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

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#911

Post by bogomipz » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #282

Reminds me of: "Nobody ever got fired for buying cloud". Spotify was a stand-out, almost no large tech company bought into cloud like they did, and everyone said the same thing: "It's not our core competence, it would require more people". I get it, it's not sexy at all to deal in infrastructure, but I've seen their cloud bill and it's significantly higher than 1,600 peoples jobs, even with the discounts they got thr…

>"Spotify was a stand-out, almost no large tech company bought into cloud like they did, and everyone said the same thing: "It's not our core competence, it would require more people".

I'm not sure what you mean by this as Spotify was actually quite late buying into cloud. They ran on bare metal through at least 2015. From their engineering blog:

">Thus, in early 2015 we started exploring what a cloud strategy would look like for Spotify."[1]

So they would have been running on bare metal through some of the biggest spikes in growth i.e launching in the US market. I don't think they bought in any more or any less than anyone else who transitioned from bare metal to cloud and for probably the same reasons.

[1] https://engineering.atspotify.com/2019/12/views-from-the-clo...

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#912

Post by danielmarkbruce » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #900

atbpaca wrote: post #858

I wish CEOs would resign when layoffs happen. It should be like some governments where the whole cabinet resigns. If layoffs are a necessity, then the CEO and the top management should show the example and take responsibility for taking the company into the wrong direction, leading to layoffs. That would be fair and more understable than a "thank you for your hard work and commitment".

Wouldn't this result in CEO's never doing a layoff or admitting the business needs one?

Almost every suggestion to help employees doesn't consider the second order effects.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#913

Post by spamizbad » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

marcinzm wrote: post #342

dijit wrote: post #282

Reminds me of: "Nobody ever got fired for buying cloud". Spotify was a stand-out, almost no large tech company bought into cloud like they did, and everyone said the same thing: "It's not our core competence, it would require more people". I get it, it's not sexy at all to deal in infrastructure, but I've seen their cloud bill and it's significantly higher than 1,600 peoples jobs, even with the discounts they got thr…

It's actually non-trivial to run an efficient cost center department that actually supports other departments properly. The incentive structures are just horribly difficult to align. Cloud's selling point is that you won't have to spend 6 months filling out forms to get a single out of date VM (yes, that happened to me).

You can end up in the same space even with a Kubernetes Cluster in the cloud when its fully subscribed and IT has no budget for more EC2 nodes.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#914

Post by jamesblonde » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:24 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #711

jamesblonde wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "semantic difference" is justification for using the word, but the intent behind using RIF is the usual - water down the harshness of the thing. I don't buy we need a new word for this. Particularly this justification is nonsense - "layoffs typically came with an expectation that the employee might be rehired if more work became available or the employer’s financial condition improved" Who said this is true? Lik…

Language is not the same thing to all people. Having two different terms, one for permanent changes and one for more temporary changes, seems useful and beneficial to the language. For you, the distinction in terms apparently does not exist. But for some, including me, this distinction exists. Would it not be better for us all to adopt the distinction?

Is it not better to be just understood? Like 0.01% of the population know what RIF means.

But as soon as RIF becomes widely understood, with all the negative connotations of layoffs, a new term will be need for some other nuanced reason.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#915

Post by zaps » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

I still can’t get Backstage set up correctly.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#916

Post by emodendroket » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

moogly wrote: post #905

emodendroket wrote: post #530

Has Spotify ever made money? It seems strange that all these music streaming services have limped along for years without having a model that makes any money or sense. Convenient for the rest of us I suppose.

Daniel Ek and Drake certainly have made money. Smaller artists? Not a chance. They get paid in exposure, which is the #1 rule not to do in the creative arts.

I’m not even talking about artists though. Just Spotify the corporate entity.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#917

Post by 3mums » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #125

Maxion wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly not working on the core functionality of the app - heh. This seems to be some megatrend with the big tech companies. Hire on ~10k staff, ignore your core features, ???, profit.

I mean, yeah. How many engineers do you need? 5-6 for the backend, 3-4 DevOps, maybe some more for the various frontends... say, 20? I can't imagine the whole thing can't be done with between 30 to 50 engineers in total. And everyone else, what do they do? Cold calls to the entire planet to go subscribe, or what? Also alright, some lawyers and "compliance" people, financiers, marketers,... Don't know. I'd struggle to…

According to LinkedIn, Spotify currently has 13,900 full-time employees, with 3620 in Engineering (26%), 1850 in Arts & Design (13%), 1000 in Media & Communications (7%), and roughly 800 each in Marketing, Business Development, and Sales (5-6% each).

Over the last 12 months, headcount has risen dramatically within Sales (+32%), Arts & Design (+19%), and Business Development (+21%). In comparison, Engineering has seen just a 2% rise, Media and Comms at 0%, and marketing at +10%.

If I had to guess, lots of these layoffs will begin to affect their headcounts within these functions that have experienced rapid year-on-year growth, and affect their Engineering function (despite being their largest) proportionally less than these other functions.

I would be interested in how you came to your conclusion of needing only 200 employees for a company of this scale? Any company of spotify's scale will have entire functions that will be distributed globally and working on a variety of projects or products. For example, Spotify has almost 400 data scientists. Off the top of my head, I can't fathom what I would have 400 data scientists working on, but I can easily believe that a company with over $12bn in revenue and 574 million listeners this year could find a use for them.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#918

Post by tracerbulletx » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #909

tracerbulletx wrote: post #901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every damned time this happens someone asks how it's possible they have so many employees when it's just an app... Spotify owns multiple large podcast studios, has sales people, negotiators, music industry people, lawyers, facility staff, lawyers, marketing, content curators. It is the business engine through which the vast majority of the world consumes music these days. You can quibble about if they have too many e…

This seems false, Whatsapp became 'the business engine through which the vast majority of the world' sends texts on the backs of 20ish employees. Even assuming delivering music, podcasts, royalty payments, negotiations with artists, etc..., takes 100x more headcount in total, that should still be only around 2000 employees. 9000 just means most are not being that productive.

Obviously you can do it leaner, if they couldn't they wouldn't be firing people. My point is that you shouldn't be trying to estimate based on the technical side when most of the head count is negotiating with record companies and producing podcasts. In any case I personally wouldn't be so obsessed with every company running as lean as possible, great way to have 5 people make 10 billion dollars and everyone else just gets to pound sand. In a healthy society companies should run fat to keep people employed, engaged, trained up, ready to fill in as a replacement, and lots and lots of vacation time.

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#919

Post by firecall » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

mrbonner wrote: post #743

I didn’t know they have that many people (9000) to work for a single product. I’ve been a subscriber for more than 5 years and the app on the iPhone just gets worse everyday. Why? - daily updates is gone. This is where I can get a snapshot of all new releases from artists I love. I’m not sure if Release Calendar is the new one but I don’t bother to check. - I listen to classical and the song title naming is just subp…

For me it’s the forcing of Podcasts down my throat that I hate.

No Spotify, I do not want to listen to Joe Rogan and other right wing podcasts.

Just let me hide Podcasts already :-(

Re: Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

#920

Post by firecall » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #909

tracerbulletx wrote: post #901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every damned time this happens someone asks how it's possible they have so many employees when it's just an app... Spotify owns multiple large podcast studios, has sales people, negotiators, music industry people, lawyers, facility staff, lawyers, marketing, content curators. It is the business engine through which the vast majority of the world consumes music these days. You can quibble about if they have too many e…

This seems false, Whatsapp became 'the business engine through which the vast majority of the world' sends texts on the backs of 20ish employees. Even assuming delivering music, podcasts, royalty payments, negotiations with artists, etc..., takes 100x more headcount in total, that should still be only around 2000 employees. 9000 just means most are not being that productive.

It does sound extreme doesn’t it!

But I wonder if they have to replicate non-dev teams in multiple countries?

I’d imagine they have to a seperate legal, promotional, marketing, sales and so on teams for each market.

Replicating these business functions quickly adds up to thousands of people employed!

As an English speaker I tend to think of music as being all in English, but each region has its own musical culture that would need addressing.

France I believe mandates a certain amount of French speaking songs.