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

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#691

Post by StevePerkins » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

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…

I don't think the question is whether Spotify should or shouldn't persue podcasts and audiobooks in addition to music streaming.

The question is whether any organization really needs 5-20k tech workers for an audio app. Even one that plays music, podcasts, and books. I would be slack jawed with shock if the Apple team that works on their podcasts app, and the Amazon team that works on their Audible app, COMBINED were a meaningful fraction of that scale.

And it's certainly fair game to question why they don't have more resources allocated to longstanding issues with the core product. Especially given that the core product hasn't noticeably changed much in years.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#692

Post by enlightenedfool » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:35 PM UTC

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…

So, can at least the execs that made the wrong bets be fired? Those are multi million dollar mistakes. But nope… they just take “complete responsibility” and fire the dev teams.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#693

Post by notpachet » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #628

notpachet wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were being responsible at the time. Another strong contender for humanity's future epitaph.

Remember hindsight is 20/20. If capitalists were as risk-averse as some would like, we'd be stuck in the past forever

I get annoyed with comments like yours that reach for absolutisms to try and make a point. No, we wouldn't be stuck in the past "forever". We may just move more slowly into the future than you would prefer.

Given our historic inability to predict the long-term externalities of present-day technologies, I'd say a more cautious approach is warranted compared to the current YOLO strategy.

The only way the human race becomes stuck in the past forever is if it goes extinct.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#694

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #496

acjohnson55 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Maybe? At Spotify’s scale, those teams would include things like “GCP-friendly audio encoding optimization” or “playlist sharing scalability”. I don’t know enough to estimate what a reasonable size should be (if such an estimation is even possible), but running software for hundreds of millions of users is hard.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#695

Post by mrkeen » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

dbbk wrote: post #681

mrkeen wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think the employees do? Product stand-up, agile stand-up, team fika, cross-team fika, town hall, team activity, tribe activity, one-on-one, backlog grooming, team retro, incident post-mortem, ping pong, live music. If you do scrape together a few minutes to get part of the codebase into your head (despite the open-floor-plan chatter), you've got no way to trigger that bug you think you saw. But persever…

A tiny part of Spotify's headcount is product & engineering.

See my sibling comment. Non-coders are just as capable as coders at doing non-work.

This site says 6000 engineers. That is enormous in both absolute terms and "as a tiny part" of Spotify.

https://thenewstack.io/how-spotlify-adopted-platform-enginee...

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#696

Post by baggachipz » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

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…

> Honestly, what do you expect Spotify to do?

Not spend a fortune on Joe Rogan and then lay off people.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#697

Post by jebarker » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:40 PM UTC

scarface_74 wrote: post #675

jebarker wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

How does innovation help them make more money? In the case of higher quality, they can charge more. There are premium services such as TIDAL doing that.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#698

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

ctvo wrote: post #638

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…

I think trying to normalize a ~20% workforce reduction as business as usual is a little bit much here. Management made a lot of mistakes to get to this situation. It wasn't we tried a few things and it didn't work out, it was we burrowed too much money, spent too much money, and risked too much. What other tech company has cut this deeply recently? You name their competitors, like Amazon and Apple -- is it happening…

> You name their competitors, like Amazon and Apple -- is it happening there?

Their competitors are not direct comparisons, though, and percentages can be a little misleading. Spotify is ~7.5k employees, and does one thing. Amazon is ~1.5m employees, and does many, many things.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#699

Post by sheepybloke » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:42 PM UTC

fullshark wrote: post #512

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…

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…

One of the big things I saw when a company I worked at did layoffs was that more people left voluntarily than were fired, especially a lot of the people I saw as the best and brightest. Heck, it's why I left. To me, that's the biggest side affect of the layoffs. There's going to be a brain drain, not because you fired people, but because the morale and mental of the company has shifted.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#700

Post by sitkack » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

So effectively contractors. Companies shouldn't be allowed to "shed" this much of their workforce in a system like the US's here we have a very poor safety net.

They bulked up, built their products and now want to slim down and enjoy their profits at the expense of these sacrificial workers.