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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%

#591

Post by phpisthebest »

ActionHank wrote: post #505
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…

Just remember they signed Joe Rogan for over 200 million and he's not brought in nearly that amount for them. Did they retrench the people who made that decision? Did they retrench the management who approved that contract? Spotify employees should be pushing for some degree of corporate and fiscal responsibility given they are retrenching, but they still gave Joe the bag.

Under What metric do you apply that? What goals did they have for his program?

My understanding was the purpose of buying Joe Rogan was 2 fold, one of course is to bring in new users, but that was not the only goal (maybe not even the primary goal) the other goal was to get more of their current users to have more listen time on podcasts and less on Music, they pay far far far far less for podcasts (in many cases nothing) than they do for Music.

If they were able to shift the total listen time it could have more than paid for Rogan even with out new subscribers

The contract is up for renewal very soon so if they drop him we know he did not meet their objectives. Somehow I bet they renew

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#592

Post by Aaargh20318 »

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…

> All I hear is "We hired for the sake of hiring when money was cheap and we wanted to signal 'growth'

In a healthy company, I would expect every employee to contribute to the bottom line, either directly or indirectly. They hired these people because they needed them to do a job, a job that somehow helps making the company money.

As such, unless there are sudden significant changes to the market and product (which as far as I can tell is not the case here), firing employees should result in lower revenues. After all, employees generate more money than they cost, that's the entire point of employees.

This leaves me with a bunch of questions when I read things like this:

1) If the company can get by without these people, what were they doing in the first place? 2) If these people did not contribute to the bottom line (directly or indirectly) what was the point in hiring them? 3) If they did contribute, why let them go?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#593

Post by 4iuvosvjf23 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #582
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How is that a stretch? If we're not irreplaceable then ganging up on our employers is a way for us to reclaim some of the leverage in this transaction that we lose by being replaceable.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#594

Post by code_runner »

mlrtime wrote: post #307
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #40

I often wonder what kind of work actually happens at Spotify. Pretty much every major change to the software or api since I started using it has made the product worse. Breaking libspotify, pointless UI redesigns, obvious, user-facing bugs that go unfixed for years. Removing features like play queue for long periods. There's metadata errors and even audio corruption in some albums that I actually reported to them yea…

I think this is the issue. 10,000 employees vs bad user experience. Spotify has gotten worse for me as well, I pay for Spotify + SiriusXM. Spotify should be much better, but it's not. I'm thinking of dropping it soon. Why doesn't Spotify still not have a Pandora style radio station? I just want to create 5 or 10 statiosn that auto pick based on certain criteria, does this exist?

even though I primarily use spotify for podcasts, the radio functionality is something I've used for like.... 8 years

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#595

Post by NickC25 »

danpalmer wrote: post #111
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…

What do you think the employees do? I imagine there's a big team dedicated to getting inventory on the service through negotiations with music producers around the world. You'd need to keep them to continue expanding, adding newly produced music, and re-negotiating expiring deals. There will be a large editorial team producing playlists, curation, tuning the algorithm with expertise, etc. That all needs to be localis…

Spotify had a large headcount.

Let's look at some of your examples and see where things can logically be cut.

>I imagine there's a big team dedicated to getting inventory on the service through negotiations with music producers around the world.

This can be streamlined considerably through standardized contracts. I'd wager 90% of the inventory that said team gets is from niche artists, independent artists or small labels. Very few artists actually have the clout or resources to negotiate their own deals with Spotify. That's sort of the point of having executives - to handle the Taylor Swifts of the world. Your local band, rapper, singer-songwriter or producer doesn't matter to Spotify.

Have a clear and straightforward tier system for compensation. You get a billion streams a year? You get $X. You get 10,000 streams a year? You get $Y.

>There will be a large editorial team producing playlists, curation, tuning the algorithm with expertise, etc. That all needs to be localised and to cover lots of niche music tastes. That's also not evergreen content or work, it needs constant updates to remain relevant.

You don't need a large team to curate playlists when you can have users curate playlists. In fact, they already do. You don't need a huge localization team either. Users already take care of the legwork for you. Same goes for algorithm tuning.

>Then there's international expansion and enabling the tech to work for more countries, more languages, more payment methods, more types of music publishing.

Spotify is kinda already there in terms of international expansion. Anywhere they aren't already, they probably won't get there for political reasons (such as China).

More languages? Sure, but that doesn't require a massive team. Fortunately, there are a few dominant languages around the world, and Spotify has those covered.

More payment methods? Let the creators of those methods handle that - that's their job. Credit Card companies or banks or whatever don't create their own payment platform tech and just say "now it's yours to try to implement", they have entire teams dedicated to that.

More types of music publishing? Like what? There's only so many methods of publishing music, and I'd wager there's going to be very little (if any) innovation there for a while. Spotify doesn't really distribute any other forms of published music besides digital streams. They aren't selling records or CDs, are they?

EDIT: you could also say Spotify has vastly overspent on the likes of Joe Rogan, no matter how popular he is. $200 million dollars to a company that isn't very profitable, no matter how large, is just bad business. He's worth nowhere close to $200 million.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#596

Post by crazygringo »

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…

This is completely backwards.

They didn't hire "for the sake of hiring" -- they hired specifically to build up their podcasting and audiobook efforts, which were totally new products within the app. Which they thought were essential to staying competitive -- e.g. what if people start moving over to Amazon instead with its Music+Wondery+Audible, or other competitors?

Now it's turned out those bets haven't been as successful as they wanted, so they're keeping them but massively scaling back on future investment. Which means they don't need those employees anymore.

Honestly, what do you expect Spotify to do? Not try to stay competitive, and risk a competitor taking their place, and then go the way of Pandora? Do you think it's wrong to hire teams to build products when you hope the products will succeed but you can't know 100% for sure?

This is just how normal, healthy business goes. You make bets, sometimes they succeed wildly, and sometimes they don't. When they don't, it often results in layoffs because there's not enough profit to keep paying those employees with, and there isn't immediately any new product for them to work on.

Believe me, a company with profit margins as thin as Spotify's can't afford to "hire for the sake of hiring". That's just not how it works.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#597

Post by delfinom »

mlrtime wrote: post #307
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #40

I often wonder what kind of work actually happens at Spotify. Pretty much every major change to the software or api since I started using it has made the product worse. Breaking libspotify, pointless UI redesigns, obvious, user-facing bugs that go unfixed for years. Removing features like play queue for long periods. There's metadata errors and even audio corruption in some albums that I actually reported to them yea…

I think this is the issue. 10,000 employees vs bad user experience. Spotify has gotten worse for me as well, I pay for Spotify + SiriusXM. Spotify should be much better, but it's not. I'm thinking of dropping it soon. Why doesn't Spotify still not have a Pandora style radio station? I just want to create 5 or 10 statiosn that auto pick based on certain criteria, does this exist?

My condolences for when you try to cancel SiriusXM one day.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#598

Post by dbrueck »

adamhp wrote: post #578
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #40

I often wonder what kind of work actually happens at Spotify. Pretty much every major change to the software or api since I started using it has made the product worse. Breaking libspotify, pointless UI redesigns, obvious, user-facing bugs that go unfixed for years. Removing features like play queue for long periods. There's metadata errors and even audio corruption in some albums that I actually reported to them yea…

I don't work for and am not affiliated with Spotify in any way, but I can honestly say Spotify has added more value to my life than almost any other app I have downloaded. I have discovered so much music that I genuinely adore. It's honestly mind-boggling. I'm so excited to open up my Discover Weekly. I'm very grateful for the work that has gone into their curation of certain playlists and of the similarity scoring t…

I'm in both camps: Spotify is hands down the best ROI for me in terms of where my streaming dollars go.

OTOH, it drives me crazy that customers like myself have been begging them for many years to add basic features like remembering my spot in a playlist.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#599

Post by yCombLinks »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #592
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…

> All I hear is "We hired for the sake of hiring when money was cheap and we wanted to signal 'growth' In a healthy company, I would expect every employee to contribute to the bottom line, either directly or indirectly. They hired these people because they needed them to do a job, a job that somehow helps making the company money. As such, unless there are sudden significant changes to the market and product (which a…

I've been a spotify subscriber for over a decade. Every single update has made the windows version worse at least. They've rebuilt and redesigned it repeatedly, for whose benefit I don't know. Obviously that is just the app side part of the whole org.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#600

Post by CSMastermind »

slig wrote: post #485
jzb wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opposite for me. I cancelled because of that. Partially because I didn’t like Spotify endorsing his content, but also because I subscribed to Spotify for music , not podcasts. I wanted to see them invest more in features around music and work on better compensation for artists - not spend my subscription money on shoving podcast content at me.

I wonder why they force podcasts so much. I've never listened to them, and I'm sure they have that data, and the recommendations are way, way off anything I'd consider listening to.

Probably the same reason they're pushing so hard into audiobooks right now. They want to be a general audio platform instead of a music platform and there are significant network effects if they can pull it off which ultimately means more customers and a more sticky product.
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