70 ms·

Spotify will reduce total headcount by approximately 17%

• pawelduda 3y ago
  Maybe now they will be able to focus on what matters instead of enshittening UI every few months
• neycoda 3y ago
  Geesh, glad they're trying to save the company by firing people. Lord knows they wouldn't survive otherwise. They gotta tighten their belts in this profit drought! I mean, uh, actually they're just trying to save money by competing with their workforce instead of making their products better, am I getting that right?
• honeybadger1 3y ago
  From a company that projects far too much, not surprising.
• techstacktoe 3y ago
  All things considered, the note seems honest - lays out the facts and considerations. The severance package seems quite generous as well.
  • vsnf 3y ago
    Written with a first-person active voice too, unlike many bureaucratic notes. > I have made the difficult decision to reduce our total headcount by approximately 17% across the company.
  • surgical_fire 3y ago
    Agreed. And the considerations they made seem to be factual too. I think this was the first corporate notice about layoffs that didn't read like absolute bullshit.
  • Epa095 3y ago
    > The severance package seems quite generous as well. I guess it depends a bit what they mean by `the average employee receiving approximately five months of severance` (and also where you are seeing it from, maybe its seen as more generous when seen from the US). In Sweeden the notice period for the employer is between 1 and 6 months, depending on how long the empoyee has worked there. If they count that period in as part of the severance package, it could wery well be "the legal minimum" or "the legal minimum + 2 months", which sounds less great than 5 months :-p If its "the legal minimum + approximately 5 months" then it's generous. In the other developer-downscalings I know about here in Scandinavia (Norway if it matters) the most common deal has been 6 months, either "work for the remaining notice period, then 6 months pay" or "6 months pay, you work out the current month". I say "deal", because its a deal where the employee gets that pay, and then resigns voluntarily. If they don't take the deal they only receive the legal minimum, but they can then fight the firering, which can get expensive and complicated (I have never heard about anyone not taking the deal).
    • thelastknowngod 3y ago
      Yeah you're not entitled to anything in the States. There are no employment contracts and you can be fired for any reason without notice. The only reason to give severance is to avoid bad publicity. There isn't any mandate that the company has to offer anything. There really should be though especially when the company in question was able to afford $1 billion in stock buybacks just 2 years ago, and when the CEO has a $3 billion net worth, and when they are well known for not paying their suppliers (the artists) a fair price for the content they create.
      • relativ575 3y ago
        > There are no employment contracts and you can be fired for any reason without notice. You can also leave the job at any time, which as a frequent HN user I'm sure you know and may have used it to your advantage. > There really should be though especially when the company in question was able to afford $1 billion in stock buybacks just 2 years ago, and when the CEO has a $3 billion net worth They were also in a hiring spree 2 years ago, like many tech companies. Many of the current employees wouldn't have a job otherwise. The CEO is also the founder of the company, who built it over time from scratch. There have been many ups and downs during their 17 year history. 10,000 jobs didn't appear overnight. We hardly hear when company hire, only when they let people go. > and when they are well known for not paying their suppliers (the artists) a fair price for the content they create. Apparently they don't make big fat profit given this layoff
  • pcurve 3y ago
    I agree, but this part bothered me. "Today, we still have too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact. More people need to be focused on delivering for our key stakeholders – creators and consumers. " While this is likely partly true, this is mostly management's fault. I didn't see anything in the email that talks post-mortem about the root cause and how it will be prevented going forward.
    • Tao3300 3y ago
      > too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work Damn, that's every job I've ever had.
• thiago_fm 3y ago
  They need a bigger cut. 17% will not have a big enough impact to its bottom line. They need to have enough money to invest in other initiatives, as the business they are in is proven to be margin-thin. Apple and Amazon will eventually eat Spotify given enough time, if they don't find a moat to be built
  • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >They need a bigger cut. 17% will not have a big enough impact to its bottom line. What's stopping them from bigger cuts? We've seen that big SW products can run on lean teams(whatsapp, post-Musk Twitter) and we know many large tech companies are overloaded with way more workers than they need to run(Google), just because they could overhire when money was free. >Apple and Amazon will eventually eat Spotify given enough time, if they don't find a moat to be built What prevents Google from doing the same? They already have a large customer base in Android users.
    • csunbird 3y ago
      Google themselves? Given the popularity of the YouTube they should have won a decade ago, but they have not. The inefficiency of Google always amazes me.
      • chewz 3y ago
        > The inefficiency of Google always amazes me. It's the kind of people they attract. IBM types...
      • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >The inefficiency of Google always amazes me. As long as they have the cheat code for unlimited free money(ads) they can be as inefficient as they want.
      • kevinmchugh 3y ago
        About a decade ago they had Google Music. A friend of mine really liked it. He was supposed to have a for-life price of $7/month (or something) and then they raised prices and failed to grandfather his price in. Being Google, there was no way for him to complain about this to them, so he cancelled and used a product he liked less, out of spite. At some point they launched a duplicative product, YouTube Music, which they later migrated all customers to. So you know, the standard Google experience.
• mvdtnz 3y ago
  I wonder how those losing their jobs feel about Spotify's reported $200 million investment in Joe Rogan now.
  • anon23432343 3y ago
    It was and still is a stupid decision to buy Joe Rogan. I don't get why people listen to him... He is not funny nor smart. It sometimes feels you get better value when watching morning tv shows...
    • HideousKojima 3y ago
      >It was and still is a stupid decision to buy Joe Rogan. >I don't get why people listen to him... I think you just contradicted yourself here. Whether or not it was a stupid decision to buy the rights to his podcast is orthogonal to whether or not he's funny or smart or if his content gives "value" to listeners.
    • 10u152 3y ago
      You don’t listen to Joe Rogan to listen to Joe Rogan. You listen because he has the most interesting guests on.
      • anon23432343 3y ago
        And lets people spread fake news and stupid theories. Just because they are "interesting" they should not get a free promo.
        • rowanG077 3y ago
          That's precisely what people like about it. Anyone can come on his show. No matter how batshit crazy. Many people don't want to be coddled and protected from viewpoints other people have decided are fake news or stupid. They can make up the balance themselves.
        • kvetching 3y ago
• rob74 3y ago
  > Yet, considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to rightsize our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives. or, otherwise said: "we fired you to make our bottom line look nicer"
  • TapWaterBandit 3y ago
    Eh, what's the alternative? Some people have this weird attitude that businesses are not allowed to shrink/fail. Businesses can only ever go one direction and that is more headcount, otherwise give them govt bailout. Businesses need to be able to grow and shrink. Otherwise we just end up with "too big to fail".
    • robin_reala 3y ago
      I don’t think the complaint was in the action, but the horrible wording.
      • epistasis 3y ago
        I'm not sure which of the wordings is supposed to be worse. They are both bad. But that is the nature of a company on the edge of survival.
        • hackernewds 3y ago
          Spotify is not merely surviving. They have numerous monopolistic exclusive contracts and paid $200M for Joe Rogan's podcast. Be the judge on whether that's worth 1500 employees keeping their job
    • acdha 3y ago
      It’s not that businesses can never shrink but that it should be considered and linked to a specific reason (e.g. a change in business strategy or consumer preferences). If they were, say, RIM a decade ago, layoffs would make sense once they had no path back into the consumer market and also were bleeding cash to the point where they soon wouldn’t be able to make payroll. When the Cold War ended, manufacturing layoffs were inevitable at some of the big defense contractors because the market for stealthy aircraft shrunk and nobody else needed to buy them. A layoff this large means one of two things: the management screwed up on an epic scale (and should be the first to go) or it’s just giving investors a short-term stock boost at the expense of long-term success. Broad layoffs are usually bad for companies long-term because they signal both a lack of management skills and mean that everyone still working there is going to be worried about another round, so politics and making yourself harder to replace will consume a certain amount of otherwise productive time.
• ardit33 3y ago
  Sad to see this happening to my former co-workers. At least it looks like the severance seems to be generous. "We will start with a baseline for all employees, with the average employee receiving approximately five months of severance."
• mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  I often wonder what kind of work actually happens at Spotify. Pretty much every major change to the software or api since I started using it has made the product worse. Breaking libspotify, pointless UI redesigns, obvious, user-facing bugs that go unfixed for years. Removing features like play queue for long periods. There's metadata errors and even audio corruption in some albums that I actually reported to them years ago, never fixed. As for new features, there may be more but the only one I noticed somewhat recently was the ability to view lyrics at least for some songs, and sometimes but not always synced to the music. But this was already an add-on for Spotify wayyy back in their original client, and then they axed add-on support! This feature was gone for years after that. I'm legitimately curious at this point what people actually do at Spotify besides billing and accounting.
  • that_guy_iain 3y ago
    I would assume it's mostly optimisation and bug fixing. Improving their ability to read files globally, improving availability, etc. Plus internal tools will probably be a major thing too.
  • scarab92 3y ago
    All the pointless redesigns was a pretty clear sign that they had excess engineering headcount.
    • fullshark 3y ago
      I saw it as a sign that they needed to find ways to get people to spend time listening to anything that is proprietary (podcasts, unique recommendation algorithms) to avoid just being the middle man for music streaming and getting squeezed by the publishers for all their revenue. Edit: By proprietary I mean - owned by Spotify.
      • rightbyte 3y ago
        The music is propertiary. Even recordings of Mozart is unless the recording is older than an ever increasing limit of a bazillion years.
• jamesblonde 3y ago
  You will hear more about the new term "RIF" not - reduction in force. Nobody likes to say we had layoffs, so corporate speak will be - we did a RIF ...blah blah. It's terrible, because i love playing guitar, and they are screwing with the english language as normal people use it.
  • epistasis 3y ago
    There is a semantic difference in the terms: > In the past, layoffs typically came with an expectation that the employee might be rehired if more work became available or the employer’s financial condition improved. An RIF, on the hand, did not come with such an expectation; it usually meant that a certain position or an entire department was being eliminated. https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/rif-or-layoff-what-difference-does-it-make.html https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/rif-...
    • jamesblonde 3y ago
      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? Like say 30 years ago, IBM fired 30% of people. They didn't need to call it a RIF. Like would they re-hire the people because OS/2 took off?
      • sgerenser 3y ago
        I’ve only heard the term “Layoff” in regards to a temporary staff reduction in the trades/blue collar/seasonal work. In white collar jobs, layoff has pretty much always meant a permanent staff reduction.
      • epistasis 3y ago
        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?
• that_guy_iain 3y ago
  Super good time to announce layoffs, at the start of the month where everyone is preparing for time off and holidays.
  • 1letterunixname 3y ago
    Yep. Maximizing fuck-over of employees. Tech workers need to stop working for corporations they don't own, aren't seeing the profits of, and who will just throw them away at any moment. The solution are businesses in the form of employee-owned co-ops and organized labor.
    • piyuv 3y ago
      I’m in full support. But, you do realize the forum you’re writing this in, right?
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Tech workers are one of the few W2 employees to see any profits from ownership, hence the compensation in RSUs and stock options. Also, anyone with investments in the public equity markets (like most tech workers earning high salaries) receives gains from the profits.
    • matchbok 3y ago
      Or Spotify could have not taken the risk a couple years ago and never hired them. Which is what would have happened in your scenario. (No dynamism) Businesses take risks. Part of that includes hiring people for things that may not work out. It's really not that hard. And "fuck-over"? Please. 5 months of salary with no work? Actual working class people would go nuts for that. Get a reality check bud.
  • switch007 3y ago
    It’s unfortunately common when financial end of year is around the same time. Announced now, people can at least try to scale back Christmas and NYE plans if necessary.
    • 3y ago
• toboche 3y ago
  I wonder what amount of money will be saved doing these layoffs and how that compares to the overall spending of the company, given that the content streaming rights are probably a huge (the largest?) expense for the business.
  • ath3nd 3y ago
    It's about appearing efficient to the investors and therefore bumping the stock price and giving a payout to the few big stockholdets, rather than real efficiency. They go through a round of this routinely now, it seems, the letter is more or less the same as what he sent during last year, only percentages of laid off are different. That new version that ChatGPT generated made it more fluffy than last time. If they were worried about efficiency, they would not have grossly over hired during covid. That's why we need unions.
    • 1letterunixname 3y ago
      Yep. Business theater. It's about stepping on the necks of working people to suppress wages and "teach them a lesson" they probably won't learn.
      • matchbok 3y ago
        That's.... not how things work. (Maybe on DSA Twitter, but not in the real world lol)
        • ath3nd 3y ago
          This is, to an extent, exactly what is happening now, specifically to the group of people what Musk refers to as 'the laptop class'. The high salaries and good benefits we enjoyed in the industry could only last so long. The pandemic came and it was then when the behemoths overhired and boosted their stock prices, and were happy that we managed to make them money remotely. Now that the pandemic is over, they seized the opportunity to crack down on remote work, reduce their headcount, and one more time boost their stock price, while at the same time showing the pesky engineers who is boss. Oh, and when Twitter started with the layoffs, suddenly all of them were overstaffed, AWS, Microsoft, Spotify, you name it... The layoffs then suddenly meant a market that was hot and starving for engineers, was flooded with good and highly qualified people. And poof, went out bargaining power. The tech giants collectively benefitted from their collective actions, while we were left to compete with each other in a very difficult market. I know that for many of the US based folks this is natural and somewhat acceptable, but things don't have to be that way, this is avoidable and preventable. Strong unions world-wide, and good labor protection laws is the antidote to corporate greed, which, if left unchecked, will throw everything and everyone under the bus, just so they can temporarily squeeze out a point or two in their stock price before the whole world burns.
• jamesblonde 3y ago
  Why did this drop off the front page after a couple of mins? Loads of people seem interested. @dang ?
  • rapsey 3y ago
    I assume because HN keeps culture wars/political discussions down in favor of technical discussions. HN is quite heavily moderated and thank god for that.
  • ryanSrich 3y ago
    The upvote to comment ratio is off (too many comments and not enough upvotes), which is a negative signal to the HN algorithm.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• xer 3y ago
  The elephant in the room: Will Spotify survive the coming wave of generative AI audio content? Wasn't any mentioning on that in the letter. Seems to me like they would need to ditch a lot of silly investments like original content, platform engineering on Kubernetes and scaled agile which together carry costs in the range of $100s millions, to free up resources to battle new disruptive technologies.
  • dvngnt_ 3y ago
    I would think so, people want to listen to swift and drake not some ML song with no relevance.
    • confidantlake 3y ago
      Tbh I would rather listen to a ML song than drake. At least the ML song would sound less robotic.
      • dvngnt_ 3y ago
        would need an example of this. drake has many (many) styles but i wouldn't describe him as robotic
        • confidantlake 3y ago
          It is an opinion man. They call it mumble rap for a reason.
• jaymzcampbell 3y ago
  I wonder how much of this is led by the likes of paying $200 million to sign up Joe Rogan or $25 million for Harry and Megan. That's a big chunk of change. 9,000 employees too - 17% of the workforce out the door.
  • wombat-man 3y ago
    Sure, but they’re also probably planning work for 2024. They may just figure they have more people than they need at the moment.
  • badcppdev 3y ago
    Spotify made a gamble that having some headline Podcasters would build the listener market. Podcasters release regularly and have a different potential for becoming viral compared to musicians so it's a valid commercial decision to make. Seems like their headline gambles didn't work but googling suggests that the podcast listener market increased 10% in the last year so I think they'll probably try again.
    • danpalmer 3y ago
      Anecdotally, most of the podcasts I listen to advertise as being on Spotify, especially the ones that skew towards a more mainstream audience. I think Spotify's podcast play has largely worked to gain the mindshare, it's really just them and Apple Podcasts. I suspect this means that Spotify subscribers are listening to plenty of podcasts, but perhaps podcasts failed to bring new listeners into Spotify.
    • cupofjoakim 3y ago
      For what it's worth Spotify is the most popular podcast platform in the US, with 25% of the userbase: https://explodingtopics.com/blog/podcast-listeners#podcast-platform-usage https://explodingtopics.com/blog/podcast-listeners#podcast-p... I'd say that gamble in particular worked. Not so sure others will though, audio books feels like it will be a dud.
      • sdenton4 3y ago
• CartyBoston 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • HenryBemis 3y ago
    let me fix that for ya: "We realized we don't need those specific 1500 jobs/workers." "Joe Rogan is the most popular podcaster." If cutting those 1500 jobs would put Spotify in serious harm (i.e. devs, licensing, IT security), they wouldn't let any of them go. But they do. So they are either very foolish OR they know something(s) we don't.
    • offices 3y ago
      They were foolish/fickle/myopic/selfish to hire them in the first place. Companies have treated beneficial market conditions as an opportunity to make a land-grab for employees without a plan for how to afford them just a couple of years later - after the employee has organised their life and their family's life around the expectation that they were more than a temporary contractor. If an individual took advantage of cheap credit to buy a car & flogged it while being underwater on the loan shortly after, we'd rightly judge it as a financial mistake. When a CEO does it with people's livelihoods and social circles at stake, it's applauded.
• maxglute 3y ago
  Should have fired 80% of their employees years ago when service was reasonably feature complete. Not that I don't sympathize with people getting laid off, but feels like past a certain point, more heads changes products faster than can be fixed, and sometimes moving fast degrades what shouldn't have been changed in the first place. NPR acquisition drama aside, pocketcast has like 25 employees that makes the service slightly better every year while fixing obvious bugs. Sometimes I don't understand how jumping from winamp to spotify goes from a handful to 10000 employees. Winamp + audiogalaxy (ah memories) probably covers 90% of spotify use case with probably 10 engineers, then just get some suckers to curate playlists for free.
  • danpalmer 3y ago
    What do you think the employees do? I imagine there's a big team dedicated to getting inventory on the service through negotiations with music producers around the world. You'd need to keep them to continue expanding, adding newly produced music, and re-negotiating expiring deals. There will be a large editorial team producing playlists, curation, tuning the algorithm with expertise, etc. That all needs to be localised and to cover lots of niche music tastes. That's also not evergreen content or work, it needs constant updates to remain relevant. Then there's international expansion and enabling the tech to work for more countries, more languages, more payment methods, more types of music publishing. Honestly, where do you get "80%"?
    • maxglute 3y ago
      >Honestly, where do you get "80%"? Lazy hyperbole and picked pareto 80%. Not remotely well calculated remark. Should have constrained comment to engineer/design team.
      • danpalmer 3y ago
        Well thanks for owning up to it! I agree that it feels like the product from an engineering perspective was "finished" a while ago, however when I think about it for a while I can come up with many things that will need ongoing engineering work. For example, bug fixes (no one ever finishes this), support for new devices/phones/smart speakers/TVs/cars, support for payments and authentication in new regions, scaling work to scale to users in more regions, reliability and operational work. And that's just the stuff that isn't about growing more. I think it's reasonable to expect that businesses want to grow, and this isn't always anti-consumer either, as it can result in services that appeal to more users and cost less. This means engineering work on the marketing funnel, onboarding, new markets like podcasts, and lots more.
• bittermandel 3y ago
  Interesting timing considering the on-going process of unionizing.
  • u320 3y ago
    I don't see how it's related. If anything this will accelerate that.
  • benterix 3y ago
    This is one bit I don't understand. You either unionize or don't. If you do, you do it fast or you lose it. All management hates unions, and especially the management of SV companies. They will do everything to crush it. So you either do it fast or lose employees as the management will attack first.
  • occz 3y ago
    It will be interesting to see whether this reinvigorates the unionization push that followed the layoffs early this year.
• atebri 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• pdimitar 3y ago
  But why do they have so many in the first place? 9000 employees. My gods. What are all these people doing?!
  • izacus 3y ago
    Maintaining a large worldwide music/podcast delivery platform. What do you think they're doing?
    • steve1977 3y ago
      Not OP, but I really don’t know why you would need that many people.
      • Shaanie 3y ago
        Obviously you don't need all those people. Almost no company apart from like one-man companies or dying companies employ only the people they need. You employ as many people as possible that generate additional profit, short or long-term. Do you need to hire a conversion specialist? Of course not, though if she costs $400k a year while improving conversion by 10% the payoff is absolutely massive, and you'd have to be an idiot not to hire her. I'm surprised people don't realize this, especially on hackernews.
        • steve1977 3y ago
          That would maybe explain 500-1000 people.
          • izacus 3y ago
            What do you base your estimates on? What do you know about Spotify's business and what it takes it to run sustainably?
    • sligor 3y ago
      Well, whatsapp reached 1 billion user with only around 50 employees
• iamsaitam 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • benterix 3y ago
    The current payout scheme is advantageous to popular artists and Spotify, the rest gets ridiculous amounts because all money from subscriptions and advertising is eaten by the former. Of course they could change the scheme to a more fair one (Spotify gets a fixed amount from your subscription and the rest is divided between artists you listened to in a given month) but the problem is the deal wouldn't be so advantageous to big studios. So basically everybody is subsidizing a few big guys who earn a lot.
• 43446547456 3y ago
  [flagged]
• semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  Absolutely feel bad for the people that are being let go in today's economy. When it comes to Spotify in particular, I use it almost daily and I can't say that I've noticed any new features in the past two-three years, other than some semi-confusing reshuffle of where stuff is listed on the home page. Feels like it is an app that is well and truly in maintenance mode - it just does what it says on the tin, with extremely good market penetration. So genuine non-facetious question as an outsider, what are the people working on? Does it take this many people to operate an app on the scale of Spotify, are there lots of people developing new features that never make it into prod, or is it something else that I haven't thought about? For comparison the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has around 7000 employees, and they develop and operate multiple Mars rovers, several space telescopes, a whole range satellites and space probes, etc. Maybe that's a bad comparison, but if so, why?
• dustedcodes 3y ago
  I have never had Spotify and would like to understand what people like about it? Admittedly I pay for YouTube Premium which comes with YouTube Music, so I use that for music. YouTube is kind of an integral part of life I find, everybody uses it. It has so much useful content, it has educational content, product reviews, how to guides, and then of course all the entertainment content. So assuming that probably most people subscribe to YouTube Premium, why Spotify as well? Where do people have all that time for listening to all those podcasts which Spotify buys to lurk people onto their platform? I don't even have time for Netflix, let alone listening to some podcasts. Time taken up by my work, then my hobby projects, playing sports, playing with my child and spending time with my wife, meeting friends and family on our weekends, going outdoors with the kids or just for us to do something in the real world, cooking fresh food every day, doing regular house work and so forth, where is the time left to binge watch one Netflix series after another or to listen to these podcasts? Even when I was single and didn't have wife and child I didn't have time for these things. In fact I had even less time because I did even more sports, went clubbing, house parties, dating women, going abroad with friends, etc. was even more time consuming than having a stable family now. This is not criticism, but genuinely asking, do people who subscribe to those services do anything else in their life or are they just transitioning from Spotify to work to Netflix to bed to Spotify to work to Netflix to bed to... ???
  • rapsey 3y ago
    I listen to podcasts: While doing pretty much anything in the house, while driving. Turns out that is a pretty sizeable chunk of time.
  • syrgian 3y ago
    Not Spotify, but I pay for Amazon Music. I listen music all the time, and it also works for 5 of my family members (out of which 1 listens a lot and the rest listen a little). It's cheaper than Youtube Premium and has better quality as far as I can tell. I don't listen to podcasts, but I know people listen to them in during their commute. In fact, I am surprised someone with kids and little free time considers Youtube an integral part of life. I watch an average of 2 videos a week, usually skipping most of them. Mostly DIY guides. Maybe I will subscribe once my kids are in age to watch educational videos, but even then, I am pretty sure I will prefer Curiosity Stream, which I trust waaay more than Youtube for kid-friendly content.
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
• goodluckchuck 3y ago
  There were 1,600 people at Spotify?
  • amatix 3y ago
    > Spotify reported that it had 9,400 employees at the end of the third quarter of 2023. It had already cut back employee numbers by 6% in January and by a further 2% in June.
    • sho_hn 3y ago
      I'm also curious what they need 10k people for. What of the business is so labor-intensive?
      • bradyat 3y ago
        Every Spotify wrapped is put together by hand
        • donkeysquid 3y ago
          I had a good chuckle at this
      • hoseja 3y ago
        I would like to say "curating the library" but it's probably license paperwork and negotiations with the rightsholders.
        • sho_hn 3y ago
          Probably those require a lot of local branch offices for legal reasons, so that's a lot of HR/admin overhead.
      • bjord 3y ago
        the constant interface overhauls they do, probably
      • 3y ago
• mahmoudhossam 3y ago
  This isn't about rising costs though, this is about the labels and shareholders being greedy and wanting an even bigger piece of the cake that is already massive. Meanwhile artists are getting paid next to nothing and now even workers are getting the short end of the stick.
  • deburo 3y ago
    Are you not aware how dire inflation and the very high interest rate make the current situation?
    • WUMBOWUMBO 3y ago
      Hasn't inflation gone down to ~3%?
      • COGlory 3y ago
        Has it? Nothing in my life except gasoline has gotten any cheaper. Edit: I misread the comment. I am aware of the difference between rates and absolutes.
        • ahtihn 3y ago
          Why would it get cheaper with a low inflation rate? Low inflation rate means stuff get more expensive slower. It's still getting more expensive.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
        • dagw 3y ago
          That isn't what the inflation number means. An inflation rate of 0% means prices stop going up and stay at their current level, not that prices go down. Prices going down would be deflation, and that almost certainly won't happen.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
• FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Looks like Benn Jordan's analysis on how Spotify will fail is slowly starting to materialize: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDfNRWsMRsU
  • jorlow 3y ago
    Would love a tl;dw. How does he predict the fail will materialize?
    • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      Here's what Bard says: "The video starts by talking about how Spotify has become the dominant force in the music industry. In 2018, Spotify had over 200 million users and was paying out over $5 billion in royalties to artists. However, the video also points out that Spotify is not a very profitable company. In fact, Spotify has lost money every year since it was founded in 2006. So, how does Spotify make money? The answer is that Spotify makes money by selling advertising. In 2018, Spotify generated over $1.2 billion in advertising revenue. This means that Spotify is essentially a media company that just happens to also offer music streaming. The video also discusses the impact of streaming on artists. On the one hand, streaming has made it easier for people to discover new music. This can be a good thing for artists, as it can help them to reach a wider audience. On the other hand, streaming has also led to a decline in album sales. This is because people are no longer willing to pay $10 or $20 for an album when they can stream it for free on Spotify. As a result of this, many artists are now struggling to make a living from their music. In fact, a study by the Berklee College of Music found that the median income for a full-time musician in the United States is just $20,000 per year. So, what does the future hold for the music industry? The video argues that the music industry is in a state of flux. It is unclear how artists will be able to make a living in the future, and it is also unclear how Spotify will be able to continue to grow its business."
      • 4death4 3y ago
        But where is the prediction on how Spotify will fail?
• nalekberov 3y ago
  A few days ago I received "Pay one month, get 3 months" promotion (disclaimer: Accepted). That explains the picture.
• DueDilligence 3y ago
  [dead]
• rodlette 3y ago
  I'm embarrassed to admit that despite having had Spotify for years, my music tastes didn't change much. I switched back to albums, and can thankfully pick clients that suit my taste. * https://gitlab.com/souch/SMP https://gitlab.com/souch/SMP for Android * https://apps.gnome.org/Amberol/ https://apps.gnome.org/Amberol/ for desktop Linux Beets and rsync manage tags and distribution.
  • oblio 3y ago
    > I'm embarrassed to admit that despite having had Spotify for years, my music tastes didn't change much. Don't be embarrassed, that's probably most people. We like what we like.
    • ghaff 3y ago
      Napster and, later, streaming caused me to experiment a bit more. But although I picked up various artists and genres over the years I'm still pretty rooted in what I liked during college and early adult years. If my access to streaming were cut off tomorrow, I'd be pretty content with my mostly ripped from CD music library.
• bluesounddirect 3y ago
  Finally.
• byyll 3y ago
  Can someone explain to me why a company that is about streaming mp3s needs 9500 employees? That just sounds extremely inefficient to me. They don't even have native desktop apps.
  • stemlord 3y ago
    I could understand so many employees for seemingly simple-ish tech services like this if 9000 of them are working in the customer support / tech support department. Wishful thinking though I guess.
  • elAhmo 3y ago
    They definitely don't need that many, hence the layoffs.
  • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    All of these hp tech start-ups/scale-ups overhired when money was cheap to signal growth and confidence to investors, even if they didn't need that many workers, nobody cared, as long as "line goes up".
    • lupire 3y ago
      This is nonsense. They hired people to grow users, usage revenue, not to brag about employee counts. Companies brag about maximizes revenue per employee.
      • cbozeman 3y ago
        No, that makes sense to you. I grew up with someone who is now in the C-Suite of one of America's largest corporations - a company that has been in the Fortune 100 for decades. He has bounced from directorship to C-Suite in Fortune 500s for the past 12 years, and I asked him about this phenomenon over cigars about six months ago, he said this: "cbozeman, you have to understand these people. Most of these people making these decisions are raging narcissists. What do you think sounds better? 'I managed and led 500 people.' 'I managed and led 5000 people.' And when you compound that on top of essentially free money, and then you also throw in the desire to lock up the best talent so your competitor can't have them, you have a recipe for indiscriminate hiring." This person has been working in a high-level capacity in the corporate world for over 15 years now. He has seen some truly reprehensible shit, and shared quite a bit of it with me when we meet up once a year for ice fishing. I can tell you right now, not only is not "nonsense", it's perfectly logical - just not to you, and not to a lot of other HN users, because entirely too many people think in the logic of 1s and 0s, and not in the logic of people. High-level business decision makers - the kind who make these decisions - don't think like you. They don't value what you value. They see engineers and programmers as expendable and easily replaceable - and many of them are. For every 10x or 100x engineer / programmer, there's 500,000 no-namers who can be slotted in and out without much trouble.
• redwood 3y ago
  They are doing a lot, including open source. Out of curiosity is anyone using Backstage at their place of work for developer portal? Is it providing value? Should Spotify double down on that?
  • realraghavgupta 3y ago
    Yes, it is being used at my place of work. Extensive work is being done internally to make it the portal to everything a developer needs. Its definitely a great product and more work should be done. Spinning it off into its own entity would not be a bad idea, if they can deliver a lot and introduce a good SaaS pricing around it, with prices that should be comparable to what self hosting it in a kubernetes cluster would normally be, and not something what most companies are doing.
• empiricus 3y ago
  Meanwhile I cannot see anywhere what is the streaming quality for Spotify on my Samsung TV. Please put a text label somewhere in the currently empty settings page. It should take 1h of programmer time. Granted, if what I suspect is true, i.e. the streaming data rate is too small (not configurable), then I might switch to a different streaming app :)
• dijit 3y ago
  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 through committed use and even when considering the actual costs for infrastructure they need. I'm sure there are inefficiencies everywhere, but this was the one that I talked about before and was talked down in a rather condescending tone. "Nobody got fired for buying cloud" is evidently a misnomer, because if you spend a lot of money and you don't have a lot of income: something has to give. And cloud has a lot more lock-in than most employees.
  • ttymck 3y ago
    This is a wild leap of twisted logic. You posit that they might not have to lay off employees if they instead.... Paid a team to manage their infrastructure instead of outsourcing that responsibility to the cloud.
  • kranke155 3y ago
    How big is the difference in your estimate, between the bills they have now vs cost of cloud + staff to support it?
    • dijit 3y ago
      Largely depends. For ML workloads anything between 6-8x cost increase for using cloud. For CDN costs somewhere like 3x (they're pretty smart on discounts here, without those it could be 100's of x) For compute somewhere like 3-4x (would be 6x before the discounts) Managed DB is a hard one because the cost is really high but I'm not 100% sure how much time is saved with the solution they chose because while I saw the bill I don't work there. It gets dicey with humans because it's apples to oranges, expensive SRE's who understand the inner-workings of cloud vs cheap(er) hardware folks who set things up from first principles with a higher up-front cost. -- FinOps with more traditional solutions is easier but you still need people for that. Spotify's backend load is not entirely elastic. There are some elastic bits but a large chunk is pretty static.
• throwaway2990 3y ago
  lol why does Spotify even have so many employees to begin with. Doubt it was 1600 tech jobs cos they don’t need anywhere close to that to run the service.
• pachico 3y ago
  Firing people is business as usual. I don't know why this is usually taken with such surprise. It's part of the life cycle of many companies to hyper-hire when money flows in, and cut lots of jobs when they "re-adjust". I don't think this is good, I personally don't like it, but I learned not to be surprised anymore. We like cloud because it scales in and out: often management don't see workforce differently.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • crote 3y ago
    Mass firings like these are not normal. In countries with functional labor laws, it's straight-up illegal unless you're basically going through bankruptcy. Mass firings should only happen if either 1) there's a very significant economic crisis going on, or 2) the company is doing so poorly its immediate future is uncertain. The Silicon Valley style mass-hiring followed by mass-firing style of management is indicative of poor management. In a well-run company this should never happen, as the same could be achieved by simply reducing the hiring rate and letting natural attrition take care of the rest.
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Or, if you want to win big, you have to make big bets. This applies to both employers doing mass hiring and employees choosing to work at employers aiming for explosive growth. It is not poor management, it is simply a different tactic. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. The fact that Silicon Valley has succeeded in producing the most profitable companies in the last few decades seems to be relevant.
      • ghaff 3y ago
        You wouldn't think that most people here would be campaigning for companies to hire much more slowly, conservatively, and probably at salaries more in line with the market as a whole.
      • 3y ago
• ianwalter 3y ago
  Instead of investing in massive podcaster deals, they should have just focused on integrating podcasts into the app in a sane way. I would pay more if it were as good as Pocket Casts, but it's nowhere close.
  • Mindwipe 3y ago
    The whole point was to move into podcasts for exclusivity so they had something they could put behind a hard paywall to boost revenue - the music service will never be significantly profitable and will probably never be genuinely profitable at all, so they need to move into another area or they will eventually collapse.
    • ianwalter 3y ago
      Yea I understand that, but whats the point of that strategy if users don't want to even subscribe to podcasts in the app because how bad the UI is. It's like they've never used a podcast app before.
    • sva_ 3y ago
      I think you can listen to them for free but with ads.
      • InCityDreams 3y ago
        No.
        • sva_ 3y ago
          How so? https://www.spotify.com/us/free/ https://www.spotify.com/us/free/
• Y-bar 3y ago
  At an average yearly cost of $125000 per employee they could either cut 1600 employees or not fund some random podcaster.
  • kerbs 3y ago
    The average cost will far exceed $125000 fwiw
• 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
  "..Spotify had taken advantage of cheap borrowing during 2020 and 2021, when central bankers cut interest rates sharply in response to coronavirus pandemic lockdowns" > “Embracing this leaner structure will also allow us to invest our profits more strategically back into the business,” > invest our profits more strategically back into the business why didn't they do this in 2020 when they got zero interest loans and free money from the government? profits are for "strategic" investment but loans are for un-strategic and unsustainable hiring? got it.
  • draw_down 3y ago
    [dead]
  • mewpmewp2 3y ago
    I don't understand the question? They were able to use money more freely as it was more abundant, so they were able to take more risks. Now that money is more expensive, they need to be more careful about it.
    • ethbr1 3y ago
      I think parent might be overemphasizing strategic in that quote. >> This is not a step back; it’s a strategic reorientation. We’re still committed to investing and making bold bets, but now, with a more focused approach, ensuring Spotify’s continued profitability and ability to innovate. "Strategic" could be replaced with "efficient". They were previously optimized for growth -- now, they're optimizing for growth:krona. Also, it is refreshing to see a head cut announcement that doesn't bury the lede: we're firing people, and this sucks.
      • rchaud 3y ago
        When a company is publicly traded, mass firing announcements are no longer buried, it's red meat for shareholders.
        • ethbr1 3y ago
• htrp 3y ago
  >Severance pay: We will start with a baseline for all employees, with the average employee receiving approximately five months of severance. This will be calculated based on local notice period requirements and employee tenure. Is this a super vague way of saying we're letting go of the senior people with tenure first. The average severance being five months implies that most people being let go probably aren't the people hired during 2020 and 21. On a separate note, we can add bandmates to the insane titles that a company uses for their employees.
  • andsoitis 3y ago
    > Is this a super vague way of saying we're letting go of the senior people with tenure first. The average severance being five months implies that most people being let go probably aren't the people hired during 2020 and 21. No, they're saying that severance is based on tenure (and local notice period requirements). On average, people laid off get 5 months worth of severance - some more, some less, based on tenure.
  • Scarblac 3y ago
    Labour laws will apply, they probably can't just pick who they lay off. Maybe they have to let go the same proportion of people at all levels of seniority.
    • eythian 3y ago
      Yeah, where I live (NL), it's required to be something like "group people into roles, then let people go in reverse order of seniority (i.e. LIFO) within those roles."
      • zucked 3y ago
        This is refreshingly pragmatic. I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from that part of the world.
        • lotsofpulp 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• linsomniac 3y ago
  I guess that defect that's been open for 3 years to "actually shuffle large playlists" doesn't stand a chance.
• Hakeemmidan 3y ago
  Why do these mass layoffs keep happening in the software industry? Or is this a global phenomenon that exists across all industries?
  • dubcanada 3y ago
    Software industry is a giant bubble 90% of the time, so it's usually the first one to go. But no most industries seem to be hiring averagely to better then average at least as per the JOLTs report.
  • ulfw 3y ago
    Only to a small extend. Mostly it happens in software. And no it's not just "overhiring" (that doesn't happen across so many industries). That's only part of it. We all know with AI we won't need white collar jobs anymore. If I had children I wouldn't allow them to study CS. Not anymore.
    • thepablohansen 3y ago
      What would you have them study instead? If you're optimizing for what AI is least likely to be able to accomplish, some forms of blue collar labor would probably rank highest on the list.
    • vlowrian 3y ago
      I feel like you're overestimating the impact of AI on the current wave of dismissals. It's hard to say without any actual data, but there seems to be a lot of FUD regarding AI replacing white-collar and CS jobs. I don't have better data than you, but I'd be very much surprised if AI would replace computer scientists rather than being a tool which will change what we'll have to be good at as computer scientists. There is a lot of digitalisation to be done and AI might change the price of doing that, but it won't make a whole academic discipline obsolete.
  • DrThunder 3y ago
    [dead]
  • 3y ago
• abkolan 3y ago
  The Spotify inserted ads during the podcast makes a lot of sense now. They are really trying to make the books look good. Is this a leading indicator that the podcasts could go more towards the exclusives / originals route? For example: Like Joe Rogan.
  • code_runner 3y ago
    Spotify is actively moving away from originals (or at least changing how they do it). Inseted ads gives them better tracking and with better reporting… $$$$
• skywhopper 3y ago
  I suppose I appreciate that the CEO was mostly honest about the goals and what the business actually values. “Supporting work”, ie operations, maintenance, etc is considered worthless. Near term financial ROI is the only metric that is important. Investments in the long term health of the business and treating employees with respect are of no consequence. We all know this is true, but so few layoff announcements are willing to spell it out. That said, the thing that’s missing is accountability of the executives. They overhired and overinvested in 2020-21. Where is the accountability for their massive failure of leadership?
• kderbyma 3y ago
  I predicted this......their API v2......that was all I needed to see you know they were firing a lot of people......they need to get profit somehow and they have no knowledge at the top....so they do what all dumb companies do....flounder until someone saves them....so cut cut cut.
• someonehere 3y ago
  Meanwhile Apple came late to the game and now is just sitting it out. Wonder what will happen in a few years?
• nojvek 3y ago
  Post-pandemic, the trend of Corporations raking in higher and higher profits, while needing fewer and fewer staff scares me. The most obvious and likely outcome is it drastically separates the ultra wealthy from middle class. With rise of AI and automation, that trend will likely accelerate. The top 10% hold more than 50% of wealth. It's likely in a few decades, the top 1% will hold more than 50% of the wealth. They already hold 28% of wealth. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/10/the-wealthiest-0-1-of-households/ https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/10/the-wealthiest-0-1-o... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=UdXz https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=UdXz
• nojvek 3y ago
  Post-pandemic, the trend of Corporations raking in higher and higher profits, while needing fewer and fewer staff scares me. The most obvious and likely outcome is it drastically separates the ultra wealthy from middle class. With rise of AI and automation, that trend will likely accelerate. The top 10% hold more than 50% of wealth. It's likely in a few decades, the top 1% will hold more than 50% of the wealth. They already hold 28% of wealth. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/10/the-wealthiest-0-1-of-households/ https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2022/10/the-wealthiest-0-1-o... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=UdXz https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=UdXz
  • TexanFeller 3y ago
    Things are probably just going back to normal. Companies went on hiring binges while unprecedented cash was pumped into the economy and interest rates were historically low. Now that all that is being walked back employment levels are going back to 2019 or a bit before.
    • eastbound 3y ago
      How is that different than the IMF pumping cash in 1998 into the Russia economy, only so that private companies take the profits and create oligarchs and various lords, who then emigrated to the French Riviera with women who became widows there, empoverishing the Russian land even further, as shows by the economist Joseph Stieglitz in his book Globalization and its Discontents?
      • SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
        Presumably it’s different because the point of the cash was to support people whose livelihoods were disrupted by the pandemic?
        • eastbound 3y ago
          Are you talking about the economic crisis of 1998 in Russia or about the pandemic? Both were emergencies with lives at stake.
• jmarchello 3y ago
  Anytime I see layoffs like this, All I hear is "We hired for the sake of hiring when money was cheap and we wanted to signal 'growth', But now reality has set in and we need our employees to serve a purpose beyond simply headcount". In my opinion they did these employees a disservice by hiring them in the first place. We need our companies to act more responsibly regardless of the price of capital. Innovate sure, but don't fill up your tank when gas is cheap just to do doughnuts in the parking lot.
  • maxehmookau 3y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree. It's about time governments started signalling to employers that this sort of behaviour will not go unpunished. After all, it's the state that will have to pick up the tab for the rampant over-hiring in the form of social security and healthcare.
    • freedomben 3y ago
      What should the punishment be? Fines for layoffs?
      • toss1 3y ago
        Sure. There are all kinds of things that could be done to increase their consideration of moves like this and simultaneously benefit the people affected. E.g., rather than considering only percentages of unemployed/employed to set rates for Unemployment Insurance, they could also add a "capriciousness" factor for events like this. Or, they could also require funds be provided for continuing education for those laid off. Heck, they could also just make a basic adjustment for the inherent bias in the Unemployment Insurance rates against small biz, where a single layoff/firing has a huge negative effect on your rates, more than firing 100 people for a medium-sized company. But of course, for the "libertarians", this is evil regulation.
        • freedomben 3y ago
          Your comment was pretty good, but didn't need the weird potshot at libertarians at the end. What your comment touched on though is how the companies already are "punished" in a way for it because it affects their unemployment insurance rates. That was established as a way to balance the needs of the company (unintended bad consequences happen to unemployment rates when you tie the hands of firing) with the needs of the people who are affected. Arguing that the balance is off seems like a much different argument than GP though.
• maxehmookau 3y ago
  I still cannot fathom any board allowing the CEO at the helm of a public that made cuts of 17% to remain in place. That's a huge pivot in organisational structure by any measure and shows clearly poor judgement.
  • bsnnkv 3y ago
    17%? Hah, I just got hit by layoffs at my last employer that targeted 25% of the workforce. Guess what happened to the CEO... That's right. Nothing.
• ketchupdebugger 3y ago
  I wonder if they laid off 17% of management and leadership as well. probably not, but they should
• senda 3y ago
  weren't they paying data scientists 500k?
• josefresco 3y ago
  I consider Spotify like Hulu - existing as a puppet to give "the industry" a centralized distribution service. I don't ever expect them to make a profit, unless they decide to pivot and sell what's left to another corp. Am I wrong?
  • Tao3300 3y ago
    I think you're kind of right. The thing about Spotify is that my initial reaction was "it's about damn time". It's not like it was technical innovative. Everything needed to make it had been around for at least a decade, they just had to get all the legal stuff figured out first.
  • umeshunni 3y ago
    It's not a puppet - they are officially part owned (3-4%) by the Universal Music Group. Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group have sold some and all of their shares in Spotify, respectively
• emodendroket 3y ago
  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.
  • Czarcasm 3y ago
    They have an operating profit, but they choose to reinvest it all back into the company, thus they don't have an overall profit. They could reduce the amount they are reinvesting into the company at any time in order to produce an overall profit. This is exactly what Amazon did/does. Doesn't mean that they have "limped along"
    • emodendroket 3y ago
      Do they? This would seem to suggest otherwise. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1022122/spotify-operating-income-quarterly/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1022122/spotify-operatin...
  • doctorpangloss 3y ago
    It's complicated. A lot of money exited from Spotify after its IPO. The rightsholders (Warner, UMG...) got an outsized return on that investment. Smooth it out since then and it looks like a more routine profit. I'm not sure if basic financials are an adequate format for a backcatalogue monetization business.
  • moogly 3y ago
    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.
    • emodendroket 3y ago
      I’m not even talking about artists though. Just Spotify the corporate entity.
• saos 3y ago
  That’s much
• Solvency 3y ago
  Spotify spends millions per month on lavish "creative" team salaries in NYC who do nothing but create gradient playlist covers and other low grade "design" work that is 100% unnecessary. All while they redesign and destroy their UX and product experiences every iteration. All of that money could go straight to the artists.
• digger495 3y ago
  [flagged]
• charles_f 3y ago
  > To understand this decision, I think it is important to assess Spotify with a clear, objective lens ... then proceeds to vague MBA word without a single number to support them. > We debated making smaller reductions throughout 2024 and 2025 What was not debated was keeping people they hired. > we still have too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact We're left to guess what this means. What's work around the work? If that work is now unsavory, why can't they work on work rather than around it? Is this describing reducing the management layer? (support) or customer/partner support? Will they be replaced by automation? I get you don't want to go into specifics of who's let go, but then don't pretend you're providing a clear analysis, and don't give a washed out business lingo salad instead. TBH I don't see what changed on Spotify for a customer perspective in the past few years. I still see bugs I reported years ago, the UI is largely the same. Not that I'm complaining, I just care about the music. But that leads me to think either the dev team is producing stuff that's on the fringe and optional, being quite inefficient, or mainly working on maintenance, and the bulk of the opex is going elsewhere.
  • ssnistfajen 3y ago
    Frankly I think the UI has gotten consistently worse. Playing saved/liked (Spotify keeps changing the word) songs from a specific artist is still very hard and convoluted. "Now Playing" pop-up panel on desktop was a feature no one asked for. "Your Library" revamp was confusing and solely for the purpose to push podcasts which somehow made it harder to view the podcasts I actually follow. Then comes the dreadful rounded corners on everything but also weird empty spaces around the UI resulting in wasted screen real estate. I held onto Google Play Music until its very last moment, all because of Spotify's dreadful UI.
  • cragfar 3y ago
    > We're left to guess what this means. What's work around the work? If that work is now unsavory, why can't they work on work rather than around it? Is this describing reducing the management layer? (support) or customer/partner support? Will they be replaced by automation? I get you don't want to go into specifics of who's let go, but then don't pretend you're providing a clear analysis, and don't give a washed out business lingo salad instead. > TBH I don't see what changed on Spotify for a customer perspective in the past few years. I still see bugs I reported years ago, the UI is largely the same. He didn't get into it because you answered it yourself. And anyone who has used it for a while has most likely the same initial thought.
• jzackpete 3y ago
  I hope they fired the person who came up with "smart shuffle" and thought tying the shuffle button to a successful network call was a good idea
  • Tao3300 3y ago
    So far the only playlist I'm using smart shuffle with is my Christmas one. I put in a bunch of the weird shit I want to hear, and it injects some mainstream stuff to keep the wife and kids happy. So it's doing a bad job matching my tastes, but I'm exploiting that as a feature.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • okrad 3y ago
    The successful network call condition is particularly frustrating. However, I enjoy the feature on the whole.
  • kenhwang 3y ago
    Seriously such a buggy and undesirable feature. Smart shuffle replaced the default shuffle for me on all interfaces that didn't get updated to switch between the two shuffles, so on Android Auto, the only shuffle option was smart shuffle and I had to use my phone to switch to dumb shuffle. Then it isn't even really smart or a shuffle. It just inserts the same 3 songs, in every playlist regardless of how well it would fit.
• saltserv 3y ago
  [dead]
• ugiox 3y ago
  Now everyone sees just layoffs again. But there are so many companies thriving and keeping their workforce. As they are in balance. And are also happy to grow at a smaller pace.
  • crorella 3y ago
    This is so important, growing at a small and healthier pace. Some companies try to make the reason of their existence to grow as fast as possible, no matter what.... and in the process they destroy the value they originally offered to its customers, processes, people and quality controls.. for what? There was a class from Darden School that talked about that, I recommend reading this summary from it https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/growth-to-greatness-smart-growth-for-entrepreneurial-businesses/ https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/growth-to-greatn...
• sitkack 3y ago
  So effectively contractors. Companies shouldn't be allowed to "shed" this much of their workforce in a system like the US's here we have a very poor safety net. They bulked up, built their products and now want to slim down and enjoy their profits at the expense of these sacrificial workers.
  • mrkeen 3y ago
    Sidestepping the issue of the US's labour laws, I almost feel like this is what a healthy software industry should look like. You go in, you build, and when the job is done, you leave. We just haven't figured out how to get the job done yet.
    • ssnistfajen 3y ago
      If only employers are capable of communicating that expection to prospective employes in an honest manner instead of doing the whole "we are a family" gaslighting act.
      • scarface_74 3y ago
        If any tech worker is more than two years out of school and is naive enough to believe that and are not always prepared to change jobs, I have no sympathy for them
  • matchbok 3y ago
    One alternative is never hiring them in the first place, which is a real possibility if some bad ideas like yours were put into law.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • carstenhag 3y ago
      Realistically they would have a permanent contract at a company that contracts out developers. Flexibility (at the cost of a premium) for the client company, safe for the employee.
• drodio 3y ago
  [flagged]
• withinboredom 3y ago
  I'm going to say it, this is why we need unions. Only a union can tell them "no, you're not. Maybe 5%." And then negotiate something. The only saving grace here is the generous severance package.
• blindriver 3y ago
  This was a good layoff note. He didn't say anything gag-worthy like "I take full responsibility for this." Most SaaS companies got a huge pandemic bump and overhired in 2021 and 2022. I think many if not most that haven't cut 20% will be cutting 20% or more in 2024.
  • whateverman23 3y ago
    You can't fully remove the "gag-worthy" label unless they use the word "layoff". Calling it "rightsizing" or "headcount reduction" is gag-worthy. A great gag-worthy line: "Please know we are focused on treating our impacted colleagues with the respect and compassion they deserve". Also, if the note doesn't include the CEO stepping down (even with a transition period would be fine), then it's not a good layoff note.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• mrbonner 3y ago
  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 subpar. For example, “Well-tempered Clavier, Book 1, J.S Bach, Angela Hewitt, Prelude in C Major is too long to be in the title. Especially, the rat if the album is just a repeat alternate between prelude or fugue and the chord. - recently play list stopped syncing between my phone and my desktop app after 2022 for some reason. Is it a bug or they just stop doing this since it costs more to sync? I probably won’t switch to a different stream service for now as there is not much differences for me to migrate.
  • fennecbutt 3y ago
    They keep changing the design of the app for the worse, just nonsensical stuff. Like how many UX design people do they have? Cause clearly they're just changing stuff to make themselves feel useful. The heart changing to a plus, what the fuck Spotify?
  • mdhen 3y ago
    I can reccomend deezer. I switched away from spotify last year and ended up trying like 5 different options before settling on deezer. No complaints, great quality streams (lossless), can upload your own songs and their recommendations system is really good.
  • neycoda 3y ago
    It's called "maximizing profit" "for the shareholders" by "saving money". They consider their workforce a liability and expense instead of an investment and necessary for quality and competitiveness. They're just cutting into their workforce to impress investors to bilk more money out of them. It's a sick philosophy for short-term gain that will ultimately destroy the company.
  • renegade-otter 3y ago
    It's hundreds of "microservices". That's why they created Backstage. You just need that many people if you are going to go that route. Unfortunately for them, once the economy goes from "stupid good" to "very good", it all starts falling apart. It's unchecked complexity that at some point is going to destroy you. And it can literally destroy them. "From Unicorns to Zombies: Tech Start-Ups Run Out of Time and Money" https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/technology/tech-startups-collapse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/technology/tech-startups-...
• softwaredoug 3y ago
  The layoffs suck. But WHO was laid off? What depts? I think it's important data because the labor market needs to adjust its skills away from what's not in demand, to what's IN demand.
• deng 3y ago
  Spotify is a completely mistery to me. I'm asking: What does Spotify really have? They don't own the music. They don't own podcasts (OK, they may have some exclusives like Rogan). All they have is a license, a bit of software, and lots of users. How will they ever turn a profit? What's the end game here? I just switched my whole family from Spotify to Deezer and it was literally a matter of minutes. There are even services that move all your favorites/playlists over and it worked flawlessly.
  • kwanbix 3y ago
    Deezer is a completely mistery to me. I'm asking: What does Deezer really have? They don't own the music. They don't own podcasts (OK, they may have some exclusives). All they have is a license, a bit of software, and lots of users. How will they ever turn a profit? What's the end game here? I just switched my whole family from Deezer to tidal and it was literally a matter of minutes. There are even services that move all your favorites/playlists over and it worked flawlessly.
    • deng 3y ago
      Very witty. Yes, the same applies to Deezer. What I'm saying is: it's a race to the bottom, and in the end, musicians will suffer (they already do).
      • kwanbix 3y ago
        But I think the problem is the music companies. Spotify says they have given 40 billion (american) to the music companies.
  • Hackbraten 3y ago
    Spotify Connect is a real game changer. I tap a song on the web player and it streams it on our living room amp, which supports it natively. No apps involved whatsoever.
    • anderber 3y ago
• dalbasal 3y ago
  So... Bodybuilders do this thing called "bulking and cutting." The best way to add muscle fast is to overeat. Work out lots. Sleep lots. Eat lots. You get fat, but you also get muscular because food is never a limiting factor. Then, they lose the extra fat with a crash diet. Google, FB and such are such money machines that they never have to cut. They can just bulk. The others... they want some of that rapid growth potential too, but can't afford to add fat forever. Corporate bulking and cutting.
  • righthand 3y ago
    But Google and Facebook did cut earlier this year?
  • thomastjeffery 3y ago
    There is only so much metaphorical food in the world.
  • zeroonetwothree 3y ago
    This analogy doesn’t seem to add any explanatory power. Corporations can’t magically know the optimal number of employees to maximize profits. And even if they could this will change over time. So we should expect them to cut when they have too many and hire when they have too few.
  • blehn 3y ago
    What "muscle" did spotify add? Not sure the metaphor works. It's bloat from bad management and copying what other companies are doing.
  • ssnistfajen 3y ago
    >Google, FB and such are such money machines that they never have to cut. Not sure what you are trying to achieve by saying something so blatantly untrue that a two-word query into any search engine can debunk it as fast as your browser loads a web page.
• brainzap 3y ago
  "whats my purpose?" you play music, and maybe display lyrics
• dcchambers 3y ago
  This absolutely sucks for those involved, especially given the timing. Not only does it add stress to an already stressful time of year for many, but hiring typically slows down in December anyway. That said it's good to see five months of severance pay. Hopefully long enough that the effected folks can take a little time off to refresh themselves, not stress about finances, and give the industry time to pick up hiring again in 2024 once new annual budgets kick in...
• atbpaca 3y ago
  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".
  • guax 3y ago
    Jack Welch school of business made students for eternity. The first to pay will always be the employees.
  • danielmarkbruce 3y ago
    Business decisions are difficult. If the result of everyone that didn't pan out was "you are fired", no one would take any risk, decisions would take forever. It's so hard to fire people in France, that some large companies simply have a policy of "no france office".
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • ep103 3y ago
      And yet companies are founded every day in France, and their economy is doing just fine. If a business cannot afford to do business in a country, then that business should not be allowed to do business in that country.
      • danielmarkbruce 3y ago
        Nope. The french economy been flatlining for 15 years: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=FR https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location... US GDP per person is now 50% higher than france: https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/ It wasn't like that 15 years ago. There doesn't need to be another rule. The existing rules are doing just fine keeping companies out.
• neop1x 3y ago
  They have 9,500 employees, yet their web app doesn't even offer a simple feature to speed up a podcast. How pathetic...
• zaps 3y ago
  I still can’t get Backstage set up correctly.
• nine_zeros 3y ago
  > Today, we still have too many people dedicated to supporting work and even doing work around the work rather than contributing to opportunities with real impact I hope they mean empires of managers.
• jmartin2683 3y ago
  Spent all of their time finding new ways to spend money and never bothered to make any.