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It's been reported in the past that it is staff. Spotify has 5,000+ employees -- I wouldn't assume for a second that it's the tech workers doing this, I suspec
by nickysielicki 6y ago
It's been reported in the past that it is staff.
Spotify has 5,000+ employees -- I wouldn't assume for a second that it's the tech workers doing this, I suspect it's probably HR and marketing and so on. It's a big bureaucratic organization.
I like to think if I was at Spotify, and I saw people holding the company hostage like this -- threatening to quit (or whatever) if they don't get their way -- that I would stand up and threaten to do the same if they do get their way.
If the only way to remove the ability of these people to make threats is to create a lose-lose situation for your employer, then you have a responsibility to do that. If enough companies see this happen and are forced to navigate a needless lose-lose situation, maybe we'll see companies take a harder position against advocacy and activism and politics in the workplace. If all else is equal, hopefully they'll be forced to take the position that they would have taken if nobody threatened anything; they'll fall back to their actual principles.
- whimsicalism 6y agoI'm curious where the line is for you. Is there any legal content where it is permissible that Spotify doesn't want to host it?
- nickysielicki 6y agoDefinitely, but Joe Rogan is nowhere near that line. I don't have a problem with the platform restricting content. I have a problem with the behavior of the employees reaching outside of their role to forward their political goals. If your job is to curate content, and you disagree with the content of JRE, you would have stopped the deal from happening in the first place.
- gizmo385 6y agoMany employees at Spotify did object to signing Joe Rogan.
- qqqwerty 6y ago> employees reaching outside of their role to forward their political goals The vast majority of executives in the corporate world are conservative, and in addition to personally supporting conservative movements, they frequently direct company resources towards furthering right leaning agendas. Is it really that offensive that a handful of employees are at a handful of tech companies are trying to steer the ship in the other direction? Are you similarly offended when oil companies lobby the government to further the oil industries interests? Are you offended when corporations successfully push congress to pass tax breaks largely targeted at corporations and the rich?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- imgabe 6y agoI think it's pretty clear that Spotify wants to host it, seeing as they paid $100 million for the right to do so. It seems some employees, whom Spotify did not entrust with the decision to host this content or not, are mad about it and are attempting a hostile takeover of their company to run it according to their own politics instead of how the owners and managers have decided to do.
- snicksnak 6y agoalways pay attention who you hire, especially in HR. Woke and activist HR hires woke and activist people, woke and activist people will cause you trouble and can wreck your whole ship. This is true for every industry but especially for media, just look what happened to the once so prestigious news outlets, all taken hostage.
- seriousquestion 6y agoSmart companies have already been filtering them out. See Coinbase, who literally paid them to leave.
- geofft 6y agoDoes this tend to improve the company's financial performance, or is this simply worth doing if you have certain political goals for your company that outweigh financial results? i.e., is this "smart companies" as in those with good financial ideas or "smart companies" as in those who want to build a non-woke world for the next generation? It seems like most SJW-converged companies have been doing just fine as companies, otherwise the invisible hand of the market would have put a stop to this long ago.
- hanselot 6y agoBlizzard being the shining paragon in that regard?
- redmeatforchina 6y agoThe ironic part is that even the most liberal anti-republican types are made miserable by woke employees. I worked at a tech company that went through the exact process you described. Liberal Democrat types used to keep politics out of the workplace for the most part. Then they started hiring woke brainwashed college students who aligned with them ideologically but not procedural. Now instead of the daily chat at the water cooler, we have employees screaming at meetings about the latest outrage, taking days off because something happened in the news, and crying when being woke doesn't help their performance reviews. Everybody is miserable and managers are fleeing.
- bootwoot 6y agoIs there a source for this? Seems way more likely to be monetarily pushed by either investors or advertisers (as other poster said) or at least pre-emptively done to appease those groups.
- nickysielicki 6y agoSource: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xg8jq4/spotify-joe-rogan-transphobic https://www.vice.com/en/article/xg8jq4/spotify-joe-rogan-tra... > One of the submitted questions was "Many LGBTQAI+/ally Spotifiers feel unwelcome and alienated because of leadership's response in JRE conversations. What is your message to those employees?" Another was “Why has Spotify chosen to ignore Spectrum ERG's guidance about transphobic content in the JRE catalog?,” referring to a group of Spotify workers who focus on related issues. > At the meeting, Ek also told employees not to leak to the media, noting "If we can't have open, confidential debates, we will have to move those discussions to closed doors."
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoAlthough it should be noted that the main episode at issue in that controversy, with Abigail Shrier, wasn't one of the ones removed in this recent wave and is still on Spotify.
- temp667 6y agoWhat is Spectrum ERG? Most corps do follow guidance from legal / HR etc to a degree - it's weird if that was being ignored.
- sethhochberg 6y ago"ERG" in this context is probably an Employee Resource Group - a pretty common construct at larger organizations. Think of them as a formal way for employees with some kind of shared set of goals or concerns to organize and support each other, usually completely distinct from their actual job function. ERGs often have some kind of liaison from HR, especially since they are often associated with diversity programs. But the ERG itself is usually just advisory if they're consulted on something the company is doing.
- ljm 6y agoI heard second hand that the folks working at Spotify were incredibly unhappy about this Joe Rogan deal, and one of the reasons for that was because leadership steamrolled over any concerns they had. And there were many. I don't really know who this guy is or why you'd spend 100 million on him to secure a deal. But he's walking away with that money and Spotify is left with the infighting. They fucked themselves over with that absurd investment.
- imgabe 6y agoWhy do their concerns matter? I thought private businesses were free to choose to host or not host any content they want, without any regard to anything or anyone? If employees don't like it, they can quit. Presumably, Spotify put some executive in charge of doing the Rogan deal, the board approved it, and that should be that. Donna from Accounting doesn't get a say. If you’re stocking the shelves at the grocery store management doesn’t care that you think they should only sell Wheaties and not Frosted Flakes. It’s not your decision to make.
- bgorman 6y agoIt is not an absurd investment, Spotify is a commodity technology and taking away Joe Rogan podcast from their biggest competitor (Apple) provides much needed differentiation. Joe Rogan's podcast was the number one podcast on Apple Podcasts. Now it isn't available at all.
- ljm 6y agoSo you buy out Apple's number 1 podcast...and then Apple has another number 1 podcast. And you're sitting with a lame duck, as is evidenced by TFA. Is Spotify going to blow another 100 mil on that one and hope for the best? They messed up by betting large on a celebrity and ignoring the fact that Joe Rogan wasn't a cultural fit.
- aleister_777 6y ago> They messed up by betting large on a celebrity and ignoring the fact that Joe Rogan wasn't a cultural fit. He's a cultural fit for x hundreds of millions. You may not fall into that demographic, but there's no discounting that other cultures exist outside of your own.
- warent 6y agoPolitics are going to exist in the workplace no matter what because workplaces are made of humans. Advocacy and activism are a bad thing?
- imgabe 6y agoWhen they are stupid, yes.