• tedu@azorius.net
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    7 months ago

    I like how the verb in the headline evolves every time I see this story. First he was surprised. Then he was shocked. Now he’s alarmed. Maybe I’ll check back tomorrow and learn he’s horrified!

  • laxe@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Layoffs are a leadership failure so should always be accompanied by firing them too

    • just_another_person@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      They only do this for end of year bonuses for shareholders and the C level folks. They don’t give a single shit about who it affects. People’s lives were ruined over this.

  • Evotech@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    It’s just insane to me that it even takes 1500 people to run Spotify to begin with

    • moon
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      7 months ago

      People think that because you can build a Spotify clone with two sticks and a heroku subscription it must not need a lot of people to work on. It’s what Elon said about Twitter prior to buying it and gutting all the features.

      These apps are first and foremost businesses with legal, HR, and all sorts of other roles before you get to product. And the products are so mature, so complex, that you need dozens of teams to cover the entire thing

    • Sprokes@jlai.lu
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      7 months ago

      Why not? Some companies do have a fraction of Spotify users and have around 100 software engineers. Things do not run by themselves. Also they are in many countries so you need to keep up with legal changes…

    • kingthrillgore
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      7 months ago

      I can see the need for those engineers but more importantly, Spotify needs sales people.

      • moon
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        7 months ago

        Spotify is also a record label now. They probably need an entire division devoted just to the marketing and strategy needed to make that successful

  • umbrella
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    7 months ago

    i tought this was the onion for a second

  • xenoclast@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    He and the shareholders still made a ton of money. They will do it again so they can make a ton more money.

    He doesn’t care and never will.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    7 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    In December, music streaming giant Spotify fired 1,500 workers, a cohort amounting to a staggering 17 percent of its total workforce at the time.

    On an investor call this week following Spotify’s Q1 report, the streaming CEO admitted that while the layoffs were the “right strategic decision,” firing 1,500 employees “did disrupt our day-to-day operations more than we anticipated.”

    “It took us some time to find our footing,” Ek continued, according to Fortune, “but more than four months into this transition, think we’re back on track.”

    And sometimes, it’s true that companies do over-hire — a reality exemplified by the tech industry, which saw record layoffs last year after a decade of fairly steady workforce increases furthered by the industry’s pandemic hiring boom.

    Because copyright exists, access to an endless music library isn’t cheap.

    “On the surface,” Spotify’s business model “looks great,” Simon Dyson, senior principal analyst at the consultancy firm Omdia, told Wired last year following Ek’s layoff announcement.


    The original article contains 403 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!