[HN Gopher] Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
___________________________________________________________________
Spotify reducing employee base by about 6%
Author : filleokus
Score : 249 points
Date : 2023-01-23 12:27 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.spotify.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.spotify.com)
| hugs_vs_toph wrote:
| I hope they fired their UX guy, at least the interface would stop
| its descent into hell (Cianide 1994)
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| I've never had an issue with Spotifys ux
| yesimahuman wrote:
| Yea it's the kind of thing you deliberately _don't_ want to
| see changed. Never had an issue. Now, if my DW would stop
| playing songs I've heard hundreds of times, that would be
| appreciated!
| bachmeier wrote:
| Just a couple that hit me all the time:
|
| - Click the play button. Nothing happens. Reload the page.
| Hit the play button. Nothing happens. Reload the page a
| second time. Hit the play button. With some delay, it finally
| starts to play.
|
| - My own playlists are buried underneath their insane
| recommendations. Want to know which songs I'm most likely to
| want to listen to? A good place to start would be the ones I
| put on my playlist. I think their recommendation system was
| designed by an intern that trained a deep learning model on 6
| observations. Then the intern left, and nobody knew how to
| fix it.
| phailhaus wrote:
| Have you ever tried to deal with playlists and queues? It's a
| nightmare. Way too easy to accidentally play a song rather
| than queue it up, and simple requests like "I'd like to queue
| up this song in the middle of this album/playlist" are too
| confusing. Run into issues constantly on road trips or at
| parties.
| gadders wrote:
| The app is terrible. No consistent route for the "back"
| button - constantly doesn't do what I expect. No clear way to
| find a history of songs you'd played before. App
| notifications for new podcast episodes never take you to that
| episode. In patchy wifi/4g it takes forever to start or
| search, rather than finding local results first.
| criddell wrote:
| I have a few problems. Spotify for me is about music and
| that's it. Why can't I remove podcasts or audiobooks? They
| are using too much of my screen to promote stuff they care
| about and I don't.
|
| Also, they really, really don't want you to turn off in-app
| notifications. I've gone through the settings and turned off
| every single switch I can find and now instead of getting a
| notification for "band $x is playing in your city" I'm
| getting a notification that I have notifications disabled and
| so I'm missing out on all the stuff they want to promote.
| Occasionally they decide to turn notifications back on and I
| have to go through them again to find which ones they
| flipped.
|
| We pay for the family plan and as soon as my kids are off of
| it, I'll probably switch to something else.
| fulltimeloser wrote:
| I hope we can keep companies like original Spotify around, where
| I can find almost all the music I want to listen to. I wish
| companies could keep a limited scope for their offerings and just
| be really good at just that.
|
| Spotify's focus on pod cast is kind of crap. It's like TV eras
| cheap production value reality shows from late 1990ths all over.
|
| I guess the capitalist mantra of perpetual growth is leading them
| down another path.
|
| Netflix used to be my go to site for film, now there are so many
| to streaming services choose from I don't know where to start.
| And they mainly focus on making series, which I'm not a big fan
| of.
|
| Looks like Spotify will follow the money and hollow out their
| original service to be another junk site for vapid entertainment
| and easy money.
| werds wrote:
| I would happily see Spotify die, they have exploited the
| artists more effectively than any other organization since the
| advent of streaming.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Both Spotify and Netflix depend on content that they don't, and
| can't, own.
|
| Netflix became a desert after WB, Disney and others decided
| they wanted their own streaming services and took their content
| with them. And since Disney basically owns everything, Netflix
| now has nothing (except their own content).
|
| Spotify is fully at the mercy of the three-four big companies
| that own nearly all the music in the world:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation
|
| And don't forget, you also need to complete with companies with
| near-unlimited money and quick access to users like Apple,
| Google, Amazon
| switch007 wrote:
| I got fed up with the poor UX and Scandinavian songs shoved in to
| my Discover Weekly, so I cancelled a month ago. I haven't missed
| it at all. I just use YouTube occasionally to listen to music.
| layer8 wrote:
| Gotta love these euphemisms, "reducing our employee base".
| joegahona wrote:
| Right? Surprised they didn't use "adjusting" instead of
| "reducing" to make it even more opaque.
| adingus wrote:
| Another one I love is "right sizing". A phrase I have only ever
| heard when companies lay off.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I can see it being used to imply that these are full time
| Spotify employees, since they hire some contractors.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| Might I suggest "Spotify" be retrospectively added to the title ?
|
| The present generic "An update on January 2023 Organisational
| Changes" is very unhelpful. And indeed has already lead to at
| least one duplicate post ...
| filleokus wrote:
| I changed it to the most relevant/interesting snippet from the
| post and added "Spotify: " before it. Maybe too much
| editorialising for HN? But it feels more informative to me.
| mikebonnell wrote:
| Spotify lays off 6% of the workforce.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Spotify fucked up and makes good by firing 6% of their people.
| eigen-vector wrote:
| This is probably the least tactical message amongst all the
| companies that have laid off people. Ek's spent most of the time
| rambling about efficiency and organizational changes to
| leadership positions who'll be least affected by the layoffs.
|
| Then comes the layoff news. It's almost as if he's rectifying
| someone else's mistake and everyone getting laid off should be
| thankful about it.
|
| I wish CEOs read some of the emails that recruiting sends to
| potential candidates before they set out to write a layoff post.
| Completely tone deaf.
| mahathu wrote:
| >I wish CEOs read some of the emails that recruiting sends to
| potential candidates before they set out to write a layoff
| post. Completely tone deaf.
|
| What kind of emails are you referring to? I haven't worked at a
| tech company in a long while
| defaultcompany wrote:
| It did seem a bit tone deaf but five months baseline severance
| is no joke.
| [deleted]
| wastedhours wrote:
| The whole email was just so off - I know they build up to these
| things, but am sure the announcement of the re-org could have
| waited, and could have led with the most pressing news,
| especially since it came in the middle of day and people had
| already been let go by that point.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > I wish CEOs read some of the emails that recruiting sends to
| potential candidates before they set out to write a layoff
| post. Completely tone deaf.
|
| I highly doubt CEOs write these posts.
| mjburgess wrote:
| It always helps to remember that people, generically, are
| idiots who don't mean to say what, literally, they say; have no
| idea how to say what they mean; and are otherwise just
| struggling to create an impression of being in control and
| knowing whats going on.
|
| The first paragraph of this article reads this way to me: a
| person flinging around cliches because they've no idea what
| they're supposed to say, or how to say it.
|
| This, indeed, may be more acute if the author is actually
| distressed.
| eigen-vector wrote:
| I'd be more empathetic if this was a response in a live Q&A
| like situation. For something that's meant to be PR speak,
| this is abysmal.
| chippiewill wrote:
| Seriously.
|
| If you're laying people off in an email it needs to be in the
| first paragraph. Don't bury the lede.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Yeah, starting of a note about layoffs talking "reiterating"
| about the "most defensible business strategy" is extremely
| tone-deaf.
| esskay wrote:
| So based on the rate of feature releases and bugfixes, this will
| take the active development team down from 2 guys and a dog to 1
| guy and a dog.
| nayuki wrote:
| This announcement is really beating around the bush and burying
| the lede. The sentence "And for this reason, today, we are
| reducing our employee base by about 6% across the company." comes
| after about 10 paragraphs, and is 70% down the length of the
| text.
|
| The vague, ephemistic title "An Update on January 2023
| Organizational Changes" doesn't help either. If I saw this
| article on its own, I would probably miss its main point. But
| because I saw this from HN, the title from HN - "Spotify reducing
| employee base by about 6%" - told me what I needed to know.
| ajaimk wrote:
| Can a mod rename this: sounds like base salary is being reduced
| by 6%
| Kiro wrote:
| Don't tell mods to change something if you're not sure what
| you're talking about. Base here refers to people, 600 to be
| exact, so it sounds like you're wrong.
| nsteel wrote:
| I think you've misunderstood the parent comment. They were
| saying the current title could be misinterpreted to mean
| "base salary is being reduced by 6%". I didn't think that,
| but I can see where they are coming from.
| Ekaros wrote:
| That was my first skim on it as well. Which to me sounded
| horrible considering inflation rates.
| Kiro wrote:
| Ah, you're probably right and my comment is stupid in that
| context. I apologize.
| mcdonje wrote:
| I switched to Tidal and have been pleased so far. It's not
| perfect, but it is focused on music, has a pretty good interface,
| and pays artists better than Spotify does.
|
| Reasons I was unhappy with Spotify:
|
| - They went all in on podcasts at the expense of the music
| interface. Too many little design choices trying to steer me into
| podcasts when I'm there for music.
|
| - Their podcast strategy relies on leveraging their market
| position instead of adding value to the market. -
| Trying to replicate Patreon - Buying up a catalog of
| exclusive podcasts
|
| - Not going to respond to any comments about this point, but the
| Joe Rogan thing left a sour taste in my mouth as well. In
| addition to other aspects of that debacle, it was not a sound
| business strategy.
|
| The podcast app I use (PocketCasts) is generally pretty good, but
| it has enough annoyances that I thought I might as well try to
| switch and get all of my podcasts on Spotify. I couldn't get
| special Patreon feeds because Spotify doesn't support them. The
| reason is they want to roll out their own Patreon-like podcast
| payments mechanism. But as of when I left, they had not rolled it
| out across the board, and the podcasts I listen to were not
| supported.
|
| I'm not sure what their value proposition to podcast producers is
| that would get them to switch from Patreon to Spotify, but I
| imagine that has something to do with the trouble rolling that
| out.
|
| I don't recall the details, but I wasn't all that impressed with
| the Spotify podcast functionality as a user either.
|
| If they spent money on paying musicians more instead of
| podcasters, made a podcast app worth using, and played nicely
| with the podcasting sphere, I probably would've stayed with them.
|
| They got big because they solved problems. Then they shifted
| their strategy to leveraging their market position instead of
| solving problems. A sure sign a company has lost its way.
| ttrrooppeerr wrote:
| They should lose Joe Rogan as well, I bailed out of the platform
| when all that debacle started, don't want my money to fund these
| things.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Just turn off your internet services if you don't want to fund
| differing points of view.
| paulcole wrote:
| You can be OK funding differing points of view but not OK
| funding a specific differing point of view.
| popularrecluse wrote:
| We just live in a world now where propagating false and
| dangerous misinformation is merely offering a differing
| point of view.
|
| We were happy to let subject-matter experts help build the
| modern world, but then turn on them as we seek out the
| information that comports with the way we wish the world to
| be. It's good to be skeptical, but a very significant
| portion of the population has serious epistemic
| deficiencies.
| paulcole wrote:
| I honestly don't have a clue what you're talking about
| here.
|
| My point was that you can think Elon Musk is a jackass
| and not buy a Tesla even if you do think Jeff Bezos is a
| jackass and still shop at Amazon.
| popularrecluse wrote:
| I responded to a comment upstream from yours on your
| comment, because yours was the last I read and I was
| continuing the train of thought. Sorry for the confusion.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| I am not interested in engaging on identity politics.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Just turn off your internet services if you don't want to
| engage with differing points of view.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Luckily,I am fine with people having different points of
| view, even when they are wrong. I have the right to see
| them but not engage or to point and laugh and move on,
| they don't reserve the right to force me to engage. This
| person wishes to take the right away from people to even
| know of the differing point of view, never allowing
| dissent or support. Good effort though.
| overgard wrote:
| Ah "misinformation". (Which seems to be far-left speak
| for "has a different opinion and I'd rather censor them
| than argue with them".) Rogan is a comedian and has never
| claimed any special expertise. If you're worried that
| people listen to him over the legacy news media, well,
| what does it say about them that somehow a comedian has
| more credibility than they do?
| popularrecluse wrote:
| There will always be an acceptable range of discourse in
| any society, and those that in their own ignorance and
| confusion spread ideas that hurt the stability and well-
| being of that society can expect pushback. Sorry if you
| wanted to say whatever bullshit you want without a
| challenge.
|
| If you don't like it disconnect your internet, as you'd
| say.
| overgard wrote:
| Never said it should go unchallenged. What a lovely
| strawman you've built. Free speech is great, and if
| someone says something incorrect, the solution is more
| speech to counteract it. I think part of why Rogan is so
| popular is because legacy media and woke activists have
| such a bad reputation for trying to control the narrative
| rather than engage in discourse, which is what he does. I
| just said I don't have a problem with him stating his
| opinion and I'm sick of people trying to censor a goddamn
| comedian because they're jealous he built a large
| audience.
|
| I fail to see how Rogan threatens the stability of
| society. I mean, it's hilarious other than that you're
| actually serious about that. I'm far more afraid of
| censorship than I am of Rogan talking to some goofball.
| (BTW, you haven't even stated _why_ Rogan threatens the
| stability of society or what he 's done).
|
| I think I'll keep my internet connection friend.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > If you're worried that people listen to him over the
| legacy news media, well, what does it say about them that
| somehow a comedian has more credibility than they do?
|
| It says absolutely nothing about the "legacy news media".
| It just means that many people are incredibly gullible.
|
| Joe Rogan does not have more credibility, but some people
| THINK he does, and that's the problem.
| overgard wrote:
| I think that's frankly a condescending world view. Who
| made you the arbiter of what's true and what's not?
| Listening to Joe Rogan doesn't mean you agree, it just
| means he brings on interesting guests and trusts his
| viewers to make up their own mind.
|
| Who do you think people are more inclined to listen to,
| someone that treats their audience with respect, or
| someone that calls a broad swath of the population
| idiots?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Who made you the arbiter of what's true and what's not?
|
| Nobody. But I'm going to trust the opinions of people who
| are experts in their field much more than some comedian.
|
| > or someone that calls a broad swath of the population
| idiots?
|
| If you trust Joe more than the experts, then well, if the
| shoe fits...
| horns4lyfe wrote:
| Just a quick glance at his podcast shows his last 5 guests:
| famous comedian, ancient civilization researcher, wildlife
| conservationist, UFC fighter. The horror! Please don't venture
| out of whatever bubble you live in or you might find some
| podcasts there you REALLY disagree with, and you clearly don't
| do well with that. I mean honestly, the guys not even a
| political commentator, just has opinions that are occasionally
| outside the liberal current thing.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| My bubble (not gp) is that i just can't stand jr podcasts -
| especially when interviewing people i make time for. Perhaps
| the bubble isn't the content but the presenter?
| leanstartupnoob wrote:
| Yes, and of those last 5 guests: At least one is an infamous
| sexual predator who forced his female staff into non-
| consensual masturbation sessions.
|
| The "researcher" mainly promote conspiracy theories about the
| lost city of Atlantis.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I have no bone to pick when it comes to Joe Rogan (love
| _Newsradio_ ) but to continue the sibling post:
|
| > wildlife conversationist
|
| As host of the Extinct or Alive series, Galante has been seen
| negatively by ecologists for being a "parachute
| scientist".[46] Galante's website stated that he personally
| captured the first video footage of a Zanzibar servaline
| genet,[47] which is contradicted by Zanzibar researchers.[48]
| Galante has also claimed that he personally rediscovered the
| Fernandina Island tortoise [49] and the Rio Apaporis
| Caiman,[50] both claims which have been contradicted by the
| leaders of their respective expeditions,[46] the latter of
| which published their findings and exploration prior to
| Galante's trip to Colombia.[51] As of 2022, Galante has not
| outlined his claimed discoveries in any scientific journals.
| wreath wrote:
| You can't stand, not even listening, but having opposed views
| sharing tenancy in the same software as where your music is?
| phatfish wrote:
| Not just sharing the same "software". If the parent has a
| paid Spotify subscription they are directly funding his
| podcast.
|
| Admittedly there are probably other podcasts they might not
| like too, but Joe is certainly the biggest ass on platform
| and got a mountain of subscriber money for the exclusive
| deal.
| default_png wrote:
| Biggest Asset on the platform as well.. That exclusivity
| deal definitely retains people to Spotify.
| wreath wrote:
| how exactly is he an ass? He brings in people he likes to
| talk to. They spit out bullshit sometimes, interesting
| stuff other times. He happens to record those conversations
| and make shit ton of money out of them. I'm sure there are
| far whorse podcasts and content online and on Spotify (a
| lot of black metal is straight up racist shit yet its on
| Spotify). Rogan gets shit for being the archetype of
| everything the left hates.
| whatever1 wrote:
| So saving less than booting Joe Rohan ?
| bobobob420 wrote:
| Side note but every year Spotify's app gets worse and worse as
| they remove features and try to 'simplify' the UI. Has anyone
| been able to use the home screen where recommendations are
| offered successfully? They want people to listen to podcasts but
| can't even build a useable interface for browsing podcasts. All
| the Spotify playlists have the same songs over and over. Their
| proprietary shuffle algorithim is stupid because it doesn't
| actually shuffle. Why can't they offer a true random and also
| their shuffle algorithim? Music discovery is falling off as they
| are forced to promote record labels point of view.
| ben7799 wrote:
| I've seen some good analyses lately showing spotify's business
| model just can't survive in the long run with the way things are
| going in the economy and the record companies are squeezing them
| while simultaneously maneuvering to own them/buy them over time.
| Apple/Amazon/Google are diversified giants that can seemingly get
| away with running things without a need to make as much money as
| Spotify/Tidal/Whatever which just do music/podcast streaming.
|
| In the long run these services are all unsustainable and bad for
| music.. I sometimes wonder if the young people going back to
| vinyl is somewhat of a pushback on how lame the entire experience
| of using these streaming services can be.
|
| Podcasts can do well and have done well for a very long time in a
| small business model with sponsors & product promotion.. throwing
| massive money at them has always seemed an odd choice.
| rabuse wrote:
| The music industry really doesn't have a choice in this though.
| If Spotify and Apple music die out, then it's back to sailing
| the high seas again, and they get nothing. A Plex-like music
| streaming app will be born, with an idiot-proof way of
| downloading music from torrents, and they're fucked.
| default_png wrote:
| Thing is though, I have probably thrown 3K into Spotify, If I
| cant get a "Flat rate subscription for All / Most of the music
| out there" - > I will 100% just go back to downloading
| discographies of the artists I like.
|
| People saying "Support the artists" - I don't care about the
| artists, I just want to listen to whatever takes my fancy, and
| if they can't do that at my price point, they will end up
| getting nothing from me..
| maxwell wrote:
| What is your price point?
|
| Why would artists give anything to you?
| default_png wrote:
| Well, I am currently on like PS15 a month for 2x users on
| Spotify.
|
| >Why would artists give anything to you?
|
| Literally not my concern.
| maxwell wrote:
| Spotify isn't profitable. Tidal isn't profitable.
| Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple probably earn a profit on
| their bundles, but if artists and labels aren't making
| money on streaming, how long until they start pulling
| their catalogs?
|
| Will you stop listening to music if/when the unprofitable
| music streaming services shut down? What happens if/when
| Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple are barred from tying and
| bundling their services?
|
| It seems like artists and labels will simply revert to
| pay per song/album and legal battles instead of wasting
| resources on listeners who aren't willing to pay a
| meaningful amount for music. At your price point, you'll
| probably be able go back to buying a few hundred songs /
| dozen or so albums a year.
| ben7799 wrote:
| It seems like most casual listeners just don't understand
| this no matter how many articles there are about the
| current model not being sustainable or how many time
| their favorite artists complain about it.
|
| There is not enough money in music for both the record
| companies and spotify, et. al. to simultaneously rob the
| artists. These streaming companies being the new middle
| man are going to be the first to lose out. Especially if
| the record companies wake up and start making their own
| stores/services.
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| how have you spent $3k on Spotify? the company is 17 years
| old and if you were subscribing from day 1 for $10/month that
| would only be 2k.
| BlackjackCF wrote:
| OP probably just ballpark estimated... but you can
| certainly have spent $3k on Spotify since they now allow
| you to buy audiobooks.
| ben7799 wrote:
| $3k is a lot of money to rent music. It's kind of odd to
| realize people have spent that kind of money to rent music
| and have nothing to show for it without continuing to spend
| money.
|
| $3k would still buy a very large physical collection. Most
| people didn't have that kind of money into a physical
| collection back in the day.
|
| Vinyl prices are a joke, but CDs are often cheaper than a
| digital download if bought new and they are easy to find for
| $1-2 used.
|
| It's kind of amazing you're OK having spent $3k renting music
| but think the only option would be to go back to piracy if
| streaming rental isn't available.
| h4waii wrote:
| "Nothing to show for it" is strange way to requiring
| getting value from something.
|
| 2 hours after I eat lunch, what do I have to "show for it"?
|
| I'm perfectly fine with all the hours of music and the
| accompanying enjoyment I've received from paying Spotify,
| and that doesn't start to take in to consideration the
| amount of new music I have easily discovered.
| default_png wrote:
| Honestly, I paid for the convenience.
|
| I paid to bark orders at my Amazon Echo's / Google in the
| car, and vend literally any song I wanted.
|
| You could look back and be like >> Its amazing your ok with
| spending 100k on food over your lifetime, you could have
| eaten grass from the side of the road for free.
|
| Piracy is easy, Spotify was easier.
|
| Buying and ripping CD's is _Effort_
| moogly wrote:
| > $3k would still buy a very large physical collection
|
| It's only a couple of hundred CDs. If you buy a lot of low-
| priced ones, perhaps a few hundred.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The large collection is an asset to you, but to many of us,
| it's a liability.
|
| Almost everything I own I do because it is not cost-
| efficient to rent (which is what I would prefer to do).
| i.e. if cost-efficiency were even, I would rent things like
| books, movies, or music.
| MAGZine wrote:
| you do realize that young people overwhelmingly stream, and do
| not generally purchase vinyl, right?
|
| I've heard this idea of streaming being bad for music bandied
| about, but I don't believe it. streaming solved by piracy
| problem by getting people to actually pay for music. People in
| the industry like to complain about streaming, but I'm not
| actually sure that 'the good ole days' are actually better, or
| if people just have rose-coloured glasses about what the actual
| state of things were.
|
| You are right that streaming-only companies cannot afford to
| take the same loss on streaming as Apple/Amazon/Google. And IMO
| that's probably a good thing: we need to find the balance
| between producers and consumers, not subsidize it with phone
| sales.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Artist revenues on streaming have been dropping substantially
| over the years, not increasing as the companies get larger.
| There is no shortage of artists talking about what a joke the
| payments have become.
|
| If Spotify can't make money after cutting royalties 50% over
| the last 3-4 years how can that possibly work?
|
| Realistically Spotify is a whole bunch of people making a lot
| of money as middlemen, but they can't seem to figure out how
| to actually make money.
| phamilton4 wrote:
| I get needing to keep a company lean and that businesses operate
| to make money... But most of these recent layoffs really make me
| feel uneasy. Spotify is a little different because AFAIK they are
| still operating at a negative net income, but still let's take a
| look at this. They're going to let go 600 people.. that's maybe
| an annual 90 million in savings (150k salary). The company's
| revenue is about 9 billion with -39 million in net income. So
| while this move might take them into the positive net income,
| it's still only going to save them what? 0.1% of their revenue.
|
| I realize it's much more complex than this, but I have been
| looking at it this way for nearly every recent headline/company
| and the savings are never really that significant. I'm not saying
| that people who don't contribute or people who are bad employees
| should be kept around forever because the company is healthy. I'm
| just observing the financial "cost" of these laid off employees
| compared against the companies revenue/net income.
|
| Having been at a company that's doing layoffs and surviving
| multiple rounds of layoffs myself, the impact (in my opinion) on
| the remaining employees is quite significant. I have seen people
| constantly frustrated with losing team members, managers leaving
| once a few of their employees have left, good employees finding
| other employment, etc. I'm not sure what I would do in these
| companies positions, but it seems strange to just cut your
| workforce when the trend has been going up financially for your
| company. These types of layoffs just create negative, especially
| with the current state of the world. Are any of the board members
| taking a salary cut? Are any of the C level's taking a cut?
|
| end rant, I need to get back to work so this doesn't happen to
| me.
| shmatt wrote:
| It's very naive to think these huge orgs don't have dead weight
| which is much bigger than 6%. If you start figuring some of
| your moonshot ideas aren't hitting their OKR's, you have a few
| options:
|
| * Just let them keep doing whatever without delivering what
| they claim they can
|
| * Create new moonshots for them just because
|
| * Move them to other products, but that doesn't mean they'll
| create more value as an org with (now) double the people
|
| So what ends up happening is re-orgs which actually mean
| shutting down some failed ideas, moving the high performers to
| other products, moving low performers out of those products,
| then firing people who were left without a team.
|
| Plus you need to take into the equation an assumption that
| because of how things look right now, natural attrition will be
| almost 0 in the next year or 2. If you're used to 5% of people
| leaving on their own per year, assume its closer to 0% for 2023
| and 2024
|
| This is way beyond the cynical claim that this keeps the stock
| up for another 2 months before it goes down again. There are
| teams delivering nothing. There are teams delivering 90% of the
| companies income. You can't just decide not to fire anyone,
| move 100% of the employees to the 90% income team, and think
| that income will grow just because more people work there now
|
| Now, do these companies do it right? really finding the good
| people and keeping them, and removing the weaker people, thats
| up to debate
| oxfordmale wrote:
| It is also naive to think layoffs effectively target dead
| weight. As more extensive layoffs are often decided by senior
| management rather than team leaders, such releases have a
| high signal-to-noise ratio.
|
| Natural attrition will also not be close to 0 in the next
| year or 2. Even if the markets stay stagnant, there will be
| the usual musical chairs turnover (a Facebook employee
| joining Google replacing a Google employee who joined
| Facebook).
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Layoffs are usually family within company graphs, with this
| family then naming the "guys" necessary for the departments
| to do there job. Means, you have dead weight forced to
| identify the vital organs, allowing to fire the "medium"
| weight. Yes, connections or talent are everything. No, its
| not fair.
| jupp0r wrote:
| You also transform a good percentage of your high performers
| into low performers (until they leave and high perform
| somewhere else). I've seen it happen every time.
| conor_f wrote:
| > Create new moonshots for them just because
|
| This seems disingenuous? They're "moonshots" as they've low
| chance of succeeding. You could pick the most proficient
| engineers and out-of-the-box thinkers and put them working on
| a "moonshot" and they'd still fail. Giving that team a new
| lofty goal seems like a great idea since they have experience
| working on large problems and can likely prune good/bad
| approaches much sooner than a fresh team.
| eigen-vector wrote:
| Presumably they already have performance processes that
| eliminate "dead weight". Be assured that layoffs never really
| mean that usual performance bases firings are paused. It's
| pretty much always happening on top of existing performance
| processes.
| LanceH wrote:
| Layoffs like this mean you can blame external forces like
| the economy rather than saying, "our projects failed".
|
| Some of these layoffs may have been coming anyway, but not
| the corporate statement about them is different.
| bananapub wrote:
| >It's very naive to think these huge orgs don't have dead
| weight which is much bigger than 6%. If you start figuring
| some of your moonshot ideas aren't hitting their OKR's, you
| have a few options:
|
| there's been so many versions of this low quality comment on
| every tech-company-mass-firing article. why is so little
| thought put into it? if the company feels it can save on
| salaries then:
|
| 1. close down projects that aren't
| effective/profitable/whatever
|
| 1. fire people who aren't effective/profitable/whatever
|
| mass broad spectrum layoffs like these are not that, they're
| "oh, let's just randomly put holes in the org chart to save
| X% of salary and see how it goes". would you suggest saving
| data storage costs by deleting 6% of files? would you suggest
| reducing compute by turning off 6% of jobs?
|
| edit: and presumably a counter argument to the above is
| "firing people in an optimal way is hard", to which I say lol
| of course it is? work harder, then, before firing people.
| "it's hard" isn't an excuse to do some random unrelated and
| useless thing instead.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Why do you think that mass broad spectrum layoffs are
| random holes? From what I've seen they follow exactly the
| structure you're describing - there's a company-wide search
| for projects that aren't pulling their weight, those
| projects are shut down, and the employees whose roles no
| longer make sense without the projects that will be shut
| down get laid off.
|
| > would you suggest saving data storage costs by deleting
| 6% of files? would you suggest reducing compute by turning
| off 6% of jobs?
|
| I would, and I've seen mandates like this achieve good
| results multiple times in my career. It's very rare to have
| a team that _can 't_ make do with 94% of their data storage
| footprint, but it's very common to have a team who would
| find it temporarily inconvenient or would rather prioritize
| other work over reducing it.
| elijaht wrote:
| > Why do you think that mass broad spectrum layoffs are
| random holes? From what I've seen they follow exactly the
| structure you're describing - there's a company-wide
| search for projects that aren't pulling their weight,
| those projects are shut down, and the employees whose
| roles no longer make sense without the projects that will
| be shut down get laid off.
|
| I've been through 2 companies with layoffs in the past
| year. What you describe is not how either worked. There
| were some targeted shutdowns, but many teams also just
| lost a member or two. In both cases my teams lost
| important people which have a really bad impact on the
| rest of the team.
| bananapub wrote:
| > Why do you think that mass broad spectrum layoffs are
| random holes? From what I've seen they follow exactly the
| structure you're describing - there's a company-wide
| search for projects that aren't pulling their weight,
| those projects are shut down, and the employees whose
| roles no longer make sense without the projects that will
| be shut down get laid off.
|
| ? what are you talking about? The Google layoffs weren't
| like that, nor the Meta ones nor the Amazon, and I'm
| pretty sure the Spotify ones this article is about aren't
| either, though the post is very short.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| > If you're used to 5% of people leaving on their own per
| year, assume its closer to 0% for 2023 and 2024
|
| Strongly doubt this claim. Especially for employees of a
| sought-after firm like Spotify, there will always be people
| jumping ship either to other big co's or to join
| startups/start their own thing
| cgio wrote:
| As I mature in this industry I find it hard to agree, even
| though I draw my experience from organisations outside the
| FAANG if it's still a thing. Dead weight, is in my experience
| no more than 2%, where I qualify dead weight as someone who
| cannot add value or is actively detrimental. Most people can
| add more value than they currently do. Many more people do
| not match their capacity, but that is mostly out of bad
| allocation of work etc. That bad allocation could be improved
| with restructuring but crowded and rigid management
| hierarchies are often the reason organisations don't grow at
| the risk of diluting the self perceived value of upper-middle
| management. I think this round of layoffs will see a
| rebalance across sectors with banking etc. looking at huge
| resourcing demands that are inelastic (e.g. regulation)
| pulling in some of the talent. Similar to Covid layoffs
| outside tech, my prediction is the inversion will start soon.
| whstl wrote:
| I agree. But IME the number of "dead weight" varies heavily
| depending on some factors. I've definitely seen teams with
| >10% dead weight, because of a combo of bad hiring process,
| coupled with management not caring to check on them. Of
| course that might be a biased view: in the cases I know,
| the managers couldn't manage to get them back to speed, but
| those were managers that had failed on the hiring/day-to-
| day already.
| tootie wrote:
| I've seen this play out the consulting world which puts a
| much finer point on the process. There, work is all project-
| based. We build something for a customer and then maybe build
| another thing or otherwise move on to something else. There's
| basically no long-term value for our own business beyond
| unquantifiable things like reputation. When the pipeline
| dries up and there's not enough work to keep everyone
| staffed, layoffs happen. And as much as we tried to be
| meritocratic, being good at your job was less visible than
| being ok at your job while working on a valuable project. It
| was incumbent on managers to do emergency shuffling if they
| wanted to stash top performers on good projects or vice-
| versa, but it wasn't easy.
| twawaaay wrote:
| > It's very naive to think these huge orgs don't have dead
| weight which is much bigger than 6%.
|
| Pretty much my experience that when a company keeps growing,
| at some point most corporate employees will not actually be
| contributing anything.
|
| Paradoxically, constraining teams with resources (but
| allowing them to make their own decisions) makes teams more
| efficient than if they had resources. Necessity is the mother
| of invention -- when people are forced to deal with the
| problem they will find a solution.
|
| Corporations are worst possible places to be efficient -- not
| only you have the resources (and most people get lazy when
| they don't have to be inventive) but you are also typically
| not even allowed to be inventive as companies typically work
| towards centralising decisionmaking rather than allowing
| teams to steer themselves.
|
| Same goes for hiring. I worked with teams which hired
| _anybody_ because the manager was forced to hire quickly or
| loose budget. Or managers hired people just to enlarge their
| estates because headcount was how they decided who is more
| important.
|
| So I completely understand _why_ companies are laying off
| people. The only question is whether they are too optimistic
| about being able to identify who to lay off, exactly.
|
| In my experience it is pretty difficult even for managers to
| understand who are best contributors in their teams. Get
| removed 2-3 levels from a line manager (2-3 levels is where
| the decisions would typically be made) and you can pretty
| much dream about understanding who to lay off, individually.
| lumost wrote:
| After 1-3 years of tenure things start to look different imo.
| Sure you get bad hires, and you also get people who become
| lazy. But on any given project you tend to have some split of
| people who work on the wrong things, don't work on anything,
| or fail to deliver. People who consistently hit one of these
| categories usually move on on their own - either because of
| culture fit or comp growth. It's much easier and healthier to
| focus on retaining your best people. As long as someone is
| doing something, and isn't a net drag on the team - firing
| seems to be more pain then the alternative in software.
|
| Assuming that the industry returns to its standard 30-50%
| attrition year on year.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| And those people become lazy because they put A LOT into
| the company those first 1-3 years. And after they coast a
| bit, they usual come back strong because 1. They are
| intimately familiar with the corporate culture and the
| internal software paradigm and 2. They have emotional
| investment. It's like getting divorced in your early 40s
| because things are not the same as a few years before, and
| not getting to the good part of a relationship.
| lumost wrote:
| Absolutely! I also didn't quite see it when I moved
| around earlier in my career - but many of the more
| tenured folks simply know how to work efficiently in the
| organization.
|
| They tend not to pick up meaningless fights, or invest
| time in work that the org doesn't care about, when their
| are debates - they can usually settle them.
|
| In hindsight I spent too much time early in my career on
| work no one cared about. I spend less time on that stuff
| now and have better wlb and feedback to boot.
| karl11 wrote:
| Revenue is irrelevant when looking at savings, you have to look
| at net revenue or gross margin. Majority of Spotify's revenue
| goes to record labels. If you are making -40mm / yr then a
| $90mm swing is a huge deal.
|
| Also, can't just look at salary - employees cost a lot more
| than their salary. 10% employer tax, health care, other
| ancillary benefits, IT equipment / space, etc. A $150k salary
| probably costs the company $250k all in.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| What does laying off 600 people do to their net revenue/gross
| margins?
| oxfordmale wrote:
| The cost picture is as follows:
|
| money saved on staff reduction - money spent on layoff
| packages - (temporary reduction in productivity, because of
| lower staff morale)
|
| Research shows there is no long-term benefit of layoffs other
| than the short-term gain in cash flow. Layoffs are only
| beneficial if they are needed for survival of the company
| thehappypm wrote:
| Lower productivity is highly questionable.
|
| I've really only seen layoffs boost productivity. Suddenly
| there is less overhead and fewer cooks-in-the-kitchen.
|
| Morale hits are real, but tend to fade if people feel
| confident that they've survived another day.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| You arrived at this conclusion anecdotally. You can't do
| your best work with a constant cloud hanging over you,
| doesn't matter who you are.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Morale hits are real, but tend to fade if people feel
| confident that they've survived another day.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| Research shows layoffs result in a lowering of
| productivity:
|
| https://www.boardoptions.com/Learning%20from%20the%20past
| %20...
|
| https://pavestep.com/post/the-effects-of-downsizing-on-
| remai...
|
| https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-layoffs-
| cost...
|
| https://garfinkleexecutivecoaching.com/articles/career-
| advic...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/radhikaphilip/2020/07/23/the
| -pa...
| notyourwork wrote:
| My vague recollection from an HR person was employees are
| 1.5x or 2.5x (something like that) their salary as a cost to
| the company. So $250k sounds about in the middle.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Do Swedish companies pay a lot into health care? Can you
| recover the cost of the IT equipment already paid for since
| these are existing employees?
| napoleongl wrote:
| Health care is paid through taxes in Sweden and your access
| to it is not dependent on your employment. You can have a
| private insurance (and I assume a company like Spotify
| does) but it's mostly for getting access to some private
| doctors offices with shorter queues to some things. We
| don't really have privately run hospitals as the US.
| guelo wrote:
| Hey those 90 million will help pay for Joe Rogan's 200 million.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| I thought the Joe Rogan deal was 100 million. Many people
| have been stating he was seriously underpaid but I think he
| was one of the first major deals so maybe there wasn't any
| strong metric to gauge what he is worth.
|
| Furthermore, they play multiple ads during his podcast
| regardless of if you are a paying customer or not. This one
| really grinds my gears. If they haven't made back their money
| yet then I'd be shocked.
| guelo wrote:
| "two people familiar with the details of the transaction"
| told NYT that it was at least $200 million for three and a
| half years.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/arts/music/spotify-joe-
| ro...
| nebula8804 wrote:
| oh I guess I was mistaken. I constantly heard 100 million
| but it was just a guess since the number was never
| disclosed officially.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Aren't most of the employees based in Europe? In that case it's
| more like $100k or less.
| estomagordo wrote:
| Even in Sweden, where engineers earn way less than in the US,
| it's going to be over $100k.
|
| On any salary you would have to add 30% payroll tax, and then
| maybe 15% or so in pension contributions.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I don't think it is that complex. Who benefits from these mass
| layoffs? Everyone at the top benefits, and everyone at the
| bottom suffers.
|
| You are spot on when it comes to impact of layoffs. If you want
| to destroy productivity, firing people is a sure proof way of
| doing that. To your point, I can't take any executive seriously
| if they're not self reflecting on their own failure. Mass
| layoffs should equal a new board in my opinion.
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| Who benefitted from the mass hirings? Stock holders, and also
| workers. Did the workers complain when the job market (esp in
| tech) was on fire and wages were increasing? No. Did they
| blame the people at the top for their new job and wages? No.
|
| But, now they want to blame leaders when there are mass
| layoffs. I think the blame is misplaced. The root cause was
| the stock market, and better yet blame the fed. The incentive
| was to show growth at all costs, even at the expense of
| burning cash. Leaders who did not optimize to growth were
| fired in many cases. But the game changed when stimulus and
| endless money printing stopped.
| f6v wrote:
| > Did they blame the people at the top for their new job
| and wages?
|
| Companies aren't very upfront about over-hiring.
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| It wasn't over-hiring given the environment at the time.
| It was over hiring given current environment. It seems
| clear that companies who took a more conservative
| approach to hiring have come out better for it. Not all
| companies could be so lucky. Some had activist investors
| who aggressively pushed for growth or else pushed out
| leaders. Messy world we live in.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It was. It's naive to think that a boom economy will last
| forever.
| sausagefeet wrote:
| I've been thinking about this question as well. Is it
| better to have not given these people a job at all rather
| than to have given a job and then fired? I don't know.
| There are a lot of ways to look at it that all could be
| right.
| moonchrome wrote:
| This - basically both decisions are driven by stock market
| charades - growth at all costs when interest was low - cost
| cutting when revenue drops.
| dbingham wrote:
| All of these companies laying people off are claiming that
| they "over hired" or "over extended" themselves during the
| pandemic and now they need to tighten their belts.
|
| Who made the decision to hire more workers than the company
| needed? Leadership. Who made the decisions to put the
| company in a position where it would need to lay people
| off? Leadership.
|
| Who bears the consequences of those decisions? It's not the
| people who made them.
|
| It's not like the workers forced the companies to hire
| them.
|
| This is the problem I have with these layoffs. The
| leadership who made the strategic decisions that put the
| company in a position to need to lay people off should face
| significant economic consequences before anyone else. But
| that is not happening. That never happens.
|
| And this also is where I push back on people who say that
| investors are the ones taking the risk (and should therefor
| reap the rewards of business). It's the workers who take a
| greater risk - because they have less information, less
| power, and less of a buffer if something goes wrong.
| IMTDb wrote:
| A working agreement is a contract between two parties.
|
| Who made the decision to join a company that was seeing
| sudden, unsustainable growth ? Workers. Who made the
| decisions to place themselves in a position they maybe
| aren't that needed? Workers.
|
| Who enjoyed significant salary increase due to higher
| demand for their skills, increasing the cost of their
| labours while asking for increased benefits such as
| flexibility, work from home, etc ? Again; workers
|
| There are two sides to the coin here.
| dbingham wrote:
| No there are not. There's a massive information
| imbalance. Most companies do not make enough information
| public for workers to truly assess whether their growth
| is sustainable or not. Public companies have to file a
| certain amount of financial information, but they are
| very good at playing games with that information to mask
| their true financial health.
|
| Workers have no choice when it comes to positions where
| they might not be needed. That could be true of literally
| _any_ job someone might take. And workers pretty much
| never have the information to accurately assess for
| themselves whether or not they think they are needed
| until they are in the job. Every job a worker takes is a
| risk in which they are asked to trust the company hiring
| them not to turn around and immediately fire them.
|
| > Who enjoyed significant salary increase due to higher
| demand for their skills, increasing the cost of their
| labours while asking for increased benefits such as
| flexibility, work from home, etc ? Again; workers
|
| Work from home and flexibility are mutually beneficial.
| Knowledge workers perform better when they are able to do
| their work in the way that best fits them. This is not
| some benefit the company pays to hand out, it's the
| company structuring itself in a way that most benefits
| it.
|
| As for salary, tech workers are still underpaid. Tech
| work is not factory work. The companies revenues are
| _entirely_ generated by the knowledge, skills, and work
| of the workers. There 's no physical machine the company
| is adding that allows the workers to do their work which
| they couldn't themselves easily acquire. The very fact
| that profit exists in tech companies tells you that
| workers are being underpaid.
|
| The only thing capital brings to the table in a tech
| company is the ability to operate in the negative - to
| scale head count (and thus to some degree productivity)
| faster than revenue. That is not something any tech
| worker needs, and most tech companies almost certainly
| could have grown far more sustainably by growing along
| with their revenue. That is something capital pushes,
| hoping for outsized returns on the grown on its
| investment.
|
| So, again, who should be suffering the consequences when
| the economy turns down? Keep in mind, paper losses of a
| falling stock market are not true losses for investors.
| As long as they hold through the fall - assuming the
| company doesn't go under completely - they'll most likely
| recover everything and more, but losing a job and
| therefor income can be life changing for a worker.
| CHY872 wrote:
| I think there's probably a few things here that are worth
| a comment:
|
| - Information imbalance: from people I've talked to in
| decently senior roles at even very large companies, it
| might be surprising to learn that information can be poor
| at every level, because generally the people who are
| responsible for hiring at even fairly senior levels are
| not directly also responsible for expenditure, especially
| when macro-economic conditions are responsible for those
| financial decision. Essentially, the person who is
| responsible for setting the hiring targets to enable 20%
| growth is likely not responsible for modelling what
| happens if the cost of short term debt goes from 2% to
| 10%. Probably this is most likely in the superscalers,
| and it's likely hardest in the companies from 2-5k people
| - with a tech org of about 1k, you're likely acutely
| aware of the impact hiring strong people can have on your
| product while lacking the numbers to approach the problem
| analytically and with a sophisticated finance org.
| Basically, the number of people who could reasonably be
| expected to consider 'if we hire too many people, we'll
| have to fire them' as a significant part of their brief
| is smaller than you might think.
|
| - 'There's no physical machine the company is adding that
| allows the workers to do their job which they couldn't
| themselves easily acquire'. Ignoring the focus on the
| physical machine bit and focusing more on the creative
| part of 'what does the company add, what do the people
| add', your claim may be true in some parts of industry
| and if you're in that side of industry I lament your
| situation, but for large parts of industry it's
| unequivocally false. There's a huge amount of value add
| that the machinery of an engineering organisation adds.
| In the more creative spaces, anyone who's operated in a
| truly high performing culture will have observed that a
| lot of the culture of building comes from the grouping of
| people who've been very, very carefully hired for, who've
| been carefully placed on team together, where memetic
| techniques have been used to proliferate certain positive
| behaviours, raising people up. We succeed as a team and
| fail as a team. You can see this over and over in so many
| testimonials - the stories from those who worked at Xerox
| PARC, stories from the MIT LISP hackers, back 50 years,
| all the way through hearing about the work the M1 team
| was doing, seeing the companies that spawn hundreds of
| startups from their alumni. And that's not to talk about
| the companies who specifically use process and ritual to
| ensure that engineers are consistently at the bar across
| massive orgs, from Google's exacting bars for code
| quality all the way to the consulting arms of Oracle,
| CapGemini etc who can approach repeated problems and get
| the most out of their engineers in a space where it's
| arguably harder to hire talent. And this is totally
| forgetting the huge non-SWE parts of orgs required to
| enable success - sales, finance, marketing, etc etc.
|
| - Tech workers are still underpaid - think there'll be a
| rude awakening coming for you I guess. People across the
| world get paid based on how much they can get in the
| market (and if you're already at the company, the
| switching cost). There's room for places that do it
| differently, but not much room. If a large number of
| qualified people join the labour pool, you can bet that
| the practical market comp goes down.
|
| - Paper losses are not true losses and you can just wait
| for the price to go back up: Honestly, that's wrong on
| like every level. Firstly, at the company level, there's
| a very real risk for many of these companies that they go
| bankrupt. Spotify has something like $2.8B in cash
| equivalents, has revenue of $9B and expenditure of about
| $9B. If their revenue dips by 20% due to e.g. a global
| recession, that cash supply will last them about 18
| months. Before they get there, they have to raise more
| money. If raising via equity, they're going to be raising
| at their new and lower valuation, so their investors take
| a huge haircut. If they raise via debt, they'll be
| getting charged a lot on interest (because their risk of
| default is nontrivial). My brief but non-zero insider
| knowledge of some of these debt deals make it very much
| sound like a sellers market. A smaller company might
| expect to see 15% interest demanded - if you need $150M,
| you're in trouble. The staff who Spotify are dropping
| today likely represent $300M over that same 18 month
| period. You can bet that they'll be making this cut after
| scraping the barrel everywhere else.
|
| Now, for the actual investors - if you take a massive
| paper loss, you're basically not getting that money back
| on a reasonable timeframe.
| https://danluu.com/norstad/risk-time/ is a good article
| on this topic. The simple way to think about it is that
| if in the good years you get 4% a year ROI across your
| portfolio and then you take a 50% haircut once, it will
| take you _18 years_ to make that difference back. The
| people who invest in tech companies are in large part not
| rich billionaires looking to pay for their next yacht -
| they 're institutional investors, mutuals, pension funds
| who are looking to maximise returns for their members.
| dbingham wrote:
| I appreciate your reasoned and detailed response. I
| disagree with you and I'll take it point by point. In
| some cases I think the disagreement is based more in a
| [reasonable] misunderstanding of the point I'm actually
| making, or where I didn't make my point as clearly as I
| should have.
|
| > Information imbalance
|
| I have been that Director level manager responsible for
| scaling and hiring with out the full scope of
| information. When I said "people responsible" I mean, the
| people with the information. And yes, it is a smaller
| pool than many people might thing. But it is also a much
| more highly compensated pool. Those are the people who
| are ultimately responsible, and the people who should
| face consequences and accountability. I would include the
| investors (at the very least those who sit on the board
| and take an active role in the running of the
| organization) in that pool.
|
| > There's no physical machine the company is adding
|
| Here I fumbled my words. I should have said "capital" or
| the "investors". Yes, absolutely, the organization itself
| provides value. But that organization is almost entirely
| composed of workers and could be run entirely by the
| workers with out capital. Traditionally, in a factory
| setting, the value capital has been said to provide - and
| the reasoning for capital taking the returns - is the
| physical machinery necessary for workers to do their
| work. In a tech company, there is no such machinery.
|
| The organization of a tech company is entirely composed
| of, and run by, workers. In the vast majority of cases,
| they don't need any physical machinery to do their work
| except for consumer grade electronics they probably
| already own or could trivially acquire. In the case of a
| fully distributed company, this is even more true.
|
| NOTE: I am including management in the workers here. I'm
| using workers, as it is used in the context of worker
| cooperatives or employee owned business, as a synonym of
| employees. This is different from the traditional union
| or labor organizing context which separates "line
| workers" from "managers".
|
| > Tech workers are still underpaid
|
| In a traditional capitalist labor market, I think you can
| reasonably make this argument. This views workers as
| replaceable cogs and looks at how cheaply they could be
| purchased on the market.
|
| But I'm looking at it from the perspective of "what does
| it actually take to produce the value the company
| produces". And all it takes is the workers time, skills,
| and knowledge. As I made in other points, capital brings
| very little to the table. In that case, the workers
| produce _the entire value of the company_. And from that
| perspective, many workers at tech companies (which,
| remember, I 'm using as a synonym for "employee" here)
| are still compensated less than the value they create. In
| some cases by significant amounts.
|
| > Paper losses are not true losses and you can just wait
| for the price to go back up
|
| I'll grant you the wait for them to go back up point.
| That was a bit glib and not well formed, but also
| somewhat tangential to my larger point which I didn't
| make very clearly: which is that while those losses might
| hurt _on paper_ if they represent wealth that is on paper
| then they have no immediate economic impact on the person
| losing it. There 's no risk of hunger from a paper loss.
| No risk of homelessness. No risk of exposure to the
| elements.
|
| And I will grant you, yes, there are some investors who
| do expose themselves that much with their investments.
| But they are a tiny outlier. For the vast majority of
| investors, their investment is surplus far above and
| beyond what they need to live a comfortable life to a
| reasonable standard of living. In other words, they can
| afford to lose it while suffering no unreasonable impact
| to their quality of life. (Note, I would consider going
| from "can afford a private yatch" to "have to live an
| upper middle class life" a reasonable impact.")
|
| To your point about institutional investors, the vast
| majority of those assets (80 - 90%) are owned by the top
| 10%. Who are, by definition, the middle upper class and
| above. They are perfectly comfortable. And they can
| afford a loss.
|
| My larger point is about the risk actually being taken -
| not in terms of paper wealth - but in terms of real
| impact on quality of life. Investors aren't taking much.
| Workers are.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| These details are not often not apparent to workers, and
| many times the folks doing the hiring actively hide this
| kind of thing from applicants. So it is not the workers
| fault.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > people who say that investors are the ones taking the
| risk
|
| Those same people will tell you how the "free money era"
| is over. Take a look a labors share of the economy, if
| capitals share is so large due to capital risk, and
| capital is easier to get, why didn't investors share of
| the pie shrink?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If you want to destroy productivity, firing people is a
| sure proof way of doing that.
|
| In Spotify's case, the business not making money, and hence
| not having a stock price that keeps up with the market, is
| also a way to destroy productivity. Higher productivity
| people are probably not going to want to work at a charity.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| >Higher productivity people are probably not going to want
| to work at a charity.
|
| Have you seen the things people create in minecraft
| entirely for free?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Replace with "higher productivity people in an
| organization like Spotify", which I doubt many people are
| "passionate" about like they would be Minecraft.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Have you ever seen some of the heavy hitters, programing
| game engines for open source? These guys do that, cause
| they want to recover some sanity after programing crap for
| companies all day. Sorry to say it, but great works will
| never flourish in some monpolistic mega cooperation with
| tribal infighting.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Spotify problem is that they are not a monopoly.
| Competition is brutal in music streaming.
|
| I have no idea if Apple or Google are more profitable?
| Maybe someone can give an insight.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| So I guess you really dislike people in the OSS space who
| are considered the most productive of us all and
| essentially give all their work away for free, kind of like
| a charity.
|
| Spotify is a jukebox. You put money in and music plays.
| It's not a new concept in the slightest capacity. If they
| haven't figured out how to turn a profit now will they
| ever?
| mikhael28 wrote:
| OSS is amazing. But needs to figure out how to make
| money, otherwise it's not sustainable.
|
| You ever hear the phrase 'theres no such thing as a free
| lunch'?
| floor2 wrote:
| > If they haven't figured out how to turn a profit now
| will they ever?
|
| The corporate entity Spotify will never turn a major
| profit, but that's by design.
|
| Spotify made a deal with the devil to come to terms with
| the record labels, and is now fully baked into a
| "Hollywood Accounting" set of terms
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting)
| which ensure the real money goes to the power players of
| RIAA cartel.
|
| It turns out, if you have good lawyers, you can structure
| a set of entities such that neither the artists nor the
| public shareholders of the streaming service get the
| money, but rather, the opaque production company or
| record label that sits in between it all.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| No, it was badly phrased. Rephrase it to mean that the
| proportion of people that are at Spotify who care a
| decent amount about competitive compensation is probably
| pretty high, and so they will be paying more attention to
| the business's prospects when evaluating their options.
| chitowneats wrote:
| > If you want to destroy productivity, firing people is a
| sure proof way of doing that.
|
| Not as sure proof as paying people to do nothing. Or worse,
| paying people who are actively working against the interests
| of the company, intentionally or otherwise.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| If I pay someone to do nothing, who is at fault? The person
| who shows up ready to work everyday or the person who made
| a bad hiring decision and doesn't have the work for that
| person? I'm not arguing against layoffs, I'm arguing that
| the people making the hiring mistakes are not accountable.
| If I as a CFO give the green light to increase the
| company's workforce by 10% and two years later make a full
| reverse, that CFO/Board should be let go too or since
| they're all about taking "personal responsibility" should
| step down.
|
| Most companies employ a board of narcissists that only care
| about themselves and their wallet and they get paid the
| most so I'm not sure your analogy is hitting with me.
| alldayeveryday wrote:
| > Most companies employ a board of narcissists that only
| care about themselves and their wallet
|
| My read is a bit different, in that the board optimizes
| to the stock price above all, which yes they benefit from
| but that just means their personal interests are in
| alignment with the interests of stock holders. I do not
| blame the leaders so much as I blame the model. Leaders
| who do not optimize the stock price are quickly expelled.
| When the stock market was flush with covid stimulus cash,
| and even before that whilst the market was hot, the name
| of the game was showing growth. Companies were
| incentivized to show growth even at the cost of burning
| cash. Companies took on massive debt and in many cases,
| either did stock buybacks and/or hired rapidly in an
| effort to scale their organization for growth. When the
| market fundamentals changed, and money started swinging
| back towards safer bets (cash flow positive companies),
| suddenly the game had changed and leaders needed to react
| accordingly.
|
| I guess in summary, hate the game not the player.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I think you can dislike the behaviors being exhibited and
| the game simultaneously. I hear you, it's the reality of
| the situation we live in now, but it's not a good system
| for the vast majority of people.
| deltree7 wrote:
| This is extremely naive take. No one can predict the
| future.
|
| If I hire a bunch of construction workers expecting to
| sell 100 homes and suddenly the housing market collapse
| and I need to only build 50 homes that I have contract
| for, I need to fire some construction workers.
|
| It is as simple as that.
|
| No one can predict business cycles and that is the
| fundamental driver of sales and input costs. If one can
| successfully predict business cycles, they can be a
| superior macro investor and make billions.
|
| The entire HN crowd talks about as though they never made
| any bad future decisions.
|
| How many of you invested in stocks in 2021 that is down
| 50%? Did you cut down on subscriptions? Why don't you
| fire yourself for making stupid decisions?
| bluedino wrote:
| > I need to only build 50 homes that I have contract for,
| I need to fire some construction workers.
|
| Just like during a boom when a carpenter can charge 3x
| his hourly rate, pick and choose his jobs, and anyone
| with a pulse can walk onto a construction site and get a
| paycheck.
| [deleted]
| buffington wrote:
| Since people predict the future all the time, I'll assume
| you mean that it's a lot more difficult to make
| predictions in complicated systems like housing markets.
|
| Assuming that's what you meant, let's consider the "I" in
| "If I hire..."
|
| If you're hiring someone, whether it's for your home
| building business, or your tech company, you're not doing
| it unaware of the market you're operating in.
|
| No real estate developer is ignoring potential futures.
| Those that do fail fast. That someone is hiring is
| evidence of that someone is making predictions. They're
| predicting at least one potential future where the person
| they hire helps the company achieve their goals.
|
| Speaking from experience, when I hire people, I am most
| definitely thinking of the potential future that person
| helps steer a company towards. I'm also very aware of
| what will happen if I can't afford to hire someone.
| Sometimes it's worth risking potential market effects
| that'd make it so I can't afford to pay that person, but
| usually it's not.
|
| > No one can predict business cycles
|
| Happens all the time, and people frequently make accurate
| predictions.
|
| > they can be a superior macro investor and make
| billions.
|
| Tell me, how did the current crop of billionaires become
| billionaires? Certainly not by deciding that no one can
| predict the future.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Have you built a Billion $$$ company? If so your comment
| about your own hiring is worthless. Anyone can run a
| small business. There are literally millions of SMBs
|
| For large companies with public investors, there is a
| risk of not scaling at the right time.
|
| History is filled with failed companies that didn't scale
| during 2012-2022 and were conservative.
|
| History is also filled with idiots who claimed bubble and
| predicting crash every year.
|
| If I have limited ambition of staying a $10 Million
| company, I can absolutely play it safe and hire very
| conservatively.
|
| Scaling is a Risk/Reward play and that's what the
| investors pay the premium and expect rewards
| [deleted]
| ss48 wrote:
| In this respect, I think that they're hoping that if they get
| enough experienced and higher income people laid off, that
| can compensate for the loss in productivity and the reduced
| workload with whoever remains.
| [deleted]
| nytesky wrote:
| The layoffs aren't about actually saving the cost of those
| specific employees.
|
| Instead, the threat of being laid off is being used as a stick
| to bring the remaining employees in line -- productivity has
| been lower the last few years, and leadership has no real way
| to measure on an individual level or how to improve it, so
| putting the pressure on employees is a tried and true tactics.
|
| Further, they can make lower TC offers to future employees, and
| give lower raises, pointing to the "need" to do so as
| demonstrated by earlier layoffs.
|
| So you lay off 6% but freeze the wages of the remaining 94%
| (who are grateful to have a job rather than carping about wages
| not tracking inflation) -- big savings.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > productivity has been lower the last few years
|
| Any statistics to back that up? I've read both narratives
| (this one and the one that conflicts it) countless times over
| the Internet the past few years. I have no idea what is true.
|
| A lot of people defend work from home and say it makes people
| more productive/work more overall. If that were the case, why
| are some of the brightest companies like Google/Apple against
| it?
| nytesky wrote:
| Not sure about stats, but it's definitely the impression of
| companies leadership.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/31/producti
| v...
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It's hard to be surprised by this.
|
| The pandemic may have acted like a reset on how work
| could fit into one's life. There's no going back from a
| perspective like that. I suspect that the idea of a
| career ladder simply doesn't work as well on younger
| generations as it may once have, for it may assume that
| growth occurs (making room for people).
|
| It also assumes that people trust institutions to take
| care of them.
| abeppu wrote:
| A bunch of the recent layoffs aren't considering individual
| performance as a primary factor. Whole teams get cut if that
| project is no longer a priority. Roles get cut as part of a
| reorg.
|
| When this happens, this doesn't push employees to do anything
| better; it sends the message that even if you're great at
| your job, you may be cut because the company changed its mind
| about what's worth pursuing.
| disruptiveink wrote:
| Pretty sure layoffs decrease productivity of the remaining
| employees, unless you're a H-1B visa worker, no one "works
| harder" after layoffs. Morale is low, resentment over "now I
| have to do X as well" grows and productivity gets hit.
| phamilton4 wrote:
| This is my main point from personal experience. I worked at
| a company that had almost yearly layoffs (caused by a late
| transition to the online world and competition). I knew
| whole teams that were reduced to a single person. Now that
| person has to do support 24x7, new feature requests,
| general information requests etc. Thank god I did not have
| to deal with that. Also it's very difficult to hire when
| people know the company is/has been doing layoffs.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| I always assumed the rationale was this:
|
| That employee now doing extra work accepts it because
| they are either scared of being laid off themselves, know
| they can't find a better job elsewhere, have irrational
| loyalty to the company, whatever. In any case the company
| benefits by exploiting the person.
|
| If instead the person leaves, then the process fails and
| the issue rolls up the org hierarchy. Now the leadership
| evaluates if this process was actually necessary anyway.
| If not, let it die or let the shit roll downhill
| elsewhere. If it was important, invest in the refactor
| that everyone knew was probably necessary anyway.
|
| For corporate leadership it's an easy way to either
| squeeze more out of the peasants, or force a reevaluation
| of priorities.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I don't stay after a big round of layoffs for the same
| reason I'd rather buy stocks when they look like they're
| going up, not down.
|
| The company is signaling that it is not doing well - why
| shouldn't I leave for a company that is doing well?
|
| The only way I'll stay is if you want me to be part of a
| real plan to turn things around. And my involvement in that
| has to be rewarded - not just at the successful end of that
| process, but immediately.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| The thing is there is no important signal about a
| specific company here, everyone is doing layoffs, the
| same as in previous years that everyone was in a hiring
| spree ignoring the actual company fundamentals. You can't
| just leave a company which is laying off people because
| everyone around you is also doing layoffs!
| [deleted]
| type-r wrote:
| Nearly all major tech companies have announced layoffs in
| the last few months. Which companies would you say are
| "doing well" right now?
| pm90 wrote:
| I'm assuming that with the major tech companies all
| laying off it becomes difficult to find another gig.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I'm hoping I don't have to find that out any time soon,
| but I prefer staying in the space of unknown enterprisey,
| line-of-business backend orgs. FAANG/MAANG and adjacents
| seem to be allergic to these roles and I never see their
| resumes.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Bingo! Not many people realize some firings actually increase
| productivity.
| esel2k wrote:
| Source? Because there is actually research beeing put into
| these results, that it decreases productivity:
|
| https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-copycat-layoffs-
| wo...
| achiang wrote:
| You need to use the fully loaded cost of an employee when
| estimating opex savings, which includes health care costs,
| retirement funding, etc.
|
| Rule of thumb is that fully loaded cost for US employees is
| approximately 2x yearly salary (although people who've actually
| run a company can correct my potentially stale or incorrect
| understanding).
| CydeWeys wrote:
| 2X is my understanding as well. Whatever you think an
| employee costs based on TC, double it to get the rough cost
| to the employer. Some other big employer costs related to
| employees you forgot include employment taxes,
| hardware/software expenses and licenses, and office space and
| related perks.
|
| Also I suspect that $150k as the mean TC of those being let
| go is low. Spotify might be saving up to $500k all-in per
| employee let go.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Also I suspect that $150k as the mean TC of those being
| let go is low.
|
| Probably not low. It's an enormous salary for a developer
| outside of the Valley and Spotify has plenty of employees
| which are not in the USA.
| phamilton4 wrote:
| TBH I think the average Sr. Developer is ~130k in the US.
| Of course this varies so much depending on the role and
| company.
| bumby wrote:
| The average software developer (not sure that it's
| pertinent to constrain it to "senior" devs) is $120k in
| the US. In San Francisco, the median is $161k [1]
|
| [1] https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/15-1252.00
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Spotify pays significantly above the average, though. Not
| as high as the top-tier FANGs, but still high.
| pc86 wrote:
| I applied for an "entry-level" EM role with Spotify in
| 2021 and the base was 260-275, plus a generous bonus
| target and stock. TC would have been pushing $400k, for a
| fully remote USCAN-based role. I say that strictly as a
| calibration point - it's unlikely engineers are pushing
| half a million (maybe at the Staff+ level) but there's
| also not likely any engineers before $150k TC. I'd expect
| even mid-levels to be in the $200-225 ballpark but could
| be wrong.
|
| I think $150k median is probably on the lower side of
| correct, but not enough to meaningfully impact any of the
| numbers anyone is discussing here. It's close enough.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The stock price has more then halved since 2021, and
| based on their business model and history of profit, as
| an employee, I would not value the stock portion of
| compensation much.
|
| As far as I can tell, Apple/Google/Amazon will always
| provide the ceiling price for how much Spotify can charge
| its customers, hence capping revenue, and the 3 record
| labels will always extract just enough to keep Spotify
| operating.
|
| In a similar situation to Netflix, Spotify's play would
| have to be to create their own content to lower their
| costs, but that is much easier said than done.
| sarchertech wrote:
| That's what they attempted with podcasts.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Levels.fyi supports me at least:
| https://www.levels.fyi/companies/spotify/salaries
| phamilton4 wrote:
| I commented above, whether the salary is 150k, 250k,
| 500k... the impact doesn't change 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.33%. Not
| sure it really matters. Again I'm not defending lazy
| employees or saying employers are bad for doing this. I
| feel there is a hidden cost of layoffs from my own
| experience of being at a company doing round after round
| of layoffs.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Agreed it doesn't matter much in this case, but it is a
| common misconception that employees don't cost nearly as
| much to employers as they actually do, so I wanted to
| step in and correct that.
| hello_moto wrote:
| > Whatever you think an employee costs based on TC, double
| it to get the rough cost to the employer.
|
| Hardware/Software expenses, office spaces, health insurance
| are fixed cost.
|
| $150k employee vs 200k employee will have the same amount
| of fixed cost (assuming both are in the same function).
| phamilton4 wrote:
| Understand 2x, I was also looking across all the jobs at
| spotify. There are some that go as low as 70k salary, a
| majority seem to be 170k+. It was just for ease of
| calculation. even if we take 500k that's still 0.033% of
| revenue -_-
| DeRock wrote:
| You aren't using percentages correctly, I think you mean
| 3.3% (and 1% in your original comment). Also, as pointed
| elsewhere, revenue is not really relevant, majority of that
| cash flows directly to artists/labels.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Again, revenue is not really all that relevant for this
| kind of business. They're a low margin business because
| they must pay huge bills to record labels. R&D doesn't cut
| record label costs.
| pc86 wrote:
| I'm having trouble understanding why 'revenue is not
| really all that relevant.'
|
| If you're burning $40M a year, and you press a button to
| save $90M a year, yes your label costs are the same but
| how are you not now at +$50M a year?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Payroll is a cost, so it's more relevant to think about a
| layoff in terms of its impact to profit (your example)
| than revenue. Lots of companies sell at a tight margin,
| so tiny cost savings as a percent of revenue can be a big
| difference in profit.
| voisin wrote:
| I think companies are doing it to tilt the balance of power
| back toward companies so they can force people back into the
| office. WFH is going to shrink back to a minority of the
| workforce.
| baby-yoda wrote:
| Broadly speaking, my opinion is alot of businesses are getting
| the feeling that the next 6-12 months are going to be bad.
| Layoffs, decreased consumer spending, rates continuing to rise,
| banks tightening with lending, ad spending dries up. A vicious
| cycle is starting to accelerate. Some companies are just going
| to follow the trend, sure, but I just think there is probably
| alot of internal data suggesting a slowdown and its too much to
| ignore.
|
| Spotify in particular, their revenue is Ads and subscriptions.
| Consumers can very easily cut a streaming subscription if money
| starts to dry up, same with companies purchasing ad space. They
| do have lots of cash on hand so I don't think they are anywhere
| near risk of going bankrupt. I'm curious to see their earnings
| release next week and any changes in cash flow.
|
| Another thing to consider is the opportunity cost of spending
| 90 million, there might be other internal priorities in the
| short term like acquisitions or paying down debt that supersede
| any potential "brain drain". Not to downplay the layoffs of
| course but the dynamic of competing priorities and larger
| headwinds is just difficult to navigate.
| [deleted]
| leokennis wrote:
| While I can't speak to the numbers, in general I think
| companies that so casually abandon employees by immediately
| announcing layoffs when times are tough cannot expect any
| loyalty or flex from the people that remain in times the
| economy picks up again.
|
| Maybe they're fine with that, and it's all good. But if you
| sack people on a whim don't be surprised if they walk out on
| you on a whim if some better opportunity comes along.
| matt_s wrote:
| I think what we don't see talked about is the avoidance of
| continuing to take on debt when interest rates are much higher
| than in recent past. Companies can issue bonds to raise money
| instead of loans but both are based on interest rates.
|
| Companies pulling back on growth investments will help their
| bottom line sooner. For tech companies their greatest cost is
| employees which also is where they invest for more growth in
| new products/services.
|
| Cash flow is king when interest rates are high.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Cash flow is always king, as positive cash flow is what keeps
| a company default alive like forever, or rather as long as
| cash flow is positive.
|
| And yes, I think high interest rates play role. Either
| because credit lines become more expensive or because
| investor and VC money is harder to come by.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| this is partially about wage depression
| overgard wrote:
| Considering how generous the severance is (a good thing), I
| wonder if it will even save them much money this year (granted,
| there will probably be some resignations from people that
| disagree with the direction).
| mason55 wrote:
| > _I wonder if it will even save them much money this year_
|
| They also get to account for it differently. The severance
| payments can be written off as a one-time charge, so from
| that perspective they get to take the GAAP benefits this
| year.
|
| Even though the cash flow is ~the same between letting people
| work for a year and then laying them off with no severance,
| doing it this way makes the business immediately look better.
| phamilton4 wrote:
| Edit: I'm wrong looks like they can write it off.
| eloisant wrote:
| The saving isn't that obvious because they might need to hire
| contracters (sometimes even the same worker) to make up for the
| lost workforce.
|
| Also severance packages are expensive! In addition to all the
| costs associated with a big layoff plan like this one.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Probably more about sending a message to anxious tech-
| shareholders than anything else. 2023 is not the right year
| for a tech investment to appear to hemorrhage money.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| if you expect a multi year recession it makes sense, especially
| when you aren't profitable and interest rates are rising
| apercu wrote:
| If the end game is suppress salaries and increase control (by
| forcing people back to offices), maybe the morale hit is worth
| it over a couple years.
| isitmadeofglass wrote:
| [dead]
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| My presumption is that it's both signaling to wall st to keep
| the stock price up (and for the C levels to keep their jobs)
| and also that companies did over hire in all sorts of weird
| ways in the last couple of years.
| woeirua wrote:
| This is an unpopular opinion, but history from the DotCom crash
| tells us that the layoffs are just getting started. Turns out you
| can't run at a loss forever, and when the going gets rough the
| fastest way to increase profitability is to cut costs.
|
| Say what you will about Elon and Twitter, but he definitely
| proved that the majority of the engineers at Twitter were adding
| no value to the company. That is probably true at _all_ of the
| large tech companies.
|
| If you work at a tech company make sure you have at least 6
| months of liquid savings set aside for a rainy day.
| mjr00 wrote:
| I don't think "the majority of the engineers at Twitter were
| adding no value to the company" is a fair statement: one
| because it's not clear that it was the majority, two because it
| wasn't necessarily "no value" as much as "not as much value as
| other product areas", and three because it wasn't just
| engineering, it's product managers, sales, marketing, community
| managers, everyone.
|
| That being said I _do_ think Elon 's bold moves at Twitter sent
| a shock through the industry. It made executives reevaluate
| their company's business strategies and if the non-core-
| business functions actually even made sense. Why is Google
| making a cloud gaming service, much less funding a video game
| studio? Why is Twitter employing people to debunk climate
| change? Why is Amazon employing a team of people to write jokes
| for their unprofitable smart home device?
|
| Corporate bloat has been common forever, but it's been
| especially common over the past decade with zero interest
| rates. There's been basically zero focus on expenses and 100%
| focus on growth at all costs.
|
| Scary part is we might just be getting started. Maybe we _will_
| see 50% cuts at Google /Meta/Amazon by the end of the year.
| woeirua wrote:
| I think Elon was stupid in cutting the account managers and
| salespeople, but clearly there has been no noticeable
| difference in the service now that all those engineers are
| gone. Hence the comment about not adding value.
|
| And if you read the whistleblower report you might seriously
| question what they were doing before Elon reset everything.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if 2023 marks the start of another
| tech recession. The era of outrageous tech salaries is over.
| rurp wrote:
| > Say what you will about Elon and Twitter, but he definitely
| proved that the majority of the engineers at Twitter were
| adding no value to the company.
|
| Unless you care about revenue, which has been crushed due to
| Elon's actions. The company is less healthy than a year ago and
| still coasting on reserves of previous work and network
| effects. Musk is spending billions, and refusing to pay valid
| debts, just to keep the lights on. He admits that the company
| might end up bankrupt.
|
| It blows my mind that anyone could be touting this as a well
| run business that others should emulate.
| woeirua wrote:
| I never said it was a well run business. You're also going to
| have to untangle Elons antics, laying off the account
| managers and laying off the engineers from the downturn in
| revenue.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| It's pretty funny though, that people so recently talked of
| labour shortages, but are now, saying, not with their mouths,
| but with money, the opposite-- across both Google, Spotify and
| some others, that there are a whole 6% too many.
|
| It's even funnier in Swedish, because the word for
| redundancies, is arbetsbrist, 'shortage of work'.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| What did he prove? First, the effect is going to be visible
| long-term. Second, they're hiring as hell. For example, they
| have reached out to me, and I spoke with recruiters just to
| understand what's going on a little bit better. So yes, they're
| hiring people now. What he proved is that when you fire, you
| hire immediately (but secretly).
| Loughla wrote:
| Outside looking in - it appeared that large tech companies were
| hiring a billion engineers just so they had them. Like safety
| in redundancy, and if you were employing the best and the
| brightest, they couldn't make a product that undercut you.
|
| I guess now's the time to start undercutting?
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| The companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. also having
| major layoffs are not and have not been running at a loss for a
| long time.
|
| Most of these layoffs are driven by shareholder demand. I
| suspect this will be a bit like 2008 where tech companies
| pulled back and then realized it was a huge mistake and went on
| hiring sprees again after a year.
|
| Twitter just posted a 40% or so reduction in income this
| quarter. It seems way too early to say they didn't need all the
| people they laid off. From everything I see their ad revenue is
| cratering from poor targeting, reliability, etc.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| This has absolutely nothing to do with the dotcom bubble. You
| can't seriously look at the balance sheets and revenue flows of
| tech corporations now and still think there is any comparison
| to be made with what happened 20 years ago.
|
| Big tech generates insane amounts of money, which is why they
| have been pretty resilient to the massive fall in stock prices
| in early 2022 while still ending the year with a net increase
| in headcount.
|
| Allusions to a pending "dotcom bubble burst 2.0" have also been
| common in every "downturn" since then and have never really
| materialized.
| [deleted]
| RSHEPP wrote:
| Sounds like a great time to reduce my monthly payments to Spotify
| by 100%. I overspent during the past two years and based on the
| macro economic conditions I need to increase my personal finance
| efficiency.
| whymauri wrote:
| But do you take full accountability?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Lot of talk about productivity. But I really wonder with
| companies like Spotify. Shouldn't they be at this point pretty
| mature? And is there really value looking for the next moonshot
| or big win? Did they actually even need the pool of engineers
| they had? There is always maintenance and keeping things running,
| making them better, but how much greenfield work would there be
| in short term?
| mikhael28 wrote:
| Spotify is overrated. Apple Music is the same, in the aggregate,
| and Apple's family plan allows you to share it with everyone.
|
| Spotify also sells all your previously 'private' public playlists
| to other platforms and advertisers.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > Ostroff helped shape Spotify's podcast business...
|
| If that means that they're paddling back on shoving that podcast
| bullshit into your face and return to focusing on music
| streaming, then there's at least a silver lining. Reading how
| podcasts have higher "engagement" that's probably wishful
| thinking though.
| capableweb wrote:
| As a long time user of Spotify (almost two decades in a couple of
| years...), this is my biggest gripe with Spotify:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/wfSka2H.png
|
| More and more playlists are starting to look like this, which is
| starting to piss me off. I don't really care if it's the record
| companies fault or whoever, and I blame 100% myself for getting
| into this situation in the first place.
|
| Started to use Bandcamp more and more lately, and feel a lot
| safer because of it. I'm hopeful Bandcamp won't ever need to do
| layoffs either, as they are not trying to take over the world
| with their SaaS or pivot to focusing on Podcasts, or stuff like
| that.
|
| But Spotify was really useful for a long time and still discovery
| is second to none.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I don't really care if it's the record companies fault or
| whoever, and I blame 100% myself for getting into this
| situation in the first place.
|
| Interestingly that in a situation where it's 100% copyright
| holders who are at fault, you say that you 100% blame yourself,
| but in reality you blame Spotify be cause that's your biggest
| gripe with it.
|
| Somehow no one ever blames the three-four companies (see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_industry#Consolidation)
| that hold 90% of the world's recorded music hostage.
| yawnr wrote:
| Well they're owned by Epic now, so that may not be up to them
| anymore.
| type0 wrote:
| Can they compete with Deezer for audio quality or will they also
| be reducing that by 6%?
| krono wrote:
| No mention of who is taking full responsibility for the
| situation!
|
| Edit: The CEO takes full "accountability" instead, further down
| the original announcement[0]
|
| [0]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230123124201/https://newsroom....
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Given how much all of the accountability statements are getting
| sneered at and used for media/social media outrage bait, I
| wouldn't blame companies for going back to simple just-the-
| facts announcements.
|
| In the current climate where every word and every sentence is
| picked apart, saying as little as possible might be the only
| strategy that minimizes outrage, ironically.
| halgir wrote:
| I think just dropping the free accountability statement would
| help. It's not so much the lack of responsibility, it's the
| accompanying false humility that annoys people.
|
| Or even better, back your words with actions. Like the
| Nintendo executive team did a decade ago.
| [deleted]
| CydeWeys wrote:
| They're all meaningless buzzy catchphrases. Until a CEO takes
| responsibility by resigning themselves, or forfeiting their
| pay, or something else meaningful, it's all just words.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I disagree, adults speak in language of responsibility which
| doesn't imply throwing yourself on the sword.
|
| When you get a speeding ticket, do you blame the cop, the
| car, the state, anyone but yourself? Or do you say "yup, I am
| the one behind the wheel so I am responsible"
|
| It doesn't mean you will never allow yourself to drive again
| or to only go 10mph from now on as self punishment. It just
| means you acknowledge your part like an adult instead of
| finding a way to appear blameless.
|
| or: We had a prod outage, I was the code reviewer. "yup, I am
| the one who fucked up. It's my responsibility". Doesn't mean
| I am going to forego salary for the next 10 years to make the
| company whole for the outage.
|
| I wonder if people confused by the 'responsibility' language
| themselves take responsibility for things in their lives,
| because they seem literally confused about what it means.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > When you get a speeding ticket, do you blame the cop, the
| car, the state, anyone but yourself? Or do you say "yup, I
| am the one behind the wheel so I am responsible"
|
| If you admit you're the one who was behind the wheel and
| thus responsible, then you DEAL WITH THE PENALTY, which
| includes paying a fine, points on your license, potential
| driver's ed, etc.
|
| These CEOs aren't facing any actual consequences here.
| They're just parroting the empty words "I take
| responsibility".
|
| > or: We had a prod outage, I was the code reviewer. "yup,
| I am the one who fucked up. It's my responsibility".
| Doesn't mean I am going to forego salary for the next 10
| years to make the company whole for the outage.
|
| Complete red herring. I'm struggling to believe that you're
| arguing in good faith here, actually. You really can't see
| any difference between thousands of people being laid off
| and making a bug in a code review??
| xyzelement wrote:
| >> you really can't see any difference between thousands
| of people being laid off and making a bug in a code
| review??
|
| Thank you for engaging. I intentionally picked something
| small like a production outage because - unlike
| hiring/firing 10k+ people - it's something more of us can
| relate to.
|
| The topic at hand is - what does it mean to say "I am
| responsible?" I am using the relatable examples to
| explain it - it means as an adult I am saying "I am not
| blaming someone else, I am the one in charge here, and
| this happened on my watch / I made the decision."
|
| This is in contrast to saying things like "the market is
| forcing our hand, I am powerless here" or "people under
| me made bad hiring decisions, I had no idea" - you are
| acknowledging that what happens on your watch, good or
| bad, is ultimately on you.
|
| It's a separate concept from punishment. If you keep
| making bad decisions, your employees can chose to punish
| you by quitting, your boss (the board/shareholders) can
| punish you by asking you to resign, etc. Acknowledging
| responsibility over the decision doesn't imply you have
| to fire yourself.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Sure, next time you introduce a bug in your code, you'll
| immediately resign, right?
| juve1996 wrote:
| CEOs will never really take the same responsibility. They're
| all rich. Even if they resign they'll have another job
| easily.
|
| The problem is the system. With an adequate social safety
| net, these layoffs matter much, much less.
| fleddr wrote:
| In the tech sector, "taking responsibility" means admitting
| your decisions led to the situation yet you'll externalize the
| consequences to employees.
|
| In other words, it means nothing.
|
| Taking actual responsibility could include stepping down,
| canceling bonuses, reduced compensation for leadership. It
| could include steps to become better at forecasting rather than
| randomly guessing. It could include ironing the business model
| to become less dependent on the whims of advertisers. It could
| include re-education and internal placement of the excess
| employees or reducing their hours rather than firing them.
|
| Why would you do that though when not only can you get away
| with doing nothing, the market rewards it.
| expazl wrote:
| > yet you'll externalize the consequences to employees.
|
| If a F1 driver admits his driving led to them loosing the
| race even though engineering did everything right, it's still
| the entire team that doesn't get the price. And if the entire
| team doesn't get enough funds in from their endeavor they
| might have to carry out layoffs. And you can be sure they'll
| lay off one of the 40 engineers before they lay off the
| driver.
|
| That does not mean the driver can't mean it when he says he's
| sorry and taking responsibility. Trust me, he would rather be
| on the podium than loosing.
|
| The mob mentality of "fire the driver first" will only leave
| you with 40 engineers starring at a car in a lot. You might
| say they need to change the driver, and that's certainly
| what's going to happen if management sees an opportunity for
| a better driver, but they can't just switch drivers between
| every race, imagine the spectators outrage at this team
| that's completely unpredictable and only ever keeps a driver
| for multiple races when he's first on the podium. And what
| driver would ever want to sign such a contract? Leave which
| ever team they are on for the chance at a higher pay,
| conditioned on getting 1 every time, otherwise the contract
| is void.
| deltree7 wrote:
| I'm sure you took responsibility for your bad stock markets
| returns in 2022 by saying you'll never make investment
| decision ever again and hand everything to your partner,
| right?
| cryptos wrote:
| You nailed it! I'm always wondering how someone takes
| responsibility and then absolutely nothing changes for him
| personally.
| rchaud wrote:
| Tim Cook had his compensation cut, and Reid Hoffman left the
| CEO role (becoming exec chairman). AFAIK, all other bigco
| CEOs did the 'taking responsibility' thing of doing
| absolutely nothing.
|
| I can see why Spotify is reluctant to dump the CEO. Theirs is
| a business model that's never been profitable anyway, so
| keeping the founder on couldn't make things any worse.
| halgir wrote:
| The actual statement by Ek contains: "I take full
| accountability for the moves that got us here today."
|
| Interestingly, responsibility is usually used as a get-out-of-
| jail-free phrase, while accountability literally means that you
| will take consequences. Maybe I'm just reading too much into
| the literal meaning of otherwise similar words.
| rchaud wrote:
| It is a get-out-of-jail free card only if you've squared it
| with the board of directors beforehand.
| jungong wrote:
| [dead]
| michaelmior wrote:
| The dictionary definition of accountable says nothing about
| consequences.
|
| From Merriam-Webster
|
| 1) subject to giving an account : answerable 2) capable of
| being explained : explainable
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It sure does imply consequences. Click on that link in
| "answerable".
| michaelmior wrote:
| The most relevant definition seems to be "1: liable to be
| called to account : responsible"
|
| I still don't see any implication of consequences.
| halgir wrote:
| You're right. Though checking their synonym guide [1],
| there is this:
|
| > accountable suggests imminence of retribution for
| unfulfilled trust or violated obligation.
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/accountable
| niij wrote:
| Do we have to have this same conversation on every single one
| of these threads?
| krono wrote:
| My comment was posted mostly in jest - my stance on it is
| mostly neutral, but considering the level of engagement it
| still generated even though this meme is admittedly getting
| old, there is or was clearly more to be said on the subject.
| jzb wrote:
| I dunno, maybe if Spotify wasn't spending hundreds of million on
| podcast deals and actually focusing on what its users want, they
| wouldn't need to lay people off.
|
| Any way you slice it, there's no way that the Rogan deal pays for
| itself. Spotify is stingy AF with the artists that drove people
| to the service, and then firehoses Rogan with cash and tries to
| shove podcasts down people's throats. I was a happy Spotify
| subscriber for a long time but they just kept making the service
| worse while ratcheting up prices.
| selfawareMammal wrote:
| Sorry but how's Spotify's service worse?
| waylandsmithers wrote:
| Not to mention their podcast deals are bad for the consumer-
| Spotify was and is great because people _wanted_ to pay a
| monthly fee for access to (nearly) unlimited music instead of
| buying albums.
|
| Podcasts on the other hand already worked great before Spotify
| started taking them exclusive.
| mjr00 wrote:
| > I dunno, maybe if Spotify wasn't spending hundreds of million
| on podcast deals and actually focusing on what its users want,
| they wouldn't need to lay people off.
|
| One of the people specifically called out is Chief Content
| Officer Dawn Ostroff, who "decided to depart," which is how you
| phrase C-level firings when they coincide with layoffs.
|
| I imagine that the disastrous podcast deals with the royals and
| Obamas had something to do with that.
| jzb wrote:
| That's good but hardly good enough. No way they drove those
| deals without the CEO's buy-in.
| ghaff wrote:
| I confess I don't get the big ticket podcast exclusives. But,
| then, I basically never listed to any of the "big name" talk
| radio shows either (and even actively avoided them).
| Reimersholme wrote:
| What's weirder to me is how I can't remember even seeing
| them advertised within Spotify. I know there are some
| really need content Spotify is producing, but the ones I'm
| aware off I've generally found by accident somewhere on the
| Internet, never through their own UI.
| pc86 wrote:
| Can we switch accounts?
|
| I have listened to exactly 1/2 of one episode of a
| podcast on Spotify and now have to actively navigate away
| from the main page of the app if I want to do what I do
| the other ~99.9% of the time, which is listen to one of a
| handful of playlists or try to find other similar music.
| nivenkos wrote:
| But Spotify doesn't pay the artists directly, the deals are
| with the record companies.
|
| The real issue here seems to be over-hiring and a lot of
| acquisitions for all sorts of marginal stuff like video
| podcasts, audiobooks, etc.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Streaming music has always been a very bad business. No matter
| how much Spotify grows, it will only make 30% gross margins.
| Almost the definition of a tech company is one that has high
| fixed costs and low to almost 0 marginal cost and can take
| advantage of scale. Spotify doesn't have that.
|
| At least with podcasts, they don't have to pay a third party
| for each additional user.
|
| Spotify suffers from the "Dropbox problem". Streaming music is
| a feature not a product.
| saurik wrote:
| Anyone can build and add Dropbox-like functionality to their
| product suite (and I was even involved in a couple such
| efforts a while back)... but Spotify is not at all like that,
| in that not only is having the music licenses they have more
| than just some engineering work, people bring their music _to
| Spotify_ , and so you can't even have a few ins and a major
| investor and then try and quickly get the same licenses to
| have the same service as you would still be missing
| essentially all of the music I listen to on Spotify.
| scarface74 wrote:
| That's not the concept behind "a feature not a product".
| The entire idea is that a major company can add streaming
| as a bullet point to their ecosystem - like Apple and
| Amazon - and doesn't need to be profitable by itself.
|
| That is the "DropBox problem". DropBox is trying to be a
| sustainable company while Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe
| and Amazon just throw it in as a feature in their
| portfolios.
|
| This is the same with the movie studios in 2023. In 2006
| when Apple first approached the movie studios, the idea of
| VOD digitally was new. Now the studios have a standardized
| process for it. There are a dozen VOD services with the
| same library because the industry has standardized
| licenses.
|
| VOD = Video on Demand where you pay to rent or buy each
| individual film.
|
| There are only three major record labels and if you can get
| deals with those, you cover most of the music people care
| about.
|
| The smaller labels will come along
| saurik wrote:
| The business of Spotify isn't "streaming music": it is
| "music licensing"; and, even there, it isn't like most of
| the music was due to Spotify going out of their way to
| contact people and get their music on their service:
| people--not even "labels", but _people_ --upload their
| music directly to Spotify.
|
| You _can_ compete with that, but it is a _massive_ uphill
| battle; it is similar to trying to create a new app
| market competitor from scratch and assuming that all of
| the apps which exist on someone else 's platform--many of
| which might not even be maintained by people who give a
| shit anymore--are somehow going to appear on your
| platform.
|
| > There are a dozen VOD services with the same library
| because the industry has standardized licenses.
|
| This is entirely untrue... hell: _Apple_ doesn 't even
| have a lot of the content that exists out there anymore,
| as numerous titles now can only be purchased from Amazon,
| as it was essentially uploaded directly. I _wish_ I could
| obtain all of the movies /TV I consume from Apple, but
| that just isn't how this industry operates.
|
| > There are only three major record labels and if you can
| get deals with those, you cover most of the music people
| care about.
|
| This wouldn't be sufficient to cause most users to switch
| from Spotify. It certainly wouldn't get me to switch from
| Spotify, and I don't even like Spotify!
|
| > The smaller labels will come along
|
| The long tail of music doesn't even involve "labels" :/.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why are you even arguing this? There already exist two
| major competitors that are treating streaming music as
| just an insignificant portion of a multibillion dollar
| business - Amazon and Apple. Also to a lesser extent
| Google/YouTube.
|
| As far as the content that's unavailable - it doesn't
| matter.
|
| The long tail theory has been debunked decades ago
| (https://mackinstitute.wharton.upenn.edu/2018/long-tail-
| theor...). You can't make money at scale with out having
| the most popular content.
|
| > This wouldn't be sufficient to cause most users to
| switch from Spotify. It certainly wouldn't get me to
| switch from Spotify, and I don't even like Spotify!
|
| You're a geek posting to HN (as am I) you don't represent
| the mainstream and it doesn't matter if people switch or
| not. Spotify needs to be profitable as an ongoing concern
| and it isn't and will never be extremely profitable. Its
| competitors don't have to have a profitable streaming
| service.
|
| > Amazon, as it was essentially uploaded directly. I wish
| I could obtain all of the movies/TV I consume from Apple,
| but that just isn't how this industry operates.
|
| Again, a successful business doesn't depend on the long
| tail - that's been debunked by every single market - app
| stores, music, movies, etc. the vast majority of money is
| made from hits.
|
| You're also failing to realize that Spotify's issue of
| trying to be profitable just streaming music while its
| competitors can sell at cost to prop up other businesses.
| saurik wrote:
| > Why are you even arguing this? There already exist two
| major competitors that are treating streaming music as
| just an insignificant portion of a multibillion dollar
| business - Amazon and Apple. Also to a lesser extent
| Google/YouTube.
|
| Amazon, Apple, and Google (to their lesser extent due to
| YouTube) are also in the content licensing business...
| the same business Spotify is in. Are you saying that
| iTunes, or Amazon.com, is also a shitty business? I'm
| betting you aren't. If you are, I recommend looking at
| how much money Apple makes on iTunes: it is sufficient to
| have let them _subsidize_ sales of the iPod.
|
| The reason Spotify is in a bad place is because they have
| bad contracts for their core content (vs. Apple) and a
| lack of vision for how to change up their business model
| (maybe by having a feature similar to Amazon Prime / Hulu
| where you have to pay for add-on subscriptions for
| various artists), not because "music streaming is a
| feature": their business isn't "music streaming".
|
| > Again, a successful business doesn't depend on the long
| tail - that's been debunked by every single market - app
| stores, music, movies, etc. the vast majority of money is
| made from hits.
|
| I am not saying the vast majority of revenue comes from
| the long tail, I am saying having access to a large
| catalog matters and prevents even large companies from
| being able to just shut you off as I do believe that
| people--yes, actual people, like my customers--actually
| care about _access to_ the long tail, even if it isn 't
| most of their usage or where you book your revenue.
|
| > You're also failing to realize that Spotify's issue of
| trying to be profitable just streaming music while its
| competitors can sell at cost to prop up other businesses.
|
| They aren't, though! iTunes is profitable. It has tried
| (and succeeded!) to add Spotify as a feature, but Spotify
| can and should respond by adding track sales or artist-
| specific subscriptions as a feature. There are tons of
| things they could be doing--because their business is not
| music streaming: their business is content licensing--to
| become profitable. Why don't they at least have a built-
| in Patreon mechanism where people can pay arbitrarily
| more for their subscription and have it (after they take
| a cut) doled out to their streamed artists?! They are
| just dumb.
|
| They _certainly_ aren 't Dropbox: Dropbox's entire
| business is just a technological feature and
| fundamentally continued to be a feature forever. There is
| no real reason to use their feature over someone else's
| implementation of that feature except code quality (and I
| have a queued article to write about how Dropbox is
| broken ;P). There absolutely is a moat that Spotify has
| here, and to ignore that is extremely strange. They may
| be squandering their ability to compete, but they aren't
| "just a feature". Being a dumb company that needs better
| leadership to establish a better business model is not
| the same as being a feature.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > Are you saying that iTunes, or Amazon.com, is also a
| shitty business? I'm betting you aren't.
|
| Yes, it is a shitty _standalone_ business. The purpose of
| iTunes was to sell more iPods - the whole "commoditize
| your complements".
|
| The purpose of Apple Music was to be a "feature" to sell
| high margin Apple Watches, AirPods, HomePods, to
| integrate tightly with Siri, etc.
|
| > If you are, I recommend looking at how much money Apple
| makes on iTunes: it is sufficient to have let them
| subsidize sales of the iPod.
|
| That's not what happened. SJ himself said that the
| purpose of iTunes was just to break even to sell iPods.
| iPods were high margin businesses. By the time Apple paid
| the labels 70% and then paid the credit card processing
| fees, it wasn't make much selling 99 cent songs.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Very few actually feel good about bringing their music to
| spotify.
|
| Other than the very few giant artists getting the
| sweetheart deals with guaranteed payouts most feel like
| they're forced to bring their music to spotify even though
| they know the whole thing is just bad.
| saurik wrote:
| I don't understand how this detail changes anything: you
| still can't just build a competitor to Spotify and
| magically have all of its music.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You don't need all of its music.
|
| You need the three major music producers and the rest
| will come.
|
| But that's not the point. The "feature not a product"
| saying means that a major company has your entire reason
| for existing as a feature in their product.
|
| Streaming music is already just a feature for Apple and
| Amazon.
|
| Just like today, you wouldn't create a separate spell
| checker application like in the 80s.
| saurik wrote:
| > You need the three major music producers and the rest
| will come.
|
| This isn't how the market works. I know musicians, and
| they don't care that you are playing licensing
| monopoly/bingo and have 3 key squares and now they
| clearly are going to waste their time uploading their
| music to your service. You need to essentially already
| have the subscriber count to provide them a new revenue
| source that is greater than the pain of dealing with
| you... which forms a brutal catch-22.
|
| This is similar to why live video also isn't just a
| feature and YouTube is having to go to war with them to
| bring streamers to their platform (though as Twitch isn't
| really about a "back catalog", Spotify is actually in a
| much better position than Twitch). Social networking is
| another example of a thing that isn't just a feature you
| can throw together, even if it looked like that to a lot
| of companies.
|
| Essentially, anywhere there is either a catalog or a
| network effect to be had (these are related concepts),
| you have to provide something that isn't just equivalent
| but fundamentally _new_ to build a user base that can
| pull in the new market participants, or people are going
| to keep using the old service _even if they hate it_
| because it has a better library.
|
| (The alternative is you have to do something explosively
| better for the content producers, enough that they want
| to get on the ground floor. The most obvious way to do
| that is by just handing them free money with massive
| subsidies due to VC raises, which was certainly a lot
| easier a few years ago than it is today.)
|
| I was the developer behind a major content marketplace
| that had tens of millions of users and which was able to
| operate for over a decade despite tons of people trying
| to build competitors. Hell: my software was open source!
| I only shut it down because the entire market I was in
| stopped being technologically viable (resulting in my
| lawsuit against Apple), and it still took years for the
| content to become stale enough for people to move on
| (which doesn't happen as quickly for music). I am
| speaking from direct experience.
|
| > Just like today, you wouldn't create a separate spell
| checker application like in the 80s.
|
| Spell checking, like Dropbox, has no network effect and
| no first mover advantage.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > This isn't how the market works. I know musicians, and
| they don't care that you are playing licensing
| monopoly/bingo and have 3 key squares and now they
| clearly are going to waste their time uploading their
| music to your service. You need to essentially already
| have the subscriber count to provide them a new revenue
| source that is greater than the pain of dealing with
| you... which forms a brutal catch-22.
|
| You keep acting as if there aren't two trillion dollar
| market cap companies that don't already have streaming
| services that don't have to be profitable.
|
| You also act like the day that Apple announced "Apple
| Music" every musician wasn't scrambling to get on the
| platform.
|
| > Spell checking, like Dropbox, has no network effect and
| no first mover advantage.
|
| If Facebook announced tomorrow that they were going to
| release "Facebook Streaming" they already have an
| audience. We aren't talking about Joe Bobs Music
| streaming service.
| overgard wrote:
| I forget where I heard this, I think it was on Breaking Points,
| but I think Rogan's audience is bigger than CNN, MSNBC, and Fox
| News _combined_. I doubt they regret the Rogan deal.
| missedthecue wrote:
| If they don't have enough work for their workforce, would you
| still say they're morally obligated to keep writing paychecks?
| sarchertech wrote:
| What does a recession have to do with the amount of work you
| have for employees to do? If a recession causes 5% of their
| subscribers to cancel, it's not like there's 5% less work to
| do company wide.
|
| If the company hired more people than they have work for, it
| likely has little to do with a possible recession.
|
| In the case where it is true that they have too many
| employees, I think there is a moral responsibility to attempt
| to find profitable work for those employees. Or to at least
| ride it out and make a smaller profit in the lean years if it
| doesn't seriously endanger the health of the company.
|
| Corporations aren't merely groups of people, they have been
| granted additional legal rights like limited liability. I'm
| fine with laws that say something to the effect that in
| exchange for limited liability, corporations over a certain
| size must give some consideration to the employee welfare.
| Many countries require that workers have board
| representatives.
| jjulius wrote:
| >If they don't have enough work for their workforce, would
| you still say they're morally obligated to keep writing
| paychecks?
|
| Where does OP say that Spotify is "morally obligated to keep
| writing paychecks"?
| missedthecue wrote:
| He didn't, hence why my comment has a question mark.
| jjulius wrote:
| >He didn't...
|
| >... would you _still_ say...
| randomifcpfan wrote:
| Blame music publishers. They are the ones raising prices and
| paying artists pennies. Spotify has no power to change this.
|
| Spotify is/was spending heavily on podcasts to try to create a
| new revenue stream with better economics.
| jzb wrote:
| Spotify has plenty of power to change this and it's
| disingenuous to argue otherwise. Spotify has lobbied hard to
| affect royalty rates for music / songwriters and keep them
| low. Certainly the music publishers / labels are _also_ to
| blame, but Spotify isn 't innocent.
|
| Also - Spotify wanted Podcasts so they went to the podcasters
| and made deals. Spotify is apparently paying to create
| royalty free music it can insert into playlists. Spotify
| could just as easily be making direct deals with, say, indie
| music artists or wooing bands away from major labels if it
| wanted to focus on music.
|
| It's not. It's aiming for the streaming service equivalent of
| reality TV instead but paying _big_ money for them instead of
| to musicians.
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| Apropos of little, I cancelled my family Spotify plan because
| of the Joe Rogan deal and moved to Apple Music. Totally forgot
| that's the reason I moved us until your comment.
| snird wrote:
| I moved when Rogan hosted Roger Waters, who kept saying anti-
| semitic things with no push back at all.
|
| Spotify aligning themselves with content, any content, made
| them a publisher and not a software company. That's their
| biggest mistake.
| [deleted]
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| > Any way you slice it, there's no way that the Rogan deal pays
| for itself.
|
| Especially when you still get ads on podcasts. Listening to any
| podcast on Spotify is so frustrating because I pay for the
| service and STILL get a half dozen ads an episode.
| pm90 wrote:
| Right, it seemed like a greedy move. Apple podcast app is just
| fine imo.
| [deleted]
| erdaniels wrote:
| Unrelated but, does anyone have a good universal solution of what
| music you "like" or "own"? I want to move off of Spotify but I
| want to make sure all my music is playable from some platform or
| locally.
|
| A decade ago I moved off the good iTunes and foolishly lost my
| complete library of metadata of songs, so I want to avoid that
| again.
| enjikaka wrote:
| TIDALs sister company TBD touches on that here
| https://developer.tbd.website/blog/what-is-web5/
| lunatesi wrote:
| If you have iOS, there's an app called SongShift. I think some
| features are paid, but I used it once a few years ago to
| transfer my Spotify library into Apple Music to try it out. It
| looks like it can also export to JSON too (that might be a paid
| feature?).
| skydhash wrote:
| Scrobbles through Last.fm? But I don't think you can export
| directly from Spotify (maybe through playlist and one of the
| music transfer tools? I mostly use Spotify to listen through a
| recommended album. And ads bother me, so I switched to premium
| (It's 2.99 for me).
|
| I have a local library of ALAC albums that I like. I used
| Syncthing to sync it to my home server, where there is a Plex
| installation (When I want to play via the ATV). And I convert
| to AAC 256kbps to my iPhone (Bluetooth is lossy anyway). More
| hassle than playing via Spotify, but the latter's UX is so bad
| that it's worth it. Also I have some excellent headphones
| (Hifiman Sundara and Sennheiser 6XX).
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| While Plex has some shortfalls with handling music (mostly
| that most tags are applied at the album level, not the track
| level), it's still the best option I've tried for handling
| your own streaming setup. The PlexAmp[0] app they developed
| sands off many of the rougher UX elements from the web app,
| but it requires a paid version of the Plex server.
|
| [0] https://plexamp.com
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| When you say "own" what do you mean? CD's? Or some digital
| purchase?
|
| I believe modern iTunes is DRM free so you can keep all your
| purchases safe that way. Alternatively Youtube Music allows you
| to upload all your local music so you can their service to
| stream it. I've bought things on iTunes and then uploaded them
| to Youtube Music.
| erdaniels wrote:
| Sorry I should have been more specific. I care less about the
| actual song content itself than having a synchronized list of
| the names (i.e. metadata) of all the songs I like/save/listen
| to.
| jjav wrote:
| > A decade ago I moved off the good iTunes and foolishly lost
| my complete library of metadata of songs, so I want to avoid
| that again.
|
| Relying on anything that is closed source, or worse, an online
| service, brings with it the eventual inevitability of losing
| everything. No product or company lasts forever.
|
| For things that are ephemeral in interest (e.g. movies you only
| care to watch once), that's fine.
|
| For things that you really like and want to have a strong
| guarantee you can enjoy them later, the only solution is open
| formats and have the data in your control.
|
| For all the music (and a few handful movies) that I want to be
| able to enjoy forever, I keep them locally in a redundant
| backed up ZFS server. No corporate change of heart can ever
| take those away from me.
| shadowtree wrote:
| The core question is how many employees do you need run a stable
| internet business?
|
| Stable means no massive new product lines, growth, etc.
|
| Spotify is what it is. An app across a handful platforms,
| streaming infrastructure, and a legal/purchasing dept for music
| rights.
|
| Does this need 7000 people? Zero chance. Is it 1000? 700? 250? No
| ones knows yet, but everyone remembers WhatsApp at acquisition
| and watches Twitter to kind of continue without 80% of its former
| employee base.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I would be surprised if there tech team was larger than 2000
| people. Majority of those people will be marketing, sales,
| legal, talent/content, etc.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >legal/purchasing dept for music rights
|
| I would imagine this is where the majority of their staff are.
| Spotify's catalog is huge, and record labels are constantly
| renegotiating extremely granular contracts with the streaming
| services (i.e. at the individual song level). For example, I've
| seen particular songs on albums disappear for a few weeks (the
| rest of the album can still be played), then mysteriously
| return (or not), all because of some cryptic licensing shift
| from the record label. There is no easy way to automate this; a
| human interaction must occur between the label and streaming
| service every time a weird licensing shift causes a particular
| song/album/artist to be removed. Given the size of Spotify's
| catalog, there are probably thousands of such licensing changes
| each day.
| shadowtree wrote:
| Pretty sure the DRM process in YouTube is heavily automated -
| why wouldn't Spotify do the same? Give the labels an API,
| then they can dynamically maintain all that crap themselves.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| The majority of saas business is like this: Numerous engineers
| trying to invent new unnecessary features or sitting idle
| through irrelevant projects and meetings or doing continuous
| refactoring and 'let's use the new x
| tool/process/language/whatever' every x months, numerous
| managers 'managing' them and managing these managers and
| fighting about headcount and other irrelevant metrics and so
| on, numerous product managers having no clue and just copy-
| pasting features from different saas, ux designers iterating on
| the designs every year and so on, founders keep founding the
| same saas with another tens of competitors building the same
| thing snd so on.
|
| We are really privileged to be in such an industry, gaining so
| much money (depending on location) compared to other
| professions and doing so meaningless job. IMO the majority of
| saas business would operate decently with at least half of
| their staff or they shouldn't exist at all. Most of them just
| facilitate invented features for other saas anyway.
| steviesands wrote:
| If your goal is maintenance mode for the company, milk profits
| for 10 years, and to be eventually replaced by competitors then
| I think you can run a company very slim. The other question
| would be, if you have captured a large market share (100s of
| M/yr to Billions in revenue), how many employees do you need to
| prevent an upstart from overtaking you through improved tech,
| product, or strategy?
|
| For example, if FB never invested in ML they would have had
| even larger margins (fewer GPUs and ML engineers), but now that
| investment may pay off by fending off tiktok through copycat
| products and also rebuilding ad attribution after ATT. To
| complicate matters, before it happens, you don't know in what
| area your competitor will arise (ML? Product? Paradigm shift?).
| Similar examples with Google vs. OpenAI, ~2010s Kubernetes wars
| between cloud providers, Snap vs. FB/Twitter, etc.
| shadowtree wrote:
| If you compete with startups with tens of employees -
| shouldn't you use tens of employees to counter their
| strategies too?
|
| Do you need endless hanger ons in HR, PR, all kinds of non-
| producing departments?
|
| Crappy CEOs, which is not the same as a crappy founder, have
| grown companies without any sense and purpose. Daniel is a
| great founder and rode great luck. But, he should have been
| replaced with a Eric Schmidt operator figure a while ago.
|
| I think the founder clings to company forever is coming to an
| end, in most cases going public should mean a new CEO.
| nrook wrote:
| The tide is turning; tech owners are attempting to curtail the
| high costs of labor in the software industry.
|
| The only way for labor to fight back is to stand together and
| form a union.
| gfdsgfsdgfs wrote:
| Unions often have coasters and quiet quitters. As an
| experienced developer I would never work with people like that.
| MAGZine wrote:
| you'd rather work harder and for less money than work with
| people who phone it in?
|
| I don't really buy the meritocracy argument that 'good devs
| get paid more'. It hasn't really panned out in my experience,
| except for less than 1%, probably closer to .1% of devs who
| are really, truly exceptional AND will fight aggressively for
| their keep.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, that's rather obvious, isn't it? I prefer working in
| smaller organizations. Growth there is a factor of personal
| growth and the company succeeding strongly enough that you
| have something bigger to grow into. It's not enough for me
| to work for $x for 2 years, have the company go under, and
| then go work somewhere else for $x for another 2 years,
| rinse and repeat with some number of coasters killing off
| firms.
|
| I want what I got: company goes through hyper-growth and my
| own personal growth has some meaty problems to latch onto
| so I can apply myself. You can put my Ducati on a frozen
| lake and it's not going anywhere. Powerful engine wasted on
| frictionless surface. What I got when I was young was that
| if I applied myself I got better. And the company got
| better around me. And that meant I got bigger
| responsibilities which I could actually do.
|
| Plus the obvious factor that I want my peer group as bought
| in as I am. My morale is high. Every idea I bounce off gets
| improved. Mistakes I'd make are caught. I am improved
| tenfold.
| andsoitis wrote:
| I don't want to work with people who consistently let me
| down nor would I want to work with jerks.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I would rather, yes. Working with people who phone it in
| means my projects will unpredictably grind to a halt for
| weeks, and getting them to work at all requires an
| obnoxious and overbearing management style that I really
| don't enjoy being around. I don't think it's _wrong_ to be
| a "phone it in" person, they're just trying to earn a
| living so they can focus on what they care about, but that
| doesn't mean I want to work with them.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Reminder that "quiet quitting" is a term for people who do
| what they have been asked to do by their position. It's a
| smear-word for a good thing.
| birdymcbird wrote:
| this misguided and only purpose it serve to make these company
| die sooner.
|
| Main problem these company took benefit of cheap interest rates
| and overhired. hiring for promotion and ego. hiring not sake of
| true business growth.
|
| Saw entire teams and orgs at two big tech companies sitting
| idle..senior and staff engineers have no commit in over a year.
| ok..maybe they doing design work or something else to drive
| efficiency or cross org optimization.
|
| but no, even college level hires have no commit or other
| meaningful work. reasonable question: what they do? especially
| when team own no critical service and even have no support
| burden..why 7 engineers plus 3 managers?
|
| meanwhile managers getting increasing hc and fighting territory
| battle.
|
| this was massive grift. a union only make the grift last
| longer. real solution: remove dead weight.. massive
| bureaucracy..go back to entreprenurial root of company and what
| it vision.
| kypro wrote:
| I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but a lot of these
| companies massively over hired over the last couple of years.
| While others were losing their jobs during the pandemic tech
| employees were in higher demand than ever. In fact, I'd argue
| the demand for tech workers has been so high over the last
| couple of years that a lot of people who really shouldn't have
| got a job based on their experience were able to do so.
|
| I'd also note that the severance packages most tech companies
| have been offering their employees have been very fair, and
| with tech skills being almost universally valuable across
| industries it's not hard for good tech workers to quickly find
| tech jobs if they're happy to work outside of the tech sector.
|
| If people want to form a union then fine, but I'm not sure what
| you expect. Spotify isn't profitable. With the cost of capital
| rising and a potential recession looming they obviously need to
| be financially cautious otherwise everyone at the company will
| eventually lose their job.
| matwood wrote:
| It's a meme at this point that Google is probably developing
| 5 new chat apps to replace the 10 they recently killed. But
| then everyone gets up in arms when Google trims it's
| workforce by 6%, one which as grown by 100+% since 2016. If
| everyone wasn't looking for anything to signal 'recession!',
| no one would bat an eye at these big tech companies doing
| small staffing course corrections.
| jlarocco wrote:
| There's another way to look at it, though.
|
| Without unions, employees are disposable. Companies hire them
| when money is plentiful and throw them away when it's
| convenient. It clearly benefits the employers and investors
| to operate that way.
|
| With a union, employees aren't so dispensable, and companies
| have to take a longer term view when hiring because they
| can't get rid of employees on a whim. Despite being more
| stable for everybody, it's extra difficulty for the company
| and it balances out their power over employees.
| gedaxiang wrote:
| > companies have to take a longer term view when hiring
| because they can't get rid of employees on a whim
|
| that would make it harder to find a new job, right?
| tradeoffs to consider
| nayuki wrote:
| Yup. Hard to fire = hard to hire. Why should an employer
| take a chance on hiring you, if in case it doesn't work
| out, they need to spend considerable time and money to
| fire you?
| f6v wrote:
| You don't need a union. It's enough to have a long notice
| period required by law.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Outside the US, labour costs are already quite low though.
|
| Although I agree, they're going to get even lower. To quote
| Neal Stephenson:
|
| > the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities
| and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a
| Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity
| paulcole wrote:
| Isn't it possible that the high costs just aren't sustainable
| for businesses that just don't make any money?
| overgard wrote:
| I'm not sure that collective bargaining would be helpful for
| most tech workers -- there's such a large diversity in
| individual skills and productivity that negotiating for
| yourself seems to make more sense.
| [deleted]
| mkl95 wrote:
| Worth noting that Spotify has less than 7000 employees so that 6%
| will be ~400 employees. Terrible news for those affected, but it
| would take many more to affect the industry the way FAANG layoffs
| do.
| theusus wrote:
| Jesus fucking christ
| mercwear wrote:
| 12.184B in revenue for 2022 and they are still cutting headcount,
| another tech company who could not care less about it's
| employees.
| survirtual wrote:
| They do it because they can. Because most employees are
| spineless and will fall in line.
|
| People making the money we make in the tech industry should be
| living well below their means, saving, and supplanting the tech
| giants with worker-owned coops and guilds. If all tech workers
| united into guilds the corps would come begging us for
| technical contributions, and we would collectively charge up
| the ass for it -- and all make 100% of the profits.
| jstx1 wrote:
| > most employees are spineless and will fall in line.
|
| I don't get this. It's a layoff - what do you think not
| spineless and not falling in line looks like?
| survirtual wrote:
| "If you layoff Bob, I quit"
|
| "If you do these layoffs, all of us will strike"
|
| In other words, unified action among the workers that costs
| the business significantly more funds than the savings from
| laying people off.
|
| That is one example of having a spine. There are countless
| others.
| coldpie wrote:
| I agree. However, it's easy to post on HN, and much harder to
| do in practice. Do keep us posted if you make some progress
| in this direction. (This isn't sarcasm, I'm genuinely
| interested in that model.)
| survirtual wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Generally, I think that the strategy will be some
| combination of technology, coop ownership, and worker
| insurance.
|
| Technology, for making corporation killers. Making
| alternative tech stacks that make existing corporate
| offerings irrelevant and requiring a sort of ransom to keep
| the licenses non-competitive. This provides nuclear
| leverage.
|
| Cooperative ownership to align the organizations objectives
| with individual workers. The profit is distributed in a
| relatively fair way without these 100x pay differences, in
| a manner members can all agree with, and planets away from
| only caring about enriching investors.
|
| Worker insurance where the coop offers healthcare and
| minimum income guarantees between jobs with corps. When a
| member is working for a corp, it is expected the corp pays
| for their insurance etc. If the member leaves the corp,
| they seamlessly continue to have healthcare etc.
|
| I think the first step to making something like this happen
| is creating an extremely valuable piece of tech that
| society cannot do without. That acts as a beacon to attract
| workers and provides leverage. With the appropriate legal
| framework around that, it would cascade from there.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| A union would force these layoffs to be justified well beyond
| what we see in these PR releases, however, the severance
| packages offered are very good for non-unionized labor. It
| makes me suspect that the loose association of programmers
| has latent power even if it's not in a guild or union.
| htrp wrote:
| More like if you cheap out on severance.... no one will
| ever come work for you without a significant comp premium
| htag wrote:
| In the days-of-old to gain a skill you needed an
| apprenticeship. To gain an apprenticeship you can to become a
| guild member. This created a moat, where only guild members
| were highly skilled.
|
| How do you purpose to market guild labor over non-guild
| labor, especially at a time when anyone can earn a CS degree,
| publish open source, and right to work laws pepper the
| country.
| survirtual wrote:
| Guild-owned technology, created with human-aligned
| intentions (as opposed to greed-aligned). Human-centric
| tech is superior to capital-centric tech.
|
| Open source is basically this in a naive and unorganized
| way, especially when MIT licensed (a giant con in my
| opinion). GNU does much better. But if there existed a
| guild license connected to tech and patents that are must
| haves, it would tip the balance.
|
| The guild would offer objective security to a worker --
| health insurance, income insurance, and legal backing, with
| intentions aligned entirely with the worker. It provides a
| behemoth aligned with maximizing the rights and income of a
| worker. That would do a whole lot in attracting people to
| join.
| htag wrote:
| What is this guild license, and how does it differ from
| the current system of having private companies own
| software licenses, tech patents, and trade secrets?
|
| It sounds to me like you're just describing a tech
| company.
| survirtual wrote:
| It is a tech company but it is owned by specialized,
| skilled workers. It is a guild because tech workers are
| professional artisans. Guilds are an organization of
| skilled professionals which have quality certification
| for work, often times integrated with legal frameworks in
| a government.
|
| Software needs to be elevated, credentialed, regulated,
| and more respected. This is what a guild would enable.
| But I think merging benefits of unions with the prestige
| of a guild would provide some needed innovation in that
| space.
|
| Providing skilled professionals with an army of lawyers,
| professional insurance, income guarantees, healthcare,
| lead management, all with cooperative ownership, profit
| sharing, etc is a drastically different incentive
| structure than existing organizations.
| allochthon wrote:
| Over the last decade I've had a similar thought and hope. Or
| at least the idea of working for an employee-owned and
| directed tech business (maybe on the model of REI?). Curious
| whether anyone knows of any successes in this area with
| respect to the tech industry?
| expazl wrote:
| "We're loosing money on every sale, how will we ever survive?"
|
| "Don't worry, we'll make up for it in volume"
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Profit is what matters, not revenue. You can't look at revenue
| numbers alone.
|
| Regardless, you shouldn't assume that any company's first
| priority is to continue employing and paying everyone. A
| business is a business, and the employees are hired to do a
| job. The working world makes a lot more sense when you accept
| that jobs are jobs and not a benevolent source of guaranteed
| income.
| Frost1x wrote:
| The problem is, once you adopt this mentality, there's often
| pushback that you should also consider labor just like a
| business acting in self interest. Labor should focus on their
| profits (comp vs time vs benefits of concern) and optimize on
| those, just as businesses do in terms of employment.
|
| Labor should aim to do the least work possible for the most
| compensation and only do what gets by. Labor too is not a
| benevelot source of resources for a business to leverage,
| it's a two way street.
|
| Instead I often hear a mixture of inconsistent arguments
| where after all moral and ethical lip service is exhausted,
| we fall back to the "business is business and not charity
| argument." That's fine (and I agree with it) but if we're
| going to strip away morals and ethical obligations in society
| from business, we need to do the same for labor and not
| chastise labor with morals and ethics to prevent double
| standards.
|
| If we do want labor to follow moral and ethical social
| obligations that aren't focused on pure self interest at all
| times, then we should also talk about how businesses should
| also have some sort of loyalty and societal obligations as
| well.
|
| We sort of need to pick one option, not pick and choose a
| mixture that benefits business entities above all else. Not
| that this specific post makes any such claims.
| zajio1am wrote:
| I would say that both sides have social obligations to
| fulfill their part of a contract according to their best
| effort while the contract is active, but also both sides
| are free to change / terminate contract (with respect to
| contract terms and laws) - both employer doing layoffs, or
| employee asking for raise or leaving the job.
| coldpie wrote:
| The equation isn't equal, though. A company losing an
| employee has a very different impact on that company than
| an employee losing their employment has on that employee.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The problem is, once you adopt this mentality, there's
| often pushback that you should also consider labor just
| like a business acting in self interest. Labor should focus
| on their profits (comp vs time vs benefits of concern) and
| optimize on those, just as businesses do in terms of
| employment.
|
| As someone who has managed a lot of tech teams over the
| years across multiple companies and including remote teams
| in different countries, I can confidently say that people
| already act exactly like this.
|
| > Labor should aim to do the least work possible for the
| most compensation and only do what gets by. Labor too is
| not a benevelot source of resources for a business to
| leverage, it's a two way street.
|
| This is how most people operate, especially in the tech
| world in recent years. Usually when people go above and
| beyond, it's for promotion and advancement opportunities or
| to build their resume to move to another job.
|
| The thing is, if either side takes these positions too far
| then the other side is going to want to cut ties. A company
| doing a 6% layoff into an obvious global downturn isn't
| exactly unreasonable. An employee who actively tries to do
| as little as possible and requires more management
| oversight than their peers is being unreasonable, though,
| and will find themselves at the top of the list for layoffs
| (with good reason).
|
| Neither companies nor employees should be adopting extreme
| positions. I don't see Spotify doing anything unreasonable
| here.
| fleddr wrote:
| Yes, that is a core truth, but doesn't excuse the current
| behavior. There's a lot of middle ground between "employment
| for life" and "you're a disposable object".
|
| For sure you can treat employees as disposable objects, but
| this zero trust situation surely will backlash in one way or
| another.
| dunreith wrote:
| All of these layoff announcements, regardless of high profits
| or otherwise, are quickly eroding any sense of loyalty I have
| toward my company - and it should do the same for all of the
| tech workers out there.
|
| You have to do what's best for you and those that you support.
| Do not accept anything less; your company certainly will not.
|
| Until it becomes apparent that the constant turnover of tech
| workers hits the bottom line, these companies will do less than
| nothing to make things better for their employees.
| gadders wrote:
| I got asked to do a survey when I opened the Spotify app last
| week. All the questions were of a "What would you do if this
| price rise happened?" and most of the varieties had the family
| plan going to PS20.99.
|
| I don't know what they are smoking to think that they're worth
| more than a Netflix subscription. Video > audio. If they put the
| family plan price up I'll cancel it and use Prime Music or
| something.
| wittycardio wrote:
| [dead]
| wefarrell wrote:
| Netflix doesn't have all films and shows whereas Spotify has
| pretty much every song. For video I have Netflix, Amazon Prime,
| HBO, Disney plus and Hulu but for music I only have Spotify.
| rchaud wrote:
| > _Video > audio_
|
| This is why they're now offering video and podcasts. They want
| to be valued the same way Netflix and YouTube are, and they
| can't do it with an audio-only offering.
| plaidfuji wrote:
| > video > audio
|
| Agreed, but keep in mind this is "access to virtually all
| available audio" vs "access to one particular channel/library
| of video"
| lucsky wrote:
| > I don't know what they are smoking to think that they're
| worth more than a Netflix subscription. Video > audio.
|
| Hard disagree, video streaming platforms are a gigantic hot
| mess where movies and shows _constantly_ appear and expire, you
| never know where to look, if something is available or not
| anymore or for how long.
|
| Spotify and friends are constantly _growing_ libraries, where
| everything is available, at all time, always (modulo the
| expected lawyer temper tantrums here and there). It boggles my
| mind how people can feel so entitled that they wouldn 't accept
| paying a bit more for _sixty million_ tracks available
| everywhere every time all the time.
|
| Spotify is a shit company, with garbage mobile and desktop
| clients, but the service is absolutely insanely cheap for what
| it is, I personally would gladly pay double and still be happy
| about it.
|
| They are worth way more than a stupid Netflix subscription in
| my book. Vastly.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Netflix has been doing the same thing by cracking down on
| sharing of accounts between family members not living in the
| same house, etc. I'd probably sooner cancel Netflix or Amazon
| Prime than Spotify. I've actually been thinking about that
| lately because they seem to be putting out less nice content
| lately.
|
| I might just start subscription hopping for a while. Binge on a
| bunch of HBO things. Cancel that, move on to Prime, pay for a
| few months of Netflix, Apple TV, and so on. The issue is that
| none of them have enough quality content to keep me there
| permanently and they all have some content that is at least
| tempting. There are a couple of shows per year on each that I
| really enjoy and then just a lot of filler content that I don't
| really care as much about. I actually watch more free content
| on Youtube at this point then Netflix.
|
| There are a few alternatives to Spotify. I'd say Prime Music is
| probably the least polished of them. AWS for all their success
| as a retailer just never figured out how to do decent UX. Prime
| video is pretty bad for example.
|
| I've heard good things about Tidal and I kind of like their
| focus on artist revenue. But for now, I'm pretty happy with
| Spotify and the switching is not really worth the trouble to
| me. In terms of cost most of these things are pretty close
| together.
| halgir wrote:
| > I might just start subscription hopping for a while.
|
| Aren't you worried about how this will look on your resume?
| imchillyb wrote:
| > I might just start subscription hopping for a while.
|
| >> Aren't you worried about how this will look on your
| resume? @halgir
|
| You jest, but this type of censorship is coming to a
| business near you in the very-near future.
| imchillyb wrote:
| When Spotify threatened to cancel my account for sharing with
| my sister, I cancelled Spotify instead.
|
| Spotify removed password sharing first.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| I get what you're saying but I also want to clarify that an
| equivalent analogy would be if Netflix had nearly EVERY film/TV
| show that was ever released.
| orra wrote:
| > I don't know what they are smoking to think that they're
| worth more than a Netflix subscription
|
| Don't worry, I am sure Netflix will put up their prices again.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| SiriusXM costs from $18-$23/month for ad free streaming. That's
| channels instead of on demand playback. The prices that are
| being asked for make me wish we just had a better successor to
| FM radio.
| halgir wrote:
| > Video > audio
|
| I get what you mean, but I wouldn't accept that as a universal
| truth. I spend considerably more time listening to music on
| Spotify than I do watching video on Netflix. The content I
| consume on Netflix may have cost more to produce, but the
| content I consume on Spotify gives me subjectively more value.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I agree with you - music keeps me entertained all day, it has
| far more value to me. But isn't there an argument to be made
| that the infrastructure requirements for video is huge
| compared to music? The requirements to store and stream
| enough 4k video all day every day to satisfy millions of
| users is monstrous and that has to factor into the cost. I
| wouldn't expect streaming audio to be nearly that costly.
| halgir wrote:
| The only reason music streaming is so cheap is because it's
| a commodity. There's several multi-billion dollar
| corporations all competing with largely identical products.
| There's not much else than price to compete on.
|
| Video services compete on exclusive content, so they can
| make subjective value considerations around how valuable
| certain content is to certain groups.
| ghaff wrote:
| And, related is that there's a royalty/copyright
| structure in music that means those multi-billion dollar
| companies can stream almost anything they want for a
| known low dollar amount.
|
| There's also an almost infinite supply of good music--
| past and present--out there. There just isn't a lot of
| incentive for most audio streaming services to invest in
| exclusive content--the odd podcast notwithstanding.
| ghaff wrote:
| If streaming got too expensive, I'd just buy more music now
| and then. I managed fine before streaming and I'd manage
| without it. But then I have a big library.
| Terretta wrote:
| Apple One which includes Apple Music, family app sharing,
| family storage, and family privacy (essentially TOR for
| everyday browsing, except through a privacy preserving tango
| between Apple and CloudFlare) is a surprisingly good value
| relative to the standalone music offerings.
|
| https://www.apple.com/apple-one/
|
| Family is $22.95 a month, with 5 other people:
|
| - Apple Music
|
| - Apple TV+
|
| - Apple Arcade
|
| - iCloud+ (with photos and video sharing, email/cal hosting
| with family domain name, hide my email, private browsing)
| rxyz wrote:
| Apple Music is very clunky, much worse experience than
| spotify. I tried twice to switch. I would recommend paying a
| dollar for icloud+ and ignoring the rest.
| Terretta wrote:
| One is for people who like collecting music and discovering
| things you wouldn't have discovered. The other is for
| people who like radio, and hearing more things like the
| things they already like.
|
| They're only superficially the same, in fact they're wildly
| different. Each will be a "worse experience" if your
| preferred experience is the other.
| canucklady wrote:
| Spotify is dumping tons of resources into live streaming video
| podcasts, I guess they heard "people pay for videos" and didn't
| realize the video had to be good
| dataengineer56 wrote:
| The Spotify app constantly frustrates me and I miss the old
| Google Play Music app.
|
| - I listened to 5 minutes of one episode of a podcast once,
| decided it wasn't for me and stopped, but ever since then I have
| an entire pane on my homepage dedicated to my apparent love for
| that podcast.
|
| - The first 4 sections of the homepage recommend me exactly the
| same things - I have the last 6 albums I listened to at the top,
| then "Jump back in", then "Recently played" and then "Recommended
| for today". There's no "here's some stuff you haven't listened to
| lately". I regularly enjoy an album, burn myself out on it
| (because it's always presented to me), don't listen to it for a
| week and then completely forget about it because Spotify never
| mentions it again.
|
| - The queuing functionality is horrible. There's way to add a new
| album to the end of the current queue. That means I have to
| consciously realise that I'm listening to the last song of an
| album and then queue up what I want to listen to next. It
| regularly gets confused especially if I connect it to a Bluetooth
| device mid-album, and will sometime decide to truncate my queue,
| chopping off the last few songs of an album or repeating a middle
| few songs that I've already listened to.
|
| How can such a simple concept (listen to music) get so many
| basics so wrong and have such glaring bugs?
| jerpint wrote:
| The most frustrating for me is the way the "offline" feature
| works. On my android, even though I had downloaded
| songs/podcasts/etc. I had to dig in settings and set it
| explicitly to offline mode to enable offline playback.
|
| Another grievance: I love music and podcasts and use Spotify
| for both. It would be great to have a podcast tab and a music
| tab. Instead, if you switch from one to the other, you'll have
| to dig out the previous episode you were listening to. Very
| user unfriendly
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| The whole offline / no data experience is absolutely terrible
| if you live anywhere like Canada where mobile data rates are
| small and expensive. The #1 complaint I've heard about
| Spotify for years is "I set it to not download music on data
| then didn't notice I was listening to a new playlist and now
| I'm out of data till next month". Also taking public transit
| like a subway without cell service was a pain. Hold on, let
| me open the settings in advance and flip the offline switch
| so I can keep listening to music on my commute. Ugh.
| jamil7 wrote:
| Offline is also weird on iOS, you often have to turn on
| airplane mode to get it into its offline state reliably.
| disruptiveink wrote:
| Don't forget the part that you now have to "love" a song or
| an album in order to download it because there's no "Add to
| Library" anymore, completely ruining the concept of "likes".
| How would I know if I like something or not if I have to say
| I "love" it in order to download it so I can listen to it
| later? Do I really "love" every single song of an album or
| was I just forced to say so in order to download the whole
| album? There is no possible way you're getting the correct
| data points out of me like this.
|
| There's three things I want out of Spotify:
|
| * Browse the albums of a particular artist and play it - this
| is becoming harder and harder;
|
| * Find and play one song in particular by title - this is the
| only thing Spotify still does right;
|
| * Download an album / playlist and be able to listen to it
| later on regardless of my internet connection status -
| besides the requirement to "love" it stupidity, the UI just
| hangs until it timeouts if you have a spotty connection. If
| you have the content, just display and play it! It's actually
| slightly better now when you have no connection, a while ago,
| if you were on a plane in Airplane Mode, it would hang for a
| few seconds "loading" until it gave up and displayed the
| album art it had downloaded - why?!
|
| I just want Winamp with a search engine and a downloader
| built in. Is that really so hard? Is Electron really adding
| any value here, or just making problems far harder to solve
| than they should be across every single platform?
| nikole9696 wrote:
| "Browse the albums of a particular artist and play it -
| this is becoming harder and harder"
|
| So much agreement here - of the most annoying things to me
| is that I can't just click on an artist and have an easy
| way to list every song by that artist.
| conradfr wrote:
| I use Deezer instead of Spotify, I don't know if it's better or
| worse, but what I can tell you is that I miss Google Play Music
| everyday.
| Aisen8010 wrote:
| Deezer has a lot of interface problems too.
|
| I think that Deezer is better because there is a button to
| 'don't recommend this track/artist'. I can filter the things
| that I dislike.
|
| Another positive thing about Deezer is that it shows less
| popups and notifications than Spotify.
| fleddr wrote:
| "How can such a simple concept (listen to music) get so many
| basics so wrong and have such glaring bugs?"
|
| Spotify internally has a model where they have a large number
| of small teams where each is responsible for only a tiny part
| of the experience. Possibly this leads to a lack of a coherent
| experience. The other factor may be the constant
| experimentation.
|
| Frankly, 20-30 year old media players were better. So what the
| point of it all is...I have no idea.
|
| Quite similar experience with the Netflix app where it seems
| every single day I have to wonder where they put my currently
| watching series.
|
| Ironically, we look up to these companies for their engineering
| culture. We really shouldn't. It's a hot mess. Toy tech. Deeply
| unserious about quality and customers.
| rpep wrote:
| The most frustrating one for me is that saving an album
| doesn't add the Artist to your artists list in your Library.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| You have to 'follow' the artist by going to their profile
| and clicking 'follow'. I much prefer this functionality
| because liking an album or a song does not mean I want to
| be exposed to all new music by the artist.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > Frankly, 20-30 year old media players were better. So what
| the point of it all is...I have no idea.
|
| I would say that Spotify does not compete with traditional
| media players, it competes with radio.
|
| If i want to listen to my favorite songs, there is no reason
| to use Spotify for that. But if i want something different-
| but-similar and i do not really know what, because i am not
| very interested in music, then discoverability of new music
| by Spotify is game-changing.
| xiwenc wrote:
| Spotify should serve both audiences: consistency and
| discover new ones.
|
| I think Apple Music got it right. I like how you can start
| a radio of any song. Or just play your own favorites.
| TingPing wrote:
| Spotify has always had "Song Radio".
| calebh wrote:
| For me song radio simply plays songs that I've already
| listened to but are similar to the current song.
| Completely useless for discovering new music.
| dataengineer56 wrote:
| The constant moving of the Netflix "currently watching" pane
| is a huge annoyance for me, especially because it looks the
| same as every other pane ("horror films", "British comedy"
| etc). My grandma can't figure it out, she needs to be able to
| press the same buttons every time she goes on the app and
| Netflix doesn't let her do that.
| fleddr wrote:
| Not even episode syncing works (for me). I clearly finished
| watching an episode yet regularly on another device the
| next episode would be the one I already watched. Just one
| of many basic things that doesn't work.
|
| I forgot to add that not only will they change "currently
| playing" every 3 secs, also the cover art of each series
| changes, as an A/B test. So if you use that as a visual
| confirmation, well tough luck.
|
| In the case of Netflix, there's a reason for all of this.
| They don't really want you to go and sniff around the
| catalog in easy ways. You might discover its not great.
| Best to throw a bunch of random stuff in your face to give
| you the illusion of a fabulously rich and "dynamic"
| experience.
|
| The distraction UX of Netflix is intentional. In the case
| of Spotify it's mostly incompetence.
| MandieD wrote:
| "She needs to be able to press the same buttons every time
| she goes on that app and [insert app name here] doesn't let
| her do that" must sum up at least 90% of user problems.
| bfeynman wrote:
| Anecdotally I disagree. I think I have a pretty eclectic
| taste, and spotify has helped me discover tons of new songs,
| but also still keeps my daily mixes coherent. I find myself
| listening to their autogenerated ones most of the time since
| they are very easy to craft and extend.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _Spotify internally has a model where they have a large
| number of small teams where each is responsible for only a
| tiny part of the experience. Possibly this leads to a lack of
| a coherent experience._
|
| Which is particularly surprising since they have multiple
| teams of highly compensated product people who are supposed
| to be guiding the overall product direction and preventing
| just that kind of incoherence.
| randomifcpfan wrote:
| Google Play Music was designed in a pre-streaming world, when
| albums were much more popular.
|
| Unfortunately, very few people use streaming services to listen
| to albums.
|
| It is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but given the
| minuscule usage of albums by users, it's not worth Spotify's
| time to optimize the album playback experience. (Same goes for
| Classical music.)
|
| Your problem with a static, duplicate list of suggested music
| sounds like a bug. Somehow Spotify's recommendation algorithm
| has run out of ideas of what to show you, so it just shows you
| the same thing several times.
| hef19898 wrote:
| +1 on Google Music, I really miss that.
| hbn wrote:
| There are plenty of dedicated podcast apps that offer a better
| experience with no or very little algorithmic recommendation
| system.
|
| I've used PocketCasts for years and it's been perfect and doing
| exactly what it needs to do and no more. The main page is just
| a grid of podcasts I'm subscribed to, and I can go into a list
| of all unplayed episodes of all my podcasts sorted
| chronologically. There is a "discover" tab that has
| featured/trending podcasts, but I never touch that other than
| to use the search (which doubles as an entry field where you
| can paste an RSS link to subscribe that way)
| traveler01 wrote:
| It's algorithm is really dumb. That's why these companies need
| to stop with these so called "algorithms", we should only
| select the genres of music we like and our front page should be
| a reflection of it.
|
| I still remember when my girlfriend searched for a fart noise
| podcast as a joke and then I kept getting suggestions based on
| it for weeks.
| aequitas wrote:
| I just went back to Spotify after trying a 6 month Apple Music
| trial for only 3 weeks. Apple Music is even worse. First of all
| they don't support handoff between my mac and iPhone. A feature
| that Spotify supports a lot better. There is no way to go back
| to the previous song. The mac app constantly fails to resume
| playing a song after a short while paused. And sometimes I have
| to go to a song or playlist again to get it to start playing
| music again. Searching for song has horrible ux. I haven't
| found a way to get to the playlist I'm currently on.
|
| While spotify has its issues I'm now a lot more happy with it
| after trying an alternative.
| [deleted]
| xenolithis wrote:
| Songza(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songza) really brought a
| lot of value to GPM. RIP
| silveroriole wrote:
| I think the most amazing mistake Spotify made was that recently
| all private playlists suddenly became public, because they
| changed the meaning of private and public to introduce some
| weird third level of privacy. I now have no idea what the
| privacy settings do.
|
| Second most amazing was when they made the scrollbar literally
| two pixels wide and therefore unusable.
|
| It's not even that these are huge errors but it just makes you
| wonder who drove those change and why? What on Earth are their
| teams up to when they're prioritising those kinds of changes?
| mikhael28 wrote:
| It's so they could sell your music preferences. You got got.
| EastSmith wrote:
| WTF? I just checked all my private playlist are now public!
| WTF Spotify?!?
| silveroriole wrote:
| They say that "public" means what "private" used to mean,
| "added to profile" means what "public" used to mean, and
| "private" now means that people can't see the playlist at
| all even if they have a link to it. But it's completely
| unclear which setting controls whether someone can search
| for the playlist by name and find it. I found out about
| this public/private change because I somehow got a
| subscriber to a playlist I'd thought was completely
| private, so I'm sure the previously private playlists
| actually did become more public without my permission...
| mikhael28 wrote:
| They probably made a good chunk selling your now public
| playlist music preferences to advertisers.
| puszczyk wrote:
| WTF!!! Same here, the playlists are now public
| hadrien01 wrote:
| For your second point, there's a Time Capsule playlist with
| content you haven't recently listened to.
| dataengineer56 wrote:
| I listen to albums, not songs, and looking at that playlist
| then there's a lot of stuff there that I've never listened to
| and have no desire to listen to. Spotify seems exceptionally
| bad at metal music and says "oh you listen to prog metal?
| Then you're definitely going to love us constantly
| recommending you the exact same Korn, Slipknot and blink-182
| albums".
| agluszak wrote:
| > The queuing functionality is horrible. There's way to add a
| new album to the end of the current queue.
|
| That's precisely why I chose Tidal over Spotify when GPM died
| xtracto wrote:
| I am just waiting for the personal I formation train to get to
| include my listening history and like/dislike behaviour.
|
| There should be an XML/JSON standard to store, download and
| share that information. I've got a listening history in
| last.fm, another in spotify, another in Tidal an finally in
| youtube. I should be able to use them together in any platform.
| My listening habits is also my personal information.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| And yet, people still pay for crap experiences. For me, even a
| slight annoyance means I'm out, with a quick email to 'contact
| us' explaining exactly why. Never heard back from several and
| they dont receive my $$ anymore.
| bitexploder wrote:
| You still cant search for a song in your playlists only either.
| nvarsj wrote:
| After using plexamp for the last year, it just reinforced my
| impression that the UX of Spotify is cosmically bad. Plexamp
| feels a lot like winamp, it is a nice pared down experience
| that just works and is fast.
|
| But I guess I'm just one data point. Spotify has enough users
| that they have no incentive to make any kind of radical change.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Podcasts are interesting for Spotify because they keep the
| listener attached to the service while their (royalty and
| license) costs are minimal. Just like they inject all kinds of
| cheap music from unknown artists in your recommendations.
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| Another company turning off the peacocking and turning on the
| dominant business practices culture that makes them great to
| begin with.
| gruez wrote:
| more discussion (80 comments as of this posting) here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34488121
| polygotdomain wrote:
| I think we've gotten into this weird spot where tech companies
| are almost goading each other into layoffs. I don't doubt that
| there was some overexpansion during COVID, but it seems to have
| shifted. Tech companies have signaled to the market that staffing
| numbers were too high (regardless of profitability), and that
| investors want to see them brought back down. These layoffs don't
| really seem to be an indication of company strength, and the
| golden parachutes that a lot of these companies are offering
| can't really be that helpful to the bottom line (5mo + unused PTO
| + benefits in this case for Spotify). It's just playing things up
| for a certain audience while the general public is largely
| distracted.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > These layoffs don't really seem to be an indication of
| company strength
|
| They never were.
|
| I'm old and completely fucking puzzled by this assertion from
| Millennials that strong companies wouldn't do layoffs.
| grey-area wrote:
| This is a bubble imploding, this is serious.
|
| The value of money has shifted for good after a decade of
| excess, there is rampant inflation and there is a recession
| incoming.
|
| These companies have seen the writing on the wall and are
| making the first of many layoffs to address this. This started
| last year and will last another year at least, possibly a few
| years.
|
| Apparently most eases of this sore are still in denial about it
| but the reasons are real and presssing.
|
| The other thing this paradigm shift in rates impacts of course
| is profitless startups which are now worth zero if they can't
| turn a profit within a year. Those that can't will go bust and
| lay off all employees, thus making the recession deeper.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| My experiences around bubbles popping were substantially more
| violent and sudden.
|
| This feels a lot more like a normal ebb. I doubt this layoff
| trend continues past June, and other companies are still
| hiring.
| type-r wrote:
| Why do you say it has shifted "for good"? The Fed itself
| plans to bring interest rates back down actually fairly
| quickly [0], following a half-year of decreasing inflation
| rates [1].
|
| [0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcprojtab
| l20...
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273418/unadjusted-
| monthl...
| grey-area wrote:
| The Fed is infamous for being wrong, both in projections
| and in reactions.
|
| In fact a good case could be made for their policy mistakes
| leading them to this dilemma where they must choose between
| causing inflation or recession.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Okay but if that was true, these companies wouldn't also be
| issuing massive stock buybacks at the same time. It's normal
| ebb to someone with decades of time in the industry.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| If not goading, they're at least providing some cover for each
| other. If a company is looking to cut some percentage of staff,
| it's best to tuck that into the news cycle when many of your
| peers are doing the same thing.
| tootie wrote:
| I think everyone trying to attribute some kind of 4D chess
| maneuvers to these actions is massively overestimating tech
| CEOs.
| ditonal wrote:
| 100%
|
| People regurgitate "they overhired during COVID and now
| they're making the prudent decision to cut costs"
|
| The first part of the sentence implies poor decision making
| by weak leaders, so they lose the benefit of the doubt
| they're capable of prudent decisions.
|
| You can't have it both ways - they made a stupid copycat
| decision to overhire but now layoffs are smart and
| thoughtful.
|
| Occam's razor - they made stupid copycat decisions both times
| because in both cases execs act with a herd mentality.
|
| I can't tell you the number of times the "leaders" of big
| tech companies I've worked at cited decisions by researching
| "peer companies". Management wants to self identify as
| leaders but their decision making is literally based on
| following the same decisions of other companies. They think
| "if company A is doing it, it must be smart " the only
| problem is that the peer companies they're copying are
| themselves copying others.
|
| All of these big tech companies have been overtaken by
| professional politicians incapable of leading , with perhaps
| Apple as the lone exception.
|
| This is a golden time to launch a startup as the big
| companies are putting their lunch money on the table and
| cowering in fear.
| ryandrake wrote:
| A previous HN article called them "copycat layoffs"[1] which
| makes the most sense. This is reactive panic from "leaders"
| looking at each other for hints of what to do. A lot of
| companies determine their product and engineering strategies
| this way too. An exercise to the reader: Think about the
| major decisions your company has made since you've joined...
| How much of it was simply because competitors or bigger
| example companies were also doing it?
|
| EDIT: 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34480314
| pm90 wrote:
| It's not a deliberate plan but more like FOMO. It seems
| reasonable that execs hang out in similar social groups and
| have similar viewpoints and predictions. Once a specific idea
| has taken hold, company leadership has to either fight it or
| give in.
| EastSmith wrote:
| Just learned that Spotify made all the private playlist (along
| the playlist' label) public.
|
| Someone posted about it the other thread for the same news.
|
| I am shocked.
| mh- wrote:
| I don't see them visible on my profile, as of now, but my
| profile also doesn't seem to be loading reliably.
|
| I _can_ confirm that private playlists are accessible by their
| link even in an incognito window. That _is_ surprising to me.
| Has that always been the case?
|
| edit: a quick google suggests that sharing by link is known to
| allow access to anyone with the link.
| saos wrote:
| Reminder. You're disposable. I matter how secure you think you
| may be.
| morgango wrote:
| At one point I tried to switch to Spotify for my podcast
| consumption and quickly found it to be unusable as soon as I had
| to travel.
|
| They simply are not interested in the podcast consumption
| features, like downloading the latest X episodes and having them
| easily available offline. I hope they can figure out that podcast
| episodes are not spoken word songs that go into playlists.
| shantara wrote:
| It feels like a pure bandwagon action, and not one that was well
| thought out and came from the organization's needs.
|
| To give one data point, I have a friend who just joined Spotify
| and had his first working day last week.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| Why does it take 12k people to stream a song on my phone? I'm
| being kind of sarcastic but kind of not.
| amir734jj wrote:
| I am a Spotify user for a long time. I don't understand this
| layoff. They spend millions on podcasts deals ... I just want a
| music app with good discovery option and offline listening mode.
| Am I asking too much?
| baguettefurnace wrote:
| sounds like you'd like Pandora
| hsavit1 wrote:
| Another "I take full accountability for the moves that got us
| here today." message from the CEO. What does this accountability
| mean? Shouldn't he be fired and stripped of all benefits, just as
| he did for those employees that got axed?
| andsoitis wrote:
| > What does this accountability mean?
|
| It means to own up to one's mistake and fixing it. It isn't
| that mysterious.
| [deleted]
| htrp wrote:
| 50 million charge for 600 jobs, average of 83k for severance....
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Weird wording for layoffs.
| netheril96 wrote:
| When I read the title "Spotify reducing employee base by about
| 6%", I thought Spotify was reducing the base compensation of all
| employees instead of laying people off. How wrong I was.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| More doom and gloom. Last few years have been terrible.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yeah we seem to have had hit our industry peak in November
| 2021.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Strange memories on this nervous night in Palo Alto. Five
| years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a
| Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again. San
| Francisco in the middle twenties was a very special time and
| place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not,
| in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or
| music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you
| were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.
| Whatever it meant. . . .
|
| History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit,
| but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely
| reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a
| whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for
| reasons that nobody really understands at the time--and which
| never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
|
| My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five
| or maybe forty nights--or very early mornings--when I left
| the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the
| big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an
| hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's
| jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at
| the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite
| sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end
| (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find
| neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being
| absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would
| come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I
| was: No doubt at all about that. . . .
|
| There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not
| across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los
| Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere.
| There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were
| doing was right, that we were winning. . . .
|
| And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable
| victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or
| military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply
| prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or
| theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of
| a high and beautiful wave. . . .
|
| So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep
| hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of
| eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where
| the wave finally broke and rolled back."
| dbspin wrote:
| Watched the Gimme Shelter documentary last night and it
| made me wonder if, when Thompson wrote that piece, he
| wasn't merely being allegorical. Perhaps he was also
| referencing the Altamonte Speedway which is North West of
| Vegas as the crow flies and where in a sense the 'sixties'
| came to a very definite end.
| mrweasel wrote:
| There's still a ton of jobs out there, depending on where in
| the world you're able to work. They might not be as exciting,
| the companies aren't as well known, but they still pay fairly
| well and it's stable.
|
| I do feel bad for those who are losing their jobs, it's not
| their fault. Many of the companies currently firing people
| simply had too many employees to begin with. Daniel Elk even
| admits it: "I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our
| revenue growth".
| nivenkos wrote:
| It really depends where, outside the US pay is pretty
| terrible usually.
|
| In Europe for example, as a senior developer you get maybe
| $70-90k in FAANG and big companies, and $50-70k in smaller
| companies.
| mrweasel wrote:
| It's a little hard to compare across countries in Europe,
| even within a small country. I'm in Denmark, but outside
| Copenhagen. $90.000 isn't a terrible salary and $100.000 is
| pretty doable for a senior developer, dev-ops or operation
| person. You can go a bit higher in Copenhagen. That's not
| for the FAANGs, that's for the companies that a desperately
| looking for employees.
|
| Other countries have much lower cost of living, so I don't
| see the issue with saleries being lower in those countries.
|
| Again very much depending on which country you're in, I'd
| say that $50.000 is a starting salary, perhaps on the low-
| end, for a developer fresh out of school.
| danjac wrote:
| What's weird is that _all_ of these CEOs are saying the same
| thing: "I hired too many folks a couple years ago, welp,
| guess I was wrong".
|
| You would think some companies hired too many, some hired too
| few, others more or less just stayed the same. Instead we're
| seeing this groupthink of these so-called geniuses of the
| industry moving this way and that like a flock of sheep.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Those CEOs knew what they were doing and what they're doing
| isn't wrong.
|
| Our entire economy is built on short term gain and rewards
| that. CEOs are worried about their quarterly numbers and
| are doing layoffs to lessen the blow.
| mvdwoord wrote:
| It is almost as if the low interest rate stimulated
| frivolous spending by investors..
| [deleted]
| noisy_boy wrote:
| We just sort of came off a pandemic into what seems like another
| pandemic.
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