4 ms·

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,

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
        Because unfortunately the world has given developers big heads and convinced them that they know about things that they don’t.
      - snoopsnopp 3y ago
        Because I have experience in the industry. Where is anyone getting any of this info? Don’t just believe these guys they are fake accounts repeating marketing info.
        piva00 3y ago
        I also have some 2 decades of experience in the industry, so please, share me your reasoning, how did you arrive at these numbers? Just a ballpark, no appeal to authority as I believe we are both similarly seasoned...
        pb7 3y ago
        The irony of this comment coming from a 4 day old account with nothing but baseless shrieking.
- phaer 3y ago
  9000 employees, not developers alone.
- stuartleigh 3y ago
  They don't have 9000 developers, they have 9000 staff.
happytiger 3y ago
Maybe. But for perspective it’s approximately 1/40th of the number of people that were employed at the peak of the Apollo moon landing missions (400,000 people) and that required the support of over 20,000 firms and universities. It’s a LOT of humans for streaming music service.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  Apollo wasn't travelling all over 100+ countries scooping up podcasts and speaking to growing artists though. Your comparison is weird, the goals are quite different.
- oblio 3y ago
  Turns out, more people use a streaming music service (and frankly... really care about it), than they do about the Apollo moon landing. A lot of the main tech achievements are great geek talking points but not where labor is really concentrated. Humans are vain and shallow, that should probably one of the core things drilled into geek skulls.
- izacus 3y ago
  Last I checked Apollo didn't have to deal with worldwide music licensing or have an audience of 500 million people across the world it needs to serve. This comparison is fundamentally dumb. What's next, asking why you need hundreds of thousands of employees to run worldwide store business and comparing it to Voyager program?
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Well the evidence sure seems strong they could have done the same job with at least 13% fewer people. I wonder how many of the remaining are also absolutely essential for the service to operate and grow? Music licensing, streaming and revenue sharing is hardly a “go to the moon in the 60s” complexity problem. And having a lot of end users doesn’t mean you need massive employee head counts in digital service delivery, it just means you have a lot of customers and need to build your digital delivery systems to handle a larger scale which is generally expressed as a modest pressure on engineering groups to build most scalable systems and not a rocket science level problem. The high head counts are always present at the end of boom cycles, but a LOT of what companies are doing at the end of these cycles is simply busywork. The busywork problem exists because managers equate business with productivity, and their organizations reflect that. The perception is not just that a busy worker is engaged and making an effort, but even that their industriousness gives them a higher value than their less busy colleagues. But really only a relatively small number of employees do the vast majority of the work (Pareto principle). The whole corporate management theory sets up a dynamic in which two office workers completing identical tasks can be judged on their busyness, rather than their results. Who appears to be more engaged: the busy worker who skips lunch to get things finished, or the efficient worker who finishes early and uses the time saved to buy groceries online? This, when applied at scale, leads to highly staffed organizations with a LOT of busy people who don’t really do that much compared to their potential for output. If you don’t see the metaphor between a large engineering project and an engineering organization that seems over staffed, that’s fine. But do try to have the social grace to not call people dumb. There is just no call for insults here.
michaelt 3y ago
> They undoubtedly have a large number of developers working on apps for every platform Yes, if they were at the cutting edge on every platform and constantly adding innovative new features, that could certainly explain 500 of the 9000 employees. But that still leaves 8,500 employees unexplained.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dagw 3y ago
  Developing the software is easy part. Handling and negotiating contracts and licensing agreements for all their music and podcasts (and advertisers) all across the globe is probably the hard part. Plus of course all the marketing, support and related tasks.
  - creshal 3y ago
    Still. There's only ~200 countries, and a good chunk of them either isn't worth having any presence in (no need to negotiate licenses for Somalia), or is so small and has similar laws to surrounding countries that they'll be treated as one bloc by the publishers you negotiate with anyway (all the Pacific statelets e.g.). Between that and the ability to just contract local lawyers, 45 to (realistically closer to) 90 employees per (relevant) country is still a lot. Also, spotify outsourced 90% of their support to their community (designated "star" members). There's no hotline either, so no call centres to run, or anything else personnel intensive. (And you'd outsource that anyway, realistically.)

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
      Because unfortunately the world has given developers big heads and convinced them that they know about things that they don’t.
    - snoopsnopp 3y ago
      Because I have experience in the industry. Where is anyone getting any of this info? Don’t just believe these guys they are fake accounts repeating marketing info.
      - piva00 3y ago
        I also have some 2 decades of experience in the industry, so please, share me your reasoning, how did you arrive at these numbers? Just a ballpark, no appeal to authority as I believe we are both similarly seasoned...
      - pb7 3y ago
        The irony of this comment coming from a 4 day old account with nothing but baseless shrieking.
phaer 3y ago
9000 employees, not developers alone.
stuartleigh 3y ago
They don't have 9000 developers, they have 9000 staff.

happytiger 3y ago

Maybe. But for perspective it’s approximately 1/40th of the number of people that were employed at the peak of the Apollo moon landing missions (400,000 people) and that required the support of over 20,000 firms and universities. It’s a LOT of humans for streaming music service.

averageRoyalty 3y ago
Apollo wasn't travelling all over 100+ countries scooping up podcasts and speaking to growing artists though. Your comparison is weird, the goals are quite different.
oblio 3y ago
Turns out, more people use a streaming music service (and frankly... really care about it), than they do about the Apollo moon landing. A lot of the main tech achievements are great geek talking points but not where labor is really concentrated. Humans are vain and shallow, that should probably one of the core things drilled into geek skulls.
izacus 3y ago
Last I checked Apollo didn't have to deal with worldwide music licensing or have an audience of 500 million people across the world it needs to serve. This comparison is fundamentally dumb. What's next, asking why you need hundreds of thousands of employees to run worldwide store business and comparing it to Voyager program?
- happytiger 3y ago
  Well the evidence sure seems strong they could have done the same job with at least 13% fewer people. I wonder how many of the remaining are also absolutely essential for the service to operate and grow? Music licensing, streaming and revenue sharing is hardly a “go to the moon in the 60s” complexity problem. And having a lot of end users doesn’t mean you need massive employee head counts in digital service delivery, it just means you have a lot of customers and need to build your digital delivery systems to handle a larger scale which is generally expressed as a modest pressure on engineering groups to build most scalable systems and not a rocket science level problem. The high head counts are always present at the end of boom cycles, but a LOT of what companies are doing at the end of these cycles is simply busywork. The busywork problem exists because managers equate business with productivity, and their organizations reflect that. The perception is not just that a busy worker is engaged and making an effort, but even that their industriousness gives them a higher value than their less busy colleagues. But really only a relatively small number of employees do the vast majority of the work (Pareto principle). The whole corporate management theory sets up a dynamic in which two office workers completing identical tasks can be judged on their busyness, rather than their results. Who appears to be more engaged: the busy worker who skips lunch to get things finished, or the efficient worker who finishes early and uses the time saved to buy groceries online? This, when applied at scale, leads to highly staffed organizations with a LOT of busy people who don’t really do that much compared to their potential for output. If you don’t see the metaphor between a large engineering project and an engineering organization that seems over staffed, that’s fine. But do try to have the social grace to not call people dumb. There is just no call for insults here.

michaelt 3y ago

> They undoubtedly have a large number of developers working on apps for every platform Yes, if they were at the cutting edge on every platform and constantly adding innovative new features, that could certainly explain 500 of the 9000 employees. But that still leaves 8,500 employees unexplained.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dagw 3y ago
Developing the software is easy part. Handling and negotiating contracts and licensing agreements for all their music and podcasts (and advertisers) all across the globe is probably the hard part. Plus of course all the marketing, support and related tasks.
- creshal 3y ago
  Still. There's only ~200 countries, and a good chunk of them either isn't worth having any presence in (no need to negotiate licenses for Somalia), or is so small and has similar laws to surrounding countries that they'll be treated as one bloc by the publishers you negotiate with anyway (all the Pacific statelets e.g.). Between that and the ability to just contract local lawyers, 45 to (realistically closer to) 90 employees per (relevant) country is still a lot. Also, spotify outsourced 90% of their support to their community (designated "star" members). There's no hotline either, so no call centres to run, or anything else personnel intensive. (And you'd outsource that anyway, realistically.)