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

theguardian.com

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

#71

Post by tdb7893 »

lgkk wrote: post #39

It’s kind of weird to see people want to work at big corporations but then act surprised or salty about layoffs. It’s nothing personal. You’re a line number even if you’re some leet coder. It’s a business, and it’s a strategy game of utilizing resources. You might have 400k TC but you’re not god you’re a resource. If you think these things aren’t fair or suck, then you should try to move out of the leet coder path an…

"If you think these things aren’t fair or suck, then you should try to move out of the leet coder path and get on the capital owner or business operator side."

Some people like engineering and don't want to have to do an entirely different career. I would love to be treated as a human as an engineer (which is why I'm trying to leave the big companies but it's hard to find a company much better)

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

#72

Post by Pentamerous »

wongarsu wrote: post #45
game_the0ry wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But aren't layoffs ultimately a mistake? Shouldn't the stress of losing a job (also) be on the shoulders of who made the incorrect decisions?

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

#73

Post by klyrs »

rco8786 wrote: post #46

As always, these sales happen on a predetermined schedule for executives. This has nothing to do with the layoffs.

Just because he executed within a legal trading window doesn't mean he didn't make the decision to trade. It absolutely has everything with the stock going up right after the layoffs.

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

#75

Post by CPLX »

forward1 wrote: post #61
hx8 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* This is a classic highlight of company leadership focused on quarterly results. The stock has a good quarter, the CFO is now much richer. * At a base level this is one person profiting off misfortune he caused other people. This isn't the pro-social type of behavior I would want to be encouraged. * Companies primary focus is on satisfying Wall Street, while avoiding too much scrutiny from DC.

All business is profiting off misfortune of other people. That is the cornerstore of post-industrial capitalism: maximize the externalization of the costs of production. Name one product, service or industry which does not harm people, animals or the environment - impossible!

No it’s not. This is nihilism.

Growing food and bringing it to you is one example of millions. And no it doesn’t “harm the environment” to dig a potato out of the ground every year or whatever.

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

#76

Post by aaomidi »

brvsft wrote: post #54
coldbrewed wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you agree with the narrative of shareholder primacy and are looking at short term outcomes then sure, nothing is wrong here. But this means that we're ignoring the harm that was done to the people that lost their income and the disruptions that the rest of the org will experience. Layoffs can be devastating to the people that were terminated; a job loss is one of the higher stress events one can experience. If you…

> But this means that we're ignoring the harm that was done to the people that lost their income and the disruptions that the rest of the org will experience. As opposed to the 'benefit' that was done while they were granted income? I'm unsure what your point is. Is a business never supposed to 'harm' its employees? They're never allowed to fire people? What is the logical conclusion of your statement? A business oug…

It should actually be very very expensive for a company to fire people. Why do stock markets have an automated forced "PAUSE" when stocks seem like they are crashing? It's because companies, investors, people, or even computers don't always act rationally. That pause has prevented a lot of hiccups from turning into full-blown crashes.

Right now, when a company lays people off, the town, state, and federal government are the ones who have to end up picking up the downstream effects of that in the macro sense. And local businesses, families, loved ones have to pick them up in the micro sense. This trade doesn't actually make sense if you think about it, a company _should not_ be able to cause that level of a disruption, without a penalty to itself.

This is why I actually don't mind some specifics of European companies, where firing people is _genuinely really hard_. This also means that when hiring, you simply have to plan better. It is okay to expect a large company to "plan better" than an individual with a single income stream. It is okay to push the burden of the pain of bad markets onto companies, rather than individuals.

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

#77

Post by karaterobot »

candiddevmike wrote: post #21

Isn't this considered insider trading? You'd think there should be a blackout period around any kind of layoff, similar to how they do with earnings.

No. As far as I know, blackout periods are usually before a major announcement, except in cases like a change in leadership. In any case, blackout periods are defined and enforced by companies, they are not rules made by the SEC: the purpose is to avoid the appearance of impropriety. This is not insider trading either, since insider trading involves making trades based on non-public information, and this all happened after the information was made public.

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

#78

Post by RankingMember »

ta_billlegrand wrote: post #70
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.

As a legal matter, no, he can't really sell his shares when he feels like it. (Disclaimer: IANAL and this is not advice.) The Spotify insider trading policy [1] prohibits transactions during "blackout periods," which start with the last month of the fiscal quarter (so December 1, in this case) and end after earnings are released. These share sales were presumably executed pursuant to a 10b5-1 plan, so he did somethin…

Wouldn't he have presumably had some input as to the timing of the layoffs?

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

#79

Post by francisofascii »

candiddevmike wrote: post #21

Isn't this considered insider trading? You'd think there should be a blackout period around any kind of layoff, similar to how they do with earnings.

Too early to tell. If the company is in far worse condition than the public realizes, than maybe. But this could just be rebalancing due to the increase in price.

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

#80

Post by jmilloy »

visarga wrote: post #7
stets wrote: post #3

I mean -- do you want him to sell when the price is low?

yes, but he probably caused the price to rise for his own benefit

The rise in price is a signal that investors think this was a benefit to the company as a whole.
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