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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

#141

Post by reustle »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #132
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…

It's really funny to see hackers fall in line to work at big companies. In the 90s all the true hackers hated large established companies and would show them the finger and work for scrappy upstarts. And now all the kids are bending over backwards to work for these large corporations doing hours of leetcode. What a shame.

The hackers of the 90s and 00s are a different breed than those today. Today, many go through a boot camp and enjoy a cozy job. Might as well be an accountant or in HR.

The hackers of the early days were tinkerers. Odd ones out, often. They are still out there, but absolutely not taking the traditional path.

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

#142

Post by aaomidi »

educaysean wrote: post #125
aaomidi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The employment laws in many Asian countries make it very difficult to lay people off or fire them. This sounds great on paper, but comes its own host of problems. One knock on effect is that the job market for anyone that isn't a new grad is tough and extremely hostile. Having been laid off or fired carries such a stigma because it is a rare thing that most people don't encounter. If you're past your 30s and laid off…

> This translates into a workplace where your value isn't tied to the work you output, but which "line" you stand behind.

I’m glad we’ve avoided this in the US /s.

Sarcasm aside, a lot of those problems exist here. Has anyone worked in a large company had a different experience in this regard?

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

#143

Post by circlefavshape »

forward1 wrote: post #100
haliskerbas wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s your TC now?

A few years on, it's 650, so I actually did myself a favor getting fired, even though at the time I was filled with regret and resentment. In retrospect, the job was miserable and I was acting out because I was deeply unhappy.

Whoa holy crap that's a lot of money. Who are you working for?

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

#144

Post by rco8786 »

chpatrick wrote: post #104
rco8786 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I meant on a "moral" level, not legally speaking. If he's doing his job as a CFO and he wants to sell shares when people are laid off, that's up to him.

> and he wants to sell shares when people are laid off, that's up to him.

That's what I am saying...it's not up to him. It's up to him if he wants to lay people off right before he has a sale scheduled. But what he most definitely did not and cannot do is: lay people off, observe that the stock went up, decide to make a sale.

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

#145

Post by gamblor956 »

For comparison, that's enough to have saved almost all of the jobs that were cut...

1500 lives were ruined so this guy could add some zeroes to his bank account.

(For all those commenting on 10b5 sales: note that the layoffs were timed to match the scheduled sales so that the executives could reap the windfall from the increased stock prices resulting from the layoffs. This has been a strategy for at least a decade now and is drawing increasing scrutiny because it's basically an endrun around insider trading rules.)

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

#146

Post by bigtex88 »

RestlessMind wrote: post #126
digging wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a risk that doesn't pan out can also be a bad idea , though. It depends on what the possible outcomes were and what the chances of each outcome were. The important thing to evaluating someone's decision making ability is to look at the decision they made with the information they had. Was it a good bet to dramatically overhire? I don't know!, but analysts can and should (rather, have no excuse not to). It's po…

It is board's job to evaluate C-suite's decisions. It is shareholders' job to appoint a proper board. Ultimately, the system has some flaws but generally it has worked pretty well over the past many decades.

So well. We've destroyed the planet but we have cheaper TV's, so that's a win in my book.

/s

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

#147

Post by bigtex88 »

CPLX wrote: post #75
forward1 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a bit of a naive viewpoint considering the massive amount of damage that modern agricultural practices have done to the environment.

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

#148

Post by landemva »

dragonwriter wrote: post #133
landemva wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 If the existing unemployment _insurance_ (forced payroll contributions to each State) are not sufficient, then change that insurance system. There could be a business opportunity for supplemental market-priced contributions which pay on job loss. That wouldn't be worse than the '…

> There could be a business opportunity for supplemental market-priced contributions which pay on job loss. Private job loss insurance exists already, its not an non-addressed potential market.

Wow, I might be interested. Do you have any recommendations in USA?

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

#149

Post by FredPret »

RankingMember wrote: post #118
FredPret wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iterating means refining what works, which means we have to take a step back and recognize the successes of capitalism over the past couple of centuries. Only then can we intelligently try to address any failures in a non-destructive way.

You say "Only then", but in the US these failures already were being addressed (see: New Deal) until they were pulled back in the 80s. I think people are rightly frustrated by this.

If people looked at a graph of their real income and wealth over time, they'd be delighted, not frustrated

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

#150

Post by wikibob »

circlefavshape wrote: post #143
forward1 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years on, it's 650, so I actually did myself a favor getting fired, even though at the time I was filled with regret and resentment. In retrospect, the job was miserable and I was acting out because I was deeply unhappy.

Whoa holy crap that's a lot of money. Who are you working for?

That’s standard or a little bit low for a staff engineer at FAANG and top tier tech.

See https://www.levels.fyi/blog/2023-mid-year-report.html

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