5 ms·

But why do they have so many in the first place? 9000 employees. My gods. What are all these people doing?!

by pdimitar 3y ago

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
  - izacus 3y ago
    Last I checked it's not a music delivery platform.
Maxion 3y ago
Clearly not working on the core functionality of the app - heh. This seems to be some megatrend with the big tech companies. Hire on ~10k staff, ignore your core features, ???, profit.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I mean, yeah. How many engineers do you need? 5-6 for the backend, 3-4 DevOps, maybe some more for the various frontends... say, 20? I can't imagine the whole thing can't be done with between 30 to 50 engineers in total. And everyone else, what do they do? Cold calls to the entire planet to go subscribe, or what? Also alright, some lawyers and "compliance" people, financiers, marketers,... Don't know. I'd struggle to fill a roster of 200 people for Spotify. > Clearly not working on the core functionality of the app - heh. Sadly, yes. That they become so tone-deaf is something I'll never condone though I do understand why it's happening (or so I think: is it the gobs of money that make people comfortable and disconnected from the bread and butter of the company?)
  - sligor 3y ago
    > I can't imagine the whole thing can't be done with between 30 to 50 engineers in total. How WhatsApp served 1 billion users with only 50 engineers. https://blog.quastor.org/p/whatsapp-scaled-1-billion-users-50-engineers https://blog.quastor.org/p/whatsapp-scaled-1-billion-users-5... edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28985169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28985169
    - em500 3y ago
      At the time WhatsApp was only forwarding messages from user to user. They didn't deal with different contracts and license deals in 180 countries. Nowadays they have a lot more country specific regulations to deal with, and also a much higher headcount.
  - kevinmchugh 3y ago
    Internal tools for licensing, library ingestion, tools to support data science, customer payments in however many countries they're in, artist payout, search, recommendations, encoding/playback (probably even multiple teams for multiple platforms), whatever their ad sales platform looks like, ad selection, concert listings, merch sales, wrapped (which is probably their most loved feature) Some of these are a team per region, some are a team per platform, some are entire divisions
sigilis 3y ago
In addition to the technical work of keeping the servers running and the infra reliable, there is probably a great deal of work getting content licensing deals, working on marketing, managing the whole edifice, and stuff like that. They need a huge number of content “suppliers” to get basically every song in every country. They undoubtedly have a large number of developers working on apps for every platform, keeping up with all that attendant complexity. On top of that, the company wants to innovate and probably has teams working on hardware and whatnot. Whether it’s efficient is not clear, but most people there probably work hard on their particular daily grind.
- snoopsnopp 3y ago
  When I was junior I used to buy this explanation, but 9,000 developers is probably more then are actually working on huge projects like Linux or .NET it’s approx 100 times more developers then you’d ever reasonably hire. It’s just for financial reasons it’s cheap to double up of devs instead of giving raises
  - objclxt 3y ago
    > When I was junior I used to buy this explanation, but 9,000 developers is probably more then are actually working on huge projects like Linux They don't have 9000 developers, they have 9000 employees.
    - snoopsnopp 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - piva00 3y ago
        How did you come up with these numbers? I'd like to hear your reasoning process for 90 total employees.
        cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
lijok 3y ago
> What are all these people doing?! Ensuring Spotify can smoothly operate globally
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I can accept that... if it's said how exactly.
  - lijok 3y ago
    Am I understanding correctly that you're looking for a HN poster to explain to you the complexities involved in maintaining compliance, legal and licensing for a globally distributed service, just so you can decide whether or not to be outraged by the size of Spotify's staff count?
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      I am not outraged. I am baffled. And yes, if somebody is willing to give a bit more details, they can be informative (and a few people already did).
      - robin_reala 3y ago
        Here’s just one example of where Spotify didn’t actually have enough staff to understand the legal requirements of one single product decision: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371
        pdimitar 3y ago
        Pretty enlightening, thank you.
      - lijok 3y ago
        You can start by looking through their job board throughout time to understand the kinds of positions a company like Spotify need to fill in order to operate globally: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.lifeatspotify.com/jobs https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.life...
n_ary 3y ago
> 9000 employees. My gods. These are probably not all devs/engineers. Usually, selling services/products in multiple countries mean, dedicated legal, HR, accounting replicated in nearly every location where no common treaty exists, and management in large tech tends to have too many levels and adds up quickly as well.
- bottled_poe 3y ago
  “probably”? I mean, yes it’s a tech company, but it’s a bit surprising anyone would expect it to be much more than 50% engineering. Marketing and customer support alone would have a huge headcount - and given the impact AI tech is having on those areas, I wouldn’t be surprised if they represented a disproportionate fraction of the layoffs.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
figassis 3y ago
Each feature, integration (maybe with each publisher), country, etc is likely its own microsservice and infra and devops and team.
poisonborz 3y ago
This is the only valid question here. Bloated workforce is somehow a must-have byproduct of growing cash flow, someone could surely say why. Is it prestige? Is it managers gaining more power by commanding more teams and this workforce then remains? Is it to please shareholders with feature bloat? Is it an actual (one-time?) need to scale up globally? I hate Xitter like the next guy, but if there is one thing Musk made right is to show you can axe most of the staff of an established platform and you can still have a running global scale operation (ignoring some early downtimes/hiccups and all other, khm, content-related issues). It seems currently they have around 600 full-time engineers.
- izacus 3y ago
  > I hate Xitter like the next guy, but if there is one thing Musk made right is to show you can axe most of the staff of an established platform and you can still have a running global scale operation (ignoring some early downtimes/hiccups and all other, khm, content-related issues). It seems currently they have around 600 full-time engineers. Xitter is massively tanking as a company with massive revenue losses since that brilliant idea. Its example proves literally the opposite of what you're claiming - after firings the company is in tailspin of financial losses.
  - poisonborz 3y ago
    How is the revenue loss a cause for downsizing? I mean bigger revenue loss since Twitter always made losses. If you say lack of moderation (workforce) and thus leaving advertisers, I think that's a minority, and moderators were just a fraction of the people let go.

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
- izacus 3y ago
  Last I checked it's not a music delivery platform.

Maxion 3y ago

Clearly not working on the core functionality of the app - heh. This seems to be some megatrend with the big tech companies. Hire on ~10k staff, ignore your core features, ???, profit.

pdimitar 3y ago
I mean, yeah. How many engineers do you need? 5-6 for the backend, 3-4 DevOps, maybe some more for the various frontends... say, 20? I can't imagine the whole thing can't be done with between 30 to 50 engineers in total. And everyone else, what do they do? Cold calls to the entire planet to go subscribe, or what? Also alright, some lawyers and "compliance" people, financiers, marketers,... Don't know. I'd struggle to fill a roster of 200 people for Spotify. > Clearly not working on the core functionality of the app - heh. Sadly, yes. That they become so tone-deaf is something I'll never condone though I do understand why it's happening (or so I think: is it the gobs of money that make people comfortable and disconnected from the bread and butter of the company?)
- sligor 3y ago
  > I can't imagine the whole thing can't be done with between 30 to 50 engineers in total. How WhatsApp served 1 billion users with only 50 engineers. https://blog.quastor.org/p/whatsapp-scaled-1-billion-users-50-engineers https://blog.quastor.org/p/whatsapp-scaled-1-billion-users-5... edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28985169 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28985169
  - em500 3y ago
    At the time WhatsApp was only forwarding messages from user to user. They didn't deal with different contracts and license deals in 180 countries. Nowadays they have a lot more country specific regulations to deal with, and also a much higher headcount.
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  Internal tools for licensing, library ingestion, tools to support data science, customer payments in however many countries they're in, artist payout, search, recommendations, encoding/playback (probably even multiple teams for multiple platforms), whatever their ad sales platform looks like, ad selection, concert listings, merch sales, wrapped (which is probably their most loved feature) Some of these are a team per region, some are a team per platform, some are entire divisions

sigilis 3y ago

In addition to the technical work of keeping the servers running and the infra reliable, there is probably a great deal of work getting content licensing deals, working on marketing, managing the whole edifice, and stuff like that. They need a huge number of content “suppliers” to get basically every song in every country. They undoubtedly have a large number of developers working on apps for every platform, keeping up with all that attendant complexity. On top of that, the company wants to innovate and probably has teams working on hardware and whatnot. Whether it’s efficient is not clear, but most people there probably work hard on their particular daily grind.

snoopsnopp 3y ago
When I was junior I used to buy this explanation, but 9,000 developers is probably more then are actually working on huge projects like Linux or .NET it’s approx 100 times more developers then you’d ever reasonably hire. It’s just for financial reasons it’s cheap to double up of devs instead of giving raises
- objclxt 3y ago
  > When I was junior I used to buy this explanation, but 9,000 developers is probably more then are actually working on huge projects like Linux They don't have 9000 developers, they have 9000 employees.
  - snoopsnopp 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - piva00 3y ago
      How did you come up with these numbers? I'd like to hear your reasoning process for 90 total employees.
      - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago

lijok 3y ago

> What are all these people doing?! Ensuring Spotify can smoothly operate globally

pdimitar 3y ago
I can accept that... if it's said how exactly.
- lijok 3y ago
  Am I understanding correctly that you're looking for a HN poster to explain to you the complexities involved in maintaining compliance, legal and licensing for a globally distributed service, just so you can decide whether or not to be outraged by the size of Spotify's staff count?
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    I am not outraged. I am baffled. And yes, if somebody is willing to give a bit more details, they can be informative (and a few people already did).
    - robin_reala 3y ago
      Here’s just one example of where Spotify didn’t actually have enough staff to understand the legal requirements of one single product decision: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371
      - pdimitar 3y ago
        Pretty enlightening, thank you.
    - lijok 3y ago
      You can start by looking through their job board throughout time to understand the kinds of positions a company like Spotify need to fill in order to operate globally: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.lifeatspotify.com/jobs https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://www.life...

n_ary 3y ago

> 9000 employees. My gods. These are probably not all devs/engineers. Usually, selling services/products in multiple countries mean, dedicated legal, HR, accounting replicated in nearly every location where no common treaty exists, and management in large tech tends to have too many levels and adds up quickly as well.

bottled_poe 3y ago
“probably”? I mean, yes it’s a tech company, but it’s a bit surprising anyone would expect it to be much more than 50% engineering. Marketing and customer support alone would have a huge headcount - and given the impact AI tech is having on those areas, I wouldn’t be surprised if they represented a disproportionate fraction of the layoffs.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

figassis 3y ago

Each feature, integration (maybe with each publisher), country, etc is likely its own microsservice and infra and devops and team.

poisonborz 3y ago

This is the only valid question here. Bloated workforce is somehow a must-have byproduct of growing cash flow, someone could surely say why. Is it prestige? Is it managers gaining more power by commanding more teams and this workforce then remains? Is it to please shareholders with feature bloat? Is it an actual (one-time?) need to scale up globally? I hate Xitter like the next guy, but if there is one thing Musk made right is to show you can axe most of the staff of an established platform and you can still have a running global scale operation (ignoring some early downtimes/hiccups and all other, khm, content-related issues). It seems currently they have around 600 full-time engineers.

izacus 3y ago
> I hate Xitter like the next guy, but if there is one thing Musk made right is to show you can axe most of the staff of an established platform and you can still have a running global scale operation (ignoring some early downtimes/hiccups and all other, khm, content-related issues). It seems currently they have around 600 full-time engineers. Xitter is massively tanking as a company with massive revenue losses since that brilliant idea. Its example proves literally the opposite of what you're claiming - after firings the company is in tailspin of financial losses.
- poisonborz 3y ago
  How is the revenue loss a cause for downsizing? I mean bigger revenue loss since Twitter always made losses. If you say lack of moderation (workforce) and thus leaving advertisers, I think that's a minority, and moderators were just a fraction of the people let go.