•

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised at negative impact of laying off 1,500 Spotify employees

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/04/23/spotify-earnings-q1-ceo-daniel-eklaying-off-1500-spotify-employees-negatively-affected-streaming-giants-operations/

Ek said Spotify employees were doing too much "work around the work" as he laid off 17% of the group's workforce in December.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised at negative impact of laying off 1,500 Spotify employees

Ek said Spotify employees were doing too much "work around the work" as he laid off 17% of the group's workforce in December.

44 comments

Fedizen

•

CEO does not understand who is doing work

tourist

•

surely not the workers

all they do is sit in front of their desks for hours

GamingChairModel

•

There's two parts to being successful at a job: successfully accomplishing the work that fits into your role, and successfully messaging to your bosses that you're doing a good job.

So when executives lay people off, it tends to catch people who are bad at that second task (the messaging/perception side), which may or may not include people who are good at the first task (actually doing good shit for the company).

That's why mass layoffs are damaging, and should be avoided if possible.

MimicJar

•

Layoffs also shake every other employee in an immeasurable way.

Even if you didn't lay someone off they may now change their priorities. Maybe they focus on the people pleaser tasks. Maybe they focus more on what is good for them to keep their job vs what is good for the company.

Layoffs should be a last resort but tech companies are just playing follow the leader right now. In a few years we'll see memoirs and books stating "in hindsight we may have made a mistake, but we made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time", it's all absolutely bullshit. This is all being done for a temporary stock boost.

atrielienz

•

The CEO can't apparently effectively communicate to his staff what the workflow priorities of the company should be and he's blaming them for basically contributing to that workflow "inefficiently" because he's a bad leader who obviously didn't lay off the right people (middle managers).

Additionally he's promising shareholders a pipedream he's having trouble delivering on because they do not have control over the continued and rising cost of licensing and nobody seems to want to do anything at all about that. The whole industry is over a barrel and they just accept it. And so do we as consumers.

kautau

•

Once Spotify changed their entire UI to focus on engagement instead of a good UX, I switched to another service. I wish the best for those employees that were laid off, and the worst for a CEO driven by profit above all else

Vorticity

•

May I ask what service you switched to? I'm tired of my music app being cluttered with podcasts and audio books. I use other services for this things and don't need them in Spotify.

kautau

•

I switched to tidal. Recently had a huge price drop to compete with Spotify and Apple Music. It’s not perfect, but it has lossless audio, and works well for my needs

VieuxQueb

•

I started using Tidal when I learned they where the ones who pay the artists the most. I don't know if it's still true today tho.

kautau

•

Yeah that was part of my motivation as well. I’m unsure how that will change now with their significant price drop, I was happy paying the previous prices, as it was like the cost of buying 3 $10 CDs a month, and I listened to considerably more music than that

fsr1967

•

Does tidal have the feature Spotify does where you can transfer what's playing from one device to another? I use that somewhat frequently.

kautau

•

Yeah you can do the same thing as Spotify and change the output on the fly within the app

fsr1967

•

Thanks!

TeNppa

•

Does the switching really work? I've been eyeing Tidal since Spotify is shit at that. Too many times I get "can't play this song" when switching from pc to mobile or vice versa. Sometimes it won't even switch and I have to force close both, which is not possible when I'm outside and not near the pc.

kautau

•

Hmm, I don’t use the feature frequently, but it hasn’t failed on me. I can say that I use CarPlay frequently, and Tidal’s CarPlay implementation is a thousand times more reliable than Spotify, so when it comes to device based implementations they seem to have done a great job.

Looks like they offer a free trial, https://offer.tidal.com/ so I would say probably best to pilot it with that and see if it suites your needs

EDIT:

Testing on my app, it doesn’t seem to do what you want to do. You can select different output devices seamlessly, but you can switch between two clients the way Spotify can, sorry for the misunderstanding. Hope you find something that works for you

SomethingBurger

•

I use Deezer. It also has podcasts but they don't shove it up your face, in fact I just checked and I don't even see them on the app's home screen. I have to specifically search for them.

JigglypuffSeenFromAbove

•

I use Deezer too. The only thing I miss is being able to bookmark my favorite radio stations. It's so weird that we don't have that yet!

Chadus_Maximus

•

Qbittorrent LMAO. Also some Russian music hosting sites that appear as quickly as they get taken down.

Newpipe for when I don't need 320kbps, such as podcasts.

essteeyou

•

So he's about to rehire all those people he laid off, right? Surely he's not just saying this, but still expecting everyone who's left to cover all the work he's surprised by. Surely he knew these details before he fucked over a bunch of workers, right?

Jimmyeatsausage

•

Pizza Party Fridays (5 pm - midnight, hackathon and 1/2 off pizza (plus tax))

Attendance mandatory!

originalfrozenbanana

•

Absolutely not and he’s learned nothing

“It took us some time to find our footing, but more than four months into this transition, I think we’re back on track and I expect to continue improving on our execution throughout the year getting us to an even better place than we’ve ever been.”

originalfrozenbanana

•

Paywalled hard

EdibleFriend

•

LOL they want 30 a month too

originalfrozenbanana

•

I mean it’s called fortune not broke ass \s

Gork

•

I want to subscribe to broke ass magazine

Dran_Arcana

•

costs only an email address and a promise to sign up for a 37% APY credit card.

jballs

•

You're thinking of Cracked

catloaf

•

You can't afford it

EdibleFriend

•

Fair.

victorz

•

takeda

•

I was able to get it from here: https://archive.is/20240425003720/https://fortune.com/europe/2024/04/23/spotify-earnings-q1-ceo-daniel-eklaying-off-1500-spotify-employees-negatively-affected-streaming-giants-operations/

originalfrozenbanana

•

My hero

tedu

•

The full quote if you don't want to read the article.

Another significant challenge was the impact of December workforce reduction. Although there’s no question that it was the right strategic decision, it did disrupt our day-to-day operations more than we anticipated. It took us some time to find our footing, but more than four months into this transition, I think we’re back on track and I expect to continue improving on our execution throughout the year getting us to an even better place than we’ve ever been.

And the full transcript of the earnings call if you want to read the whole thing.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4685308-spotify-technology-s-spot-q1-2024-earnings-call-transcript

Vorticity

•

Ah, it's from an earnings call so it is trying to put everything in the best possible light. I wonder how much fan-splattered shit he is glossing over in that statement.

snek

•

Exactly

I can heae beyond his buzzwords that what he means is that thibgs are awful and morale is low, and that he hopes it is now over but we all know it isn't.

assassin_aragorn

•

It took us some time to find our footing, but more than four months into this transition, I think we’re back on track

Did they save more money by firing those employees than they lost in the murky transition? It certainly doesn't seem like it.

obinice

•

The full quote if you don't want to read the article.

Or can't afford to.

I ain't giving some random news website more money than I pay monthly for my Internet connection just to read some article about Spotify, they can go screw xD

NoIWontPickaName

•

Well, at least they gave them 5 months severance pay.

Didn't expect that

Badeendje

•

Might I suggest the Spotify employees unionize or better yet.. US tech workers. That way they can make a fist and punch this guy in the proverbial dick.

AllNewTypeFace

•

They were in the process of unionising in Sweden, when the layoffs dropped. Some months later, Spotify cancelled talks about the proposed collective agreement, insisting a statement that Spotify employees don’t need unions because their working conditions are already exceedingly generous.

(A bit of background: workplace collective agreements are commonplace in Sweden. Spotify, though, seems to have tried to import US union-busting practices, not unlike Tesla.)

snek

•

And let's not get started on 'Employer Unions' like ALMEGA (which in my head is synonymous with Satan)

NoIWontPickaName

•

Hows that going for Tesla? Havent heard anything about that since the license plates

AllNewTypeFace

•

As of a few weeks ago, the strike is still going, with everyone from cleaners to electricians refusing to work for Tesla.

nickwitha_k

•

They should make sure to get the sanitation workers on board.

SuperSaiyanSwag

•

I don’t know if I could live with myself knowing how many lives I ruined, maybe that’s why the shit floats to the top. Sane people are not as accomplished because they “don’t make the tough decisions”.