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Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

newsroom.spotify.com

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Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#671

Post by marcosdumay »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #22
rob74 wrote: post #14

> Yet, considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to rightsize our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives. or, otherwise said: "we fired you to make our bottom line look nicer"

Eh, what's the alternative? Some people have this weird attitude that businesses are not allowed to shrink/fail. Businesses can only ever go one direction and that is more headcount, otherwise give them govt bailout. Businesses need to be able to grow and shrink. Otherwise we just end up with "too big to fail".

Well, IMO they have a duty to not be frivolous on firing.

It must not be something impossible to do, but it must be hard. And they should favor most other courses of action.

But anyway, it's up to the government to enforce this, and the US (where they are hosted) seems to almost completely disagree. So we get those companies hiring like mad, just to fire like mad in a couple of years, and begin the cycle again a few years down.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#672

Post by scarface_74 »

kojeovo wrote: post #651
buro9 wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They placed a bet, and that bet didn't pay off. But what I'd expect is for them to cut only a little (not 17%), because they would place another bet on something else to remain competitive. To cut so heavily looks like they've no great idea on the next bet that they could make, that they don't believe those people they hired could contribute towards another thing in the near future (or they have no runway to explore…

Interesting way to look at it, a bet. A bet involving people's livelivehoods.

People should know that know job is permanent and plan accordingly. Do you really expect to work at one company the rest of your career and get a gold watch and a pension ?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#673

Post by Kaytaro »

crazygringo wrote: post #596
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 succ…

It’s also healthy to get backlash from the public and investors for layoffs. Personally I don’t think it’s ever right to layoff employees for leaderships mistakes. It should be used as a last resort only when the entire company is at risk of going under. Based on their post it doesn’t sound like that’s the case, they even bragged about a “positive earnings report”.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#674

Post by asynchronous »

anon23432343 wrote: post #82
10u152 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t listen to Joe Rogan to listen to Joe Rogan. You listen because he has the most interesting guests on.

And lets people spread fake news and stupid theories. Just because they are "interesting" they should not get a free promo.

“But but misinfo!” Man I hate where we’re at for free speech in the West.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#675

Post by scarface_74 »

jebarker wrote: post #615
crazygringo wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 succ…

> Honestly, what do you expect Spotify to do? Innovate to grow, if growth is the objective. For example, they could better serve the audiophile market with higher quality offerings. Not as much growth there though.

And how does that help them make more money if they still have to always give the record label more money?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#676

Post by heyjamesknight »

buro9 wrote: post #621
crazygringo wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 succ…

They placed a bet, and that bet didn't pay off. But what I'd expect is for them to cut only a little (not 17%), because they would place another bet on something else to remain competitive. To cut so heavily looks like they've no great idea on the next bet that they could make, that they don't believe those people they hired could contribute towards another thing in the near future (or they have no runway to explore…

This is what happens during periods of economic uncertainty. It's like counting cards with a freshly shuffled deck: nobody can tell what the state of the game is, so you place a minimum bet until you can get a feel for things again.

The movie is meh, but the boardroom scene in Margin Call has a great line:

"I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear - a - thing. Just... silence."

Consumer confidence is down three straight quarters in a row. Nobody feels good about what the music is going to do next.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#677

Post by butlike »

maxglute wrote: post #178
madeofpalk wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's at least one team devoted to screwing up the homepage, pushing content that I don't want like podcasts. Will not miss them.

200m on Rogan has caused more than few of my friends to drop spotify permanently because they couldn't get him off their home screen recommendation for months. If only one engineer added a dismiss button.

Yeah but the dismiss button has to be directly tethered to the machine learning analytics that is also tied to the retention team, so if too many people trigger it, the retention team is alerted to a potential user-retention risk. You need to write the API to hook into those two services, then make sure you have benchmarks before your pull-request will get approved.

You could do this, but I think the profile pictures would look better with rounded edges.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#678

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

eastbound wrote: post #667
TexanFeller wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are probably just going back to normal. Companies went on hiring binges while unprecedented cash was pumped into the economy and interest rates were historically low. Now that all that is being walked back employment levels are going back to 2019 or a bit before.

How is that different than the IMF pumping cash in 1998 into the Russia economy, only so that private companies take the profits and create oligarchs and various lords, who then emigrated to the French Riviera with women who became widows there, empoverishing the Russian land even further, as shows by the economist Joseph Stieglitz in his book Globalization and its Discontents?

Presumably it’s different because the point of the cash was to support people whose livelihoods were disrupted by the pandemic?

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#679

Post by dbbk »

crazygringo wrote: post #596
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 succ…

You're half right. The podcasting and audiobook areas already had layoffs before. This is now layoffs across all areas of the business.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#680

Post by butlike »

makestuff wrote: post #466
apwell23 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I worked at groupon when it was taking off and we had around 200 sales ppl calling up and negotiating deals with local business. Everyone back then used to ask me the same question: Why does groupon have 500 ppl, isnt' it just a wordpress site.

It is a shame for Chicago that groupon didn't continue to find success. I really think that if they had continued to grow the Chicago tech scene would be significantly larger than it is today.

Lefkofsky and the underwriters butchered the IPO for personal gain. I don't think it was a viable business model but they could have at least tried to steer the ship.
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