertarians at the end.

What your comment touched on though is how the companies already are "punished" in a way for it because it affects their unemployment insurance rates. That was established as a way to balance the needs of the company (unintended bad consequences happen to unemployment rates when you tie the hands of firing) with the needs of the people who are affected. Arguing that the balance is off seems like a much different argument than GP though.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#582

Post by CamperBob2 » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:37 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #567

fullshark wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the consequence for doing your employees a disservice? Maybe a few of the best and most important employees get jaded and quit. Morale company wide takes a hit. These companies don't seem to care and I guess I'm not sure they should. For me, it's not just morale that's gone to shit, but I feel like I've woken up to the nature of the employer/employee relationship with all these layoffs. I was blind but now I s…

> I was blind but now I see, we ARE human resources, and it's very likely none of us are irreplaceable, none of us matter really all that much to our employers... Interestingly, there was a really good article in the NY times yesterday that made that exact point: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/business/economy/doctors-... Basically, the article was talking about how being a doctor or pharmacist used to be a very…

Quite a stretch from "This company hired too many people and ended up having to lay off some" and "Hmm, maybe we're not as irreplaceable as we like to think" to "Let's all make ourselves less attractive to our employers by threatening to gang up on them."

But I guess unionization is the universal solvent for every HR problem around here.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#583

Post by dcminter » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:39 PM UTC

BossingAround wrote: post #537

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…

I don't understand how you got from the quote to "senior people are let go first".

I think they may have misunderstood the meaning of the word tenure (note "with tenure") and not realised it meant only duration of employment here (versus its use in US academia).

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#584

Post by kamikaz1k » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

chasely wrote: post #510

jmarchello wrote: post #495

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…

I read it more like "we hired when money was cheap and were hoping that we could create some new revenue streams but that didn't work out and now we don't have much hope of revenue growth in these areas so we have to reduce costs."

That is how it should be read, because this is how these companies operate. My company's CFO was talking about this as we pushed for profitability (since the market expectations changed) and rationale for investment was exactly like you said.

"It's our job to grow, profitably, so if we think we can generate more than what we spend, we can invest. But if its not working, we will cut it."

Unless you have a specific reason to believe it to be otherwise.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#585

Post by mrcwinn » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:40 PM UTC

jmarchello wrote: post #495

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…

There is still no crystal ball. You take the opportunities as they are presented, especially given that your competitors are doing the same. Where exactly was your commentary on Spotify's business when times were better, urging them to leave more people without jobs?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#586

Post by Solvency » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #410

anon23432343 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was and still is a stupid decision to buy Joe Rogan. I don't get why people listen to him... He is not funny nor smart. It sometimes feels you get better value when watching morning tv shows...

> I don't get why people listen to him... People have different tastes. That's OK. The Joe Rogan Experience has continued to be at the top of Spotify's podcast charts, bringing in 11m listeners an episode. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/07/03/top-pod...

[flagged]

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#587

Post by wesapien » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

jmarchello wrote: post #495

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…

Put a cost to unwanted behavior and make people think twice with siding with Moloch

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#588

Post by charles_f » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

> To understand this decision, I think it is important to assess Spotify with a clear, objective lens

... then proceeds to vague MBA word without a single number to support them.

> We debated making smaller reductions throughout 2024 and 2025

What was not debated was keeping people they hired.

> we still have too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact

We're left to guess what this means. What's work around the work? If that work is now unsavory, why can't they work on work rather than around it? Is this describing reducing the management layer? (support) or customer/partner support? Will they be replaced by automation? I get you don't want to go into specifics of who's let go, but then don't pretend you're providing a clear analysis, and don't give a washed out business lingo salad instead.

TBH I don't see what changed on Spotify for a customer perspective in the past few years. I still see bugs I reported years ago, the UI is largely the same. Not that I'm complaining, I just care about the music. But that leads me to think either the dev team is producing stuff that's on the fringe and optional, being quite inefficient, or mainly working on maintenance, and the bulk of the opex is going elsewhere.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#589

Post by passion__desire » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:41 PM UTC

byyll wrote: post #381

oblio wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is another version of the classic "I could build this in an weekend" trope. 9500 is probably excessive, but think of it just this way: 1. Spotify has a worldwide presence, apparently 184 markets; that probably entails a legal presence in many of those jurisdictions, sales, marketing, support, localization, etc.; at a conservative 2 persons per market, just that's going to generate about 400 jobs; now, most…

I certainly couldn't build that in a weekend but nor would I need 9500 people. Keep in mind WhatsApp was running with 50 engineers in 2015 when it had 900 million users. Last year, according to some sources, it had 3000 employees and 2.4 billion users. And that's groups, voice messages, video and voice calls, WhatsApp for business, integrations and a lot more. Some of these seem reasonable, some not. There is no need…

Whatsapp is just sending messages. Here's music recommendation lecture on using latest techniques to better serve users. I am glad that their music recommendations are very good. There are so many nooks and corners in a big company like Spotify where you need someone to be responsible for.

Music Recommendations at Spotify - Oskar Stål, Spotify https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VvM98flwq0

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#590

Post by Solvency » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 3:44 PM UTC

adam_arthur wrote: post #576

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?

Software companies are pretty uniquely positioned such that they have far more employees than are operationally necessary. Not to say that those employees don't provide value, but the spread between operationally stable employment levels and current headcount is far wider than other industries. Thus, more potential for large cuts.

Ok but why?