Spotify To Trim 6% of Workforce in Latest Tech Layoffs (reuters.com) 28
Spotify said on Monday it plans to cut 6% of its workforce and would take a related charge of up to nearly $50 million, adding to the massive layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible recession. From a report: The tech industry is facing a demand downturn after two years of pandemic-powered growth during which it had hired aggressively. That has led firms from Meta to Microsoft to shed thousands of jobs. "Over the last few months we've made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn't been enough," Chief Executive Daniel Elk said in a blog post announcing the roughly 600 job cuts. "I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth," he added, echoing a sentiment voiced by other tech bosses in recent months. Spotify's operating expenditure grew at twice the speed of its revenue last year as the audio-streaming company aggressively poured money into its podcast business, which is more attractive for advertisers due to higher engagement levels.
Wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
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"This SNL skit from 2016 is a whimsical take at life behind-the-scenes at an internet music company such as Spotify. A power outage disrupts the servers and an 'intern' (Ariana Grande) is called on to cover hits by a variety of artists, providing the perfect showcase for Ariana's wide range of vocal talents."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Spotify runs off GCN, and was on AWS previously, so they don't really hire "an army of datacenter workers", someone else does that for them.
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You still need people to manage your cloud assets. Moving to the cloud doesn't really cut down on the workforce numbers. Just the hardware numbers.
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Yes, you need cloud admins, devops, solution architects and whatsnot, but those people are not physically in a datacenter and don't deal with the hardware, therefore don't qualify as "an army of datacenter workers".
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It started off a bit weak with the term "progressives" which is getting a bit overused now, and "woke" has really had it's day, but the whole "experimental mRNA jabs" thing is still pretty funny and "dropping dead on live TV with heart attacks and strokes" is hilarious.
7/10. Might read again.
Re:Wait... [for what? Expertise?] (Score:1)
Pretty feeble FP. Vacuous Subject, too. Yeah, I know correlation is not causation, but still...
The aspect that's started to interest me regarding all of these corporate layoffs is the residual expertise that the corporate cancers get to keep. I'm not saying it's free, because they did pay the experts to implement the code, but I'm trying to describe or understand the discount they get when times improve and they can hire cheap plodders to pick up where the expensive experts left off.
Closest match from my ex
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That crappy music service
Well, everyone is entitled to their own option, even if they are wrong.
System working as intended (Score:5, Insightful)
Company needs more money, lets:
1.) Increase our prices
2.) Reduce the quality of our products
3.) Remove benefits for our regular employees
4.) Cut corners on safety
5.) Lay off our workforce
6.) Steal from the pension fund
7.) Reduce upper management bonuses and perks
8.) Give less money to shareholders
Ha ha. I was just joking about 7 and 8. Nobody has said that ever.
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The beauty is that all companies are doing this at the moment. The main driver for inflation is not the energy cost, but corporate greed.
And as a customer, you cannot even switch to a competitor, because it is happening across the board.
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The beauty is that all companies are doing this at the moment. The main driver for inflation is not the energy cost, but corporate greed.
And as a customer, you cannot even switch to a competitor, because it is happening across the board.
In theory, the moment one emerges that isn't doing that we can all jump ship. Until the new kid on the block becomes market dominant...
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Mostly concurrence, but I think the main reason you can't switch is because so many niches are now dominated by a single company. Usually a corporate cancer, though sometimes a newbie about to be acquired by a corporate cancer.
In some niches there are a few options, but they copy each other so extensively that it's hard to see any difference in the flavors. Seriously and distinctively good email system? Anywhere?
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And as a customer, you cannot even switch to a competitor, because it is happening across the board.
That's the end goal of capitalism. The game is called Monopoly for a reason.
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8.) Give less money to shareholders
Keep in mind that the shareholders literally own the company. That's what being a shareholder means, you own a share (i.e. some percentage) of the company. So "giving" shareholders money is just giving them something that already belongs to them. Together as a group, they own the company, all its assets and all its cash. It's well within their rights to want to split out some of the cash and distribute it to themselves instead of keeping it in one big pot or spending it.
If a majority of the owners of a comp
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> I was just joking about 7 and 8. Nobody has said that ever.
Technically it has happened a few times:
* Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata took a 50% pay cut [hollywoodreporter.com] for five months
* Dan Price lowered [inc.com] his salary from $1.1 Million to $70,000 so that every employee could be paid $70,000.
But yeah, CEOs in 2021 were paid 399 (!) times [epi.org] the average worker.
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But yeah, CEOs in 2021 were paid 399 (!) times [epi.org] the average worker.
What you meant to say was "A tiny handful of CEOs at the very largest companies in the world in 2021 were paid 399 (!) times [epi.org] the average worker, while the vast majority of CEOs were paid much less"
A few people are able to stand out and through a combination of luck, preparation and skill navigate their way to exceptional positions. Sour grapes is not an attractive attitude. Don't spend your life wishing that others were less successful. Many CEOs are unsuccessful, many more are moderately successf
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Projecting much?
But if you can't see how excessive greed is a problem you are blind.
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self fulfilling prophecy (Score:3)
That's the point (Score:2, Interesting)
Powell has bluntly said he will not lower interest rates until he sees layoffs and lower wages. This is the tech companies trying to appease him without wasting too much money on pointless layoffs. They'll be rehiring all these positions in a year at huge expense. But they want interest rates down because high rates cost them money.
And nobody is going to just say "let's not screw over everyone that works for a living". That's n
good luck getting those people back (Score:2)
Oh noes they took our jerbs (Score:3)
No one cares. You didn't care when your establishment was shitting all over the non-work-from-home economy with useless lockdowns and inflation inducting helicopter money. Expect no sympathy whatsoever.
Lemmings? (Score:2)
Mass layoffs might be copycat syndrome and cost more in the end. [stanford.edu]
In biz you generally don't get chewed out as much if all your competitors also acted a certain way because the org won't be able to find many replacements who didn't make the same (wrong) decision; they're already snapped up. It's safety in numbers.
But look (Score:2)
Spotify has 107 open positions right now...
https://startup.jobs/@spotify [startup.jobs]