Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify CFO cashes in £7.2M in shares after value surges on news of job cuts

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 203 posts

Re: Spotify CFO cashes in £7.2M in shares after value surges on news of job cuts

#41

Post by eej71 »

game_the0ry wrote: post #34
chpatrick wrote: post #13

Spotify is a for-profit enterprise and if laying people off is the right financial choice then he's doing his job well. He can sell his shares when he feels like it.

This is a fair assumption, but incomplete. Its the C-suite management that makes all the decisions and reaps all the rewards, but when they make mistakes, they don't fire themselves, they fire employees, many who had no control of the strategic mis-steps of their leadership. Sometimes the C-suite needs to be fired.

It is ultimately the shareholders who reap these rewards.

Re: Spotify CFO cashes in £7.2M in shares after value surges on news of job cuts

#43

Post by wodenokoto »

kurthr wrote: post #31
Ekaros wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also clearly the buyers of these shares think it was right decision. As otherwise they would not be buying at this price.

It's not like the CFO has any more information than they do.

Well, he had to sell them _after_ the fact.

But it does sound like his opinion on the cut downs is different than the market.

Re: Spotify CFO cashes in £7.2M in shares after value surges on news of job cuts

#45

Post by wongarsu »

game_the0ry wrote: post #34
chpatrick wrote: post #13

Spotify is a for-profit enterprise and if laying people off is the right financial choice then he's doing his job well. He can sell his shares when he feels like it.

This is a fair assumption, but incomplete. Its the C-suite management that makes all the decisions and reaps all the rewards, but when they make mistakes, they don't fire themselves, they fire employees, many who had no control of the strategic mis-steps of their leadership. Sometimes the C-suite needs to be fired.

I'm not sure Spotify has really made any mistakes here though. They took a risk that didn't pan out. For an omnipotent being that would be a mistake, but for a person that only has the information available at the time it can still have been the right bet.

Firing people when their bets don't pan out just leads to a risk averse culture that dooms any company to failure

Re: Spotify CFO cashes in £7.2M in shares after value surges on news of job cuts

#47

Post by 1oooqooq »

kibwen wrote: post #5
rogerkirkness wrote: post #2

Why do so many tech executives seem to make the actual worst decisions possible when it comes to symbolic leadership?

The executive class isn't there to provide leadership, they're there to extract value.

past the startup crunch phase, the CEO job is literally to rally the troops and nothing much else.

Re: Spotify CFO cashes in £7.2M in shares after value surges on news of job cuts

#49

Post by rco8786 »

chpatrick wrote: post #13

Spotify is a for-profit enterprise and if laying people off is the right financial choice then he's doing his job well. He can sell his shares when he feels like it.

> He can sell his shares when he feels like it

He, in fact, cannot. As a C level executive he is going to trade on a 10b5-1 schedule.

Re: Spotify CFO cashes in £7.2M in shares after value surges on news of job cuts

#50

Post by maxehmookau »

Sure, lots of people saying it's totally legal and "capitalism gonna capital", which is fair.

Except imagine the absolute kicking morale will take as a result of this. I'm sure it was bad enough, internally, when 17% of staff were made redundant. (I'm sure their internal channels are pretty salty and uncomfortable right now.) I'm sure there was plenty of anger internally at the C-levels. PR school would tell them to keep quiet and wait for the storm to pass; _not_ look to be publicly, personally, profiting from it to the tune of many millions of dollars.

Poor morale leads to greater attrition of those your company needs to hold on to, especially at an inflection point such as this. It leads to it being harder to hire in the future (and more expensive.)

It's up to the CFO to decide if that's worth it. It may be in the short-term; but long-term it's a much tricker equation.

Post reply on HN