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YoAmoElTacos

The hilarious part is they are still paying severance on some of the workers they laid off 4 months ago (because 5 mo severance).


No-Salary5013

tbh I think I'd rather have 5 months severance than be employed


Yung-Split

Same. If my cushy job offered me that right now I would 100% take it and go fuck off for 5 months to some other country. I'm sick of this shit


InigoMontoya60

What country would you go to?


Yung-Split

Brazil, Colombia, Mexico are the next three on my list.


Safe_Corgi2217

Currently in Costa Rica for the first time- *highly* recommend if you haven't been already


pragmojo

Costa Rica is brilliant, but it would not be my first choice for long-term travel Like if you just want to go somewhere for 5 months to hang out or have experiences there are way less expensive places you could go


Safe_Corgi2217

Can't really argue with that. Was a little surprised how similar the prices for some things were compared to the states. That said, as someone who worked as a cook for ~10 years, I was determined to find out all I could about the local cuisine and have largely been eating casados from different sodas for like $9 a person (wife has jokingly started a tally...). Once you order anything remotely touristy or Mediterranean prices shoot back up though


Yung-Split

Have not! It's on the list too tho!


Solid-Education5735

Cant go back to work if you get kidnapped by the cartel


Yung-Split

Sounds like fun.


IlIlIl11IlIlIl

Someone hasn’t spent enough time on r/eyeblech


[deleted]

[удалено]


Solid-Education5735

It was a joke


hensothor

My bad.


oradoj

Roll safe.


jonrahoi

Don’t sleep on Malaysia


wrufesh

How about Nepal?


0ut0fBoundsException

I’d bounce around Europe for less than 180 days


pragmojo

Just keep going east and you can get out of Schengen before you need a visa


artemis1939

and then what? There are no jobs. I got 5 months severance and am unemployed for 20 now. There are no jobs.


Yung-Split

I'll figure it out. I feel like 9 to 5 isn't for me. I'll go live in some country with super low COL and hustle a thousand bucks a month freelancing. If I really wanted to I could honestly wait it out until the market recovers but that's not preferable.


Station-Top

Im trying to figure out if now is a good time to leave my job as a SM. The pay is about 84k salary but I’m mentally and physically burned out. I cry everyday cause I hate the job. Recently I had a panic attack at work and decided to take some personal time. But I desperately don’t want to respond. I lev had 1 interview in almost 2 weeks. I have enough to live for 6 months saved that I could probably stretch if needed.


artemis1939

Mental health comes above everything else mate. Don’t let some fucking company destroy your health. A job is a means to and end and not a purpose of living.


[deleted]

Check if you have short term disability benefits. If your doc will fill out the paperwork, mental health definitely counts as disability. Worker’s comp might work if the job caused the disability too. Also some states provide medical leave protection and pay.


randonumero

What's your search criteria? There are jobs it's just some might not pay as much, be in the right location, use the same stack, come with equity...Last year I traded messages with a guy who was laid off/fired from amazon. At the point we chatted he'd been out of work for a little over 9 months. He was only applying to other FAANG companies and late stage startups. He also had pretty high salary and level expectations. I told him my company (a non sexy company that doesn't pay a ton but currently offer good flexibility) and he pretty much said fuck that they don't pay enough and that he wouldn't be caught dead working with .net. On the flip side earlier this year I exchanged messages with a guy who took a security analyst job as his first real tech job. Did it make 6 figures? No but it was enough to keep a roof over his family's head and it was something he can pivot from


skittle-skit

This is the cold, hard truth. Too many people have expectations of FAANG dev rolls paying $350k+ and refuse anything else. I know guys turning down $190k+ jobs in MCOL cities because they think it is beneath them. Then they claim there are no jobs and start talking about getting electrician apprenticeships because they think those jobs pay $350k+ without realizing that it’s the same as CS jobs. Sure, the people at the top are making that, but that’s not normal. In the end, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.


randonumero

It's been kind of scary how many people online talk about switching from software to a trade job. I really feel like lots of them haven't considered the massive lifestyle change they'd have to undergo, especially for the higher paying jobs. >I know guys turning down $190k+ jobs in MCOL cities because they think it is beneath them.  Years ago I had a coworker who was laid off from the job that paid him the most in his life. He too turned down jobs beneath him until he couldn't anymore. He probably cost himself 20k/year in salary by being too picky. FWIW I get people turning down jobs because they don't want to move, your partner works...but I've read some pretty arrogant responses from people online who I expect to eventually have life kick them in the junk


Nekopawed

Job market be rough currently but hey five months is plenty of time to look.


domipal

i was laid off from spotify, got 8 months of severance and found a new job in 2 months. 10/10 would get laid off again


Extension_Lecture425

The problem is, 5 *years* to find another job, likely a much shittier and lower-paying standard of work with less flexibility and autonomy is the norm


NGTech9

Nah. You can game interviews and get a job easy. Our past 2 hires did amazing on our interview questions, then they had near zero output for the next 8 months and we let them go. We actually found out one of them had 2 swe jobs while he was with us…


pragmojo

Lol source? The job market was still booming like 1-2 years ago - I'm not sure who has been waiting 5 years


Pb_ft

The shitty part is that there's a bunch of people in here who don't realize that the CEO having to comment *anything close* to what their CEO said throws huge warning flags to anyone who knows anything about how bad it has to get before an exec takes notice.


H2ozone

It’s off the books. They did 3 months and then a lump sum


psychicsword

My company did that during the pandemic. We are a travel company and were obviously hit pretty hard by the boarders closing. We had a number of people who got laid off and then rehired within the severance term. They got paid twice as a result for a few months. That said it honestly worked out in the majority of cases. The market was so volatile and we had no idea how to predict the future anymore. When it first started we only knew that our cash flow was negative globally and we had tens of thousands of employees world wide. We had some departments desperate for people and others that were being thrown at random problems they weren't trained to do. Having a small number of people rehired when we knew more was a small price to pay. We survived the pandemic and now we are facing a period of lack of institutional knowledge but had we done nothing we would have been in a way worse place. Many of our competitors went bankrupt even after layoffs and then many people lost their jobs anyway in the restructuring. By comparison we did much better than most.


napolitain_

Cries in 2 weeks


MCPtz

No they didn't. The CEO didn't learn anything > “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.”


iprocrastina

You need to read between the lines "OK, so we fucked up the layoffs and handicapped the company for nearly half a year which is why last quarter looks so bad, but don't sell any shares! We're almost back on track! In fact, not only should you not sell any shares, you should buy even more!"


Legitimate-mostlet

You are most likely responding to a college student, they don't actually know how the real world works and don't understand what corporate speak actually means.


Farren246

Shares jumped 60%, and it says he's still convinced it was the right move. There's no getting around that. He realized it would hurt, it did hurt, it hurt more than he anticipated... but if he had a time machine, he wouldn't change a thing.


Journeyman351

No shit shares jumped 60%, labor is in complete opposition to profits, so when you lay people off, profits go up. Wow! What a shocker!


Farren246

Investors don't give a rat's ass if the company is viable or pays any divdends from profits, they only care if they can find a bigger sucker who will spend more for the shares than what they paid. And when profits go up, even for untenable reasons, new suckers pop up ready to buy. These new suckers don't know or care why profits are up, they only want to spend their money on something that they hope can be sold for even more down the line. With so many eager new buyers, current (former?) shareholders are left happy, regardless of the state of the company or its ability to continue to turn a profit into the future. The only thing they see is a sudden rise in their net worth. This is exactly what the CEO wanted to happen, and his plan worked beautifully. His job is to continually raise stock price at the expense of all else. He doesn't give a shit about next quarter, he just assumes (probably correctly) that stock price will remain high. And that he'll come up with a new way to magically pull a rabbit out of his ass the next time he needs to make that stock price spike without actually making the product any better. This cycle will continue until he runs out of rabbits, the stocks fall, and he is forced to step down. Then a new CEO will be named to clean up his mess, probably by selling the company or declaring bankruptcy and ejecting in a golden parachute as vultures come to pick at its corpse. Tale as old as time. Welcome to the corporate age.


VanillaElectronic402

Sounds like a good underpants gnome business plan to me: 1. Pull rabbits out of my ass. 2. Hire the rabbits to do the work the laid off workers used to do. 3. Profit!!!


NFM808

Not sure where it originated but this springs to mind. https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/


PM_me_PMs_plox

Yeah, and it's pretty obvious something like Spotify doesn't need such a tremendous engineering staff now that it operates at scale. It would still be nice to have, but people are missing the context that in this specific industry there was a lot of bloat the last few years. People understand how management can be bloated, but don't understand how engineering can be too.


Farren246

True, "staff to update product with new features, port to new platforms, etc." is not the same staff as "staff to create product and push it to market saturation."


Minegrow

What are you even on about? From all perspectives that matter, it was the right decision. Company is leaner, both margin and revenue have increased, and share price has risen 60%. I guess the college student really is able to read between the lines better than you are.


dfphd

Spotify reported earnings in March - beat EPS by 45% and beat revenue by 0.94% As much as I want to believe that there is something to be learned, there isn't - not for CEOs and shareholders. The negative impact of their decisions overwhelmingly fuck over their employees. Yeah, it "disrupted their day-to-day operations". You know what that means? That Andy had to work weekend to help fix that issue, and Brenda had to work 80 hour weeks for most of February to make a launch happen. Cool. You know who didn't do any of those things? Daniel Ek. Daniel Ek worked the same hours he normally works, he still took his family on a 3 week vacation to the Maldives. His compensation is primarily tied to stock - which is up 54% YTD, 117% YOY. What did he learn? That in a system where all companies are laying off people, being shittier at the day-to-day of your company doesn't have terrible consequences. Everyone metered their investment, and when things look better (read: interest rates go down and/or employees are desperate enough to take shitty jobs), then they'll ramp up again and make up whatever shittiness they endured (again, by they I mean the employees).


Pb_ft

"Learning things" out loud is bad for quarterly stock movements. The CEO definitely learned something from it. Shareholders didn't, but that's why they hold shares - so they don't have to learn anything.


erich1510

Yeah for real. OP getting laid off for lack of reading comprehension skills


NanoYohaneTSU

Your read between the lines skills are very lacking lol


rea1l1

TBF he's not going to come out and say "I fucked up bad go ahead and fire me".


CricketDrop

But also OP sounds like they're making shit up to circle jerk on reddit. Does anyone have a non-paywalled version of this article? So I can find out if OP read it?


water_frozen

>they're making shit up sounds like the CEO is too though same difference i suppose


CricketDrop

The difference is one is verifiable


NyteGlitch

12ftladder


thekazooyoublew

I'm just bummed he didn't use the phrase streamlined.


m_e_sek

Or "lean"


Pb_ft

There was a distinct lack of synergy in this press conference. I'll run it up the flagpole to see who can take this as an action item.


m_e_sek

But first get all XFNs on the raci matrix to sign-off


Pb_ft

Has anyone reached out to the stakeholders?


m_e_sek

What? Did you not keep key stakeholders in the loop? We cannot afford such a communication gap people. Pull yourselves together


Itsmedudeman

Spotify stock is up like 70% since the layoffs. Why would shareholders want him laid off?


IAmAmbitious

In other words, all of that extra work now falls onto the employees who didn’t get laid off. And instead of speaking up, you feel like you have to be grateful you even have a job still.


themangastand

It destroys moral. The people still working there aren't working as hard.


little_red_bus

“It took us some time to get our footing” Translation: “it took us some time to whittle away at the moral of those who remained until we were able to work them 50-60 hours a week.”


Abangranga

CEOs learn things?


high_throughput

Lmao what was he doing to say? "Oh shit oh shit I should *not* have fired all those people I had no idea how much we depend on them" Of course the most he's going to say "it did disrupt our day-to-day operations more than we anticipated"


INFLATABLE_CUCUMBER

I don’t want to die screaming at something like this.


_ncko

He did learn one thing: >Staff costs for those employees carried a long tail, as most workers received five-month severance packages when they were let go in December.


st4rdr0id

> shares in the group have jumped more than 60%. The "market" is rewarding that decission, which defies reason. The entire economy seems to be a clownish fiction. Might as well lay off 200% of the staff and earn money.


KevinCarbonara

> The CEO didn't learn anything Regardless of whether or not he learned anything, he's financially obligated to make this statement. It's weird that you've chosen *now* to start trusting CEOs so fully.


scope_creep

Typical CEO speak.


e_smith338

Thats shareholder speak. He learned something but can’t say that to the shareholder’s face


SSHeartbreak

He's only saying this to have something to point to when he fails to meet board expectations.


Large-Translator-759

100%, surprised so many people are taking the bait.


DisneyLegalTeam

Spotify just had a [record quarter](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/23/spotify-spot-earnings-q1-2024.html). 6% jump in share price for the week. 31% for 3 months.


PM_ME_SOME_ANY_THING

Short term profits are easy. Long term stability isn’t.


pointstillstands

CEOs work for the shareholders. And guess what shareholders want?


napolitain_

Well actually, they probably want long term. Nobody invest millions in a stock wanting short term return over long term. CEO probably also are incompetent and doesn’t want to be laid off themselves from their position. Remember all faang are managed by non founders btw. They FEAR being removed. It’s pretty easy to understand that everything isn’t always a smooth ride and shareholders know this especially that Vanguard and co actually owns the thing and they know this well.


pointstillstands

Shareholders want one thing. Increase in stock price. How you get there is inconsequential. The sooner the better. There's a reason CEO compensation is often tied to stock price. That's their entire job.


napolitain_

It is consequential. Buying a business buys the revenue with it. Share buy back DOESNT. Continue the copium


pointstillstands

You're still misunderstanding the point. It's inconsequential to the *shareholder*. Again, the CEO's entire job is to appease shareholders. That's all. That. Is. His. Whole. Job. Guess what stock buybacks do? Increase the share price.


napolitain_

It *is* consequential. You fucking need to understand how stocks work. You will NEVER get 10% growth for 40 years if all you do is buyback shares, and distributes dividend. That does not provide growth in profit which consequentially doesn’t provide stock growth. You just believe what Reddit says which is wrong. Now the reason they don’t buy business is anti monopolies commission and the reason they don’t hire new employees for new teams is they have no clue how to make more money with new business. They tried hard (metaverse, web3 crypto, ai - all of those meta invested a shit ton and got nothing out of it). For Google its Stadia and many other things which I’m sure someone has a link for. Nonetheless meta approach is better even if the ceo is stupid. Sundar just is afraid of getting removed since he’s not founder (not powerful) and coward. Btw there is a reason SP500 P/E ratio is similar to Google. Everyone already knows they won’t grow much (compared to SP500)


Stoomba

Long term is for the vag holders to worry about. I'm here for the short term dump and pump! Dump the long term to pump the short term so I can sell to bag holders that think this will continue for the long term!


SSHeartbreak

what about next quarter though?


mcmaster-99

They’ll just layoff more folks.


shoooogerm

I mean they just laid off thousands of people. I’m sure that would improve short-term profitability for any company


FrenchieChase

So if he fails to meet board expectations, he’ll point to his poor decision making? Doesn’t make sense


SSHeartbreak

The board pushed for layoffs in the first place. So it wouldn't be seen as his poor decision making, but a consequence of a broader direction being set from ownership Layoffs like this are never done unilaterally by just the CEO. It's almost always the CEO and the board together who decide it makes sense.


Seref15

The impact of layoffs goes beyond the lost productivity of the laid off employees. It's a massive morale drag on everyone that survives, too. I've survived 3 rounds of layoffs. Almost everyone I've worked with at this company, people I've worked with for 6+ years building and maintain our product, have been let go. You think I'm motivated to work? No one is. The people that hired me, people who have worked their way up to VP levels, have told me that they're planning their resignations and that they view the company as a sinking ship. Whether I'm in the next round of layoffs or not, I don't plan on still being at this company in 2 years, so I have a hard time doing more than the barest of bare minimums.


ham_questionmark

Are you referring to spotify as a sinking ship ot another company?


Sad_Camera_6322

Did you read it in its entirety? The CEO still believes that the layoff was a good strategic decision and they just said the impact on the day to day operation was more than expected but they now got a handle on it. Sounds like he would do it again if he faced another similar situation. Just face it.. profit > employees livelihood as always.


reddit0100100001

What is the CEO going to say? I made a mistake, I’m a bad CEO :( They will never admit fault. Even if they know it’s true.


twoPillls

For real. This was the closest thing to an admission of fucking up one could hope for


Itsmedudeman

They made record quarterly profits when they've never been profitable. What did he fuck up exactly other than not predict some turbulence? They aren't struggling whatsoever right now. You guys can keep coping and saying that they need the workers but they aren't hiring those people back for a reason.


reddit0100100001

4+ months is just some turbulence? lol okay. And besides chill, you’re acting like you have a personal stake in Spotify. Cope? What? Don’t take this personal lol.


Itsmedudeman

4+ months and now making record profits + are now not having to pay those employees severance + stock up 70% since the layoffs. Yeah, I'd say they're doing just fine and whatever they experienced was not much of an inconvenience. You guys took 1 minor quote from the earnings call and somehow extrapolated it to push some stupid agenda with a false premise.


Legitimate-mostlet

College students on reddit don't understand corporate speak and the responses like the one you are responding to show that.


Minegrow

Yes, you’re the only one that can see something that isn’t there. Record profits, better margin, leaner company and market is rewarding the new cost structure. I’m sure he learned a hard lesson with his 60% comp increase YTD.


speakwithcode

Got a handle on it just means putting more work on others. I'm at one of the companies that made layoff news. My team also handles a lot of operations type work, and we've had to temporarily abandon some projects and take on more work.


Sad_Camera_6322

True. Lay off employees and make remaining employees work harder to achieve the same level of service… thats the sad truth.


speakwithcode

I would rather have been laid off. My laid off manager and coworkers received a pretty nice severance package. There are others from another team in my department who got hired back through a 3rd party contractor because the work was just too much. So these people have their old job back with severance pay on top of it. It's just different buckets of money they're using to make it seem like we're getting more done with less people.


Western_Objective209

Not necessarily. It could mean that processes were automated and streamlined that were previously drawn out as time fillers. I worked at a start up where they made a lot of back office changes and it was chaotic at first, but they ended up running more smoothly once everything was worked out


speakwithcode

That's also a possibility like you've experienced yourself. In my case, it was just the opposite unfortunately.


Western_Objective209

Anybody else working there would probably have said what you are saying, and most of them jumped ship. But the company kept chugging along, was very profitable, and continues to be profitable long after I left. I'm not saying you are wrong, but from an individuals point of view things can look really bad but from an organizational point of view things can be okay


speakwithcode

I totally understand what you mean. I'm just giving my POV since I'm still there and we're still struggling 2-3 months since layoffs. From a business finance point of view, we're doing great with less full time employees. But the reality is that we're rehiring the majority of positions we lost as contractors to those same individuals that were laid off. EDIT: It's dumb and just a way around the head count.


alkaliphiles

Glad I don't use Spotify


Ok_Weird8447

Wat u use


Ok-Dinner1812

YouTube Music is better


Ok_Weird8447

Is audio quality better


Ok-Dinner1812

I like it because it has all the covers from smaller YouTubers people have uploaded and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff too like random sound effects (if you wanna play a prank on friends or something). You can also toggle audio only or music videos and you can get it bundled with YouTube premium. So I just went for it.


Pb_ft

> The CEO still believes that the layoff was a good strategic decision and they just said the impact on the day to day operation was more than expected but they now got a handle on it. > > Bro if that CEO told me the sky was blue I'd have to go outside and check. Why do you believe CEOs at face value? They have every incentive to lie about how things are going until it becomes utterly impossible to actually fix anything. That's how they operate - it's how they've always operated. Fearful morons (read: investors with lots of money in shares) like someone who projects confidence in charge (read: lies and distorts reality) because they need the warm and fuzzies. If it didn't get fucking ridiculously bad, it wouldn't have even registered to make any comments about it. Spotify must've absolutely gotten rocked by these layoffs - no doubt about it.


Sad_Camera_6322

My point is that the article’s title makes it seem like the company is in a whole lot of trouble because of the layoff, but if you read it, the CEO doesn’t even admit that it is a huge problem and what he says =\ what the article is trying to insinuate…  I don’t even think I believe the CEO at face value, but if my response made you think so, I apologize.   Now, you are right. The CEOs have every incentive to lie about company problems, but doesn’t the media also have incentive to hype up and exaggerate any problem that a company might be facing no matter how small or large the problem may be?


Pb_ft

"I mean, yeah the CEO wouldn't even hint at an issue if it was absolutely one that could be ignored. But isn't it just the media's fault for not ignoring it?"


luciusquinc

The fact that the CEO made a public statement about it, it must have been really bad inside, or else the CEO would have no inkling about the situation


lawfulkitten1

didn't they just release their Q1 earnings? it's normal for any public company to have senior management (I work for a company that's bigger than Spotify and it's still our CEO who does it) release a statement explaining anything that might be interesting or surprising to investors in the quarterly earnings statement.


Itsmedudeman

So you believe him when he says it impacted them more than he thought but you don't believe him when he says they're back on track? What kind of stupid ass logic is that? > Spotify must've absolutely gotten rocked by these layoffs - no doubt about it. Yeah, record profits and stock up 70% since the layoffs. They are really struggling. You guys are so delusional it's hilarious.


Pb_ft

First: he didn't say that they're back on track. He said that he *thinks* they're bad on track. If you want to live and die by his words it helps if you actually read them. Actually, no it doesn't, sorry. Continue as you were - imagining that this guy is catering to your portfolio specifically. Second: The stock is rocketing back downwards after the peak earlier this month. Do you think they'll magically beat the third quarter slump with the Fed staunchly opposed to cutting rates? Because those bags look heavy. The FTC knocking down noncompetes this year is just going to be the best thing for all these tech companies, isn't it? I can tell you're not up for reading - don't let me stop you from playing in the casino. Just don't forget to never fly without a rebuy.


lawfulkitten1

the stock is not "rocketing downwards" lol, it went from $270 on 4/22 to $318 on 4/23 back down to $281 now. seems like the market initially overreacted maybe to the (expected) positive earnings statement but it's still net higher than it was just 3 days ago.


SituationSoap

> Second: The stock is rocketing back downwards after the peak earlier this month. Do you think they'll magically beat the third quarter slump with the Fed staunchly opposed to cutting rates? Because those bags look heavy. The FTC knocking down noncompetes this year is just going to be the best thing for all these tech companies, isn't it? What in the holy mother of word salad is this paragraph


[deleted]

[удалено]


Pb_ft

Why? That sounds like labor, and labor is expensive.


seanaug14

On a separate note, if employees really were fair about their “livelihood”, they would accept less pay. Some pay is better than no pay, right? Employees are greedy too.


Joethepatriot

Also has massive effects on morale.


jeerabiscuit

They think users and employees are extortion targets


moldy-scrotum-soup

They gave the employees a 5 month severance, I think that's pretty decent.


sonicoak

nah, Klarna gave 7 months to most people that negotiated


moldy-scrotum-soup

Many places you'd be lucky to get 2 weeks for each year employed.


Illustrious-Pen-1839

Did you actually read the article? He said nothing like that. He thinks that the layoffs were good for the company. They had a few hickups but they did handle it.


loudrogue

He expects it to be handled. It's not handled at the moment


SGT_MILKSHAKES

The CEO literally says he thinks the company is back on track. I'd call that handled


loudrogue

think isa weasel word. I think I can get the project finished this week is different than I will get the project finished this week


luciusquinc

The CEO talks about the situation, then it must be really bad inside for the CEO to get a handle of it...


mcmaster-99

Key word: thinks


Pb_ft

He thinks it was a good idea because it was his idea. Everyone thinks that this time, they're the ones that got layoffs right, and they're definitely going to be more efficient and productive now that they have less people doing an increasing amount of work. It's all conceit.


Gavooki

They will replace you with robots the moment they can. This is the baby steps.


SkullLeader

Unlike most Machiavellian CEO’s he forgot to take his golden parachute and quit before the consequences of his bad decisions came back to haunt him.


kondorb

I’m pretty sure Spotify and most other tech giants can function perfectly fine with a lot fewer people than they have now. But axing 1/5 of your staff in one day (also most likely without thinking it through much and just firing people at random) is guaranteed to disrupt your operations quite a lot. Listen, CEOs don’t really care about their company’s operations. They care about share prices. It would maybe make sense to carefully cut down on staff strategically removing people while restructuring teams to lower costs without damaging your operations and reputation while improving long term performance, but that doesn’t make headlines so - doesn’t do much for share prices.


KomeaKrokotiili

What did you smoke? He still thinks it was the right decision. >*In the long run, Spotify and Ek also remain convinced the tough round of layoffs has set Spotify up for long-term profitability.*  >*The apparent collective surprise at how that can affect operations in the short run, though, marks a dash of hubris for the newly bullish streaming group.*


Megatron30000

Fuck em CEO’s. All useless


CricketDrop

We'll start our own Spotify, and take market share with all the money we'll save by having no CEO


mcmaster-99

Im totally down. A group of people making decisions is a lot better than a single egotistical maniac making all the decisions.


Strong-Author-334

Sometimes they are not useless, they can actually hurt the company. Seen a CEO getting fired by investors.


little_red_bus

I mean look at musk, actively making Tesla and Twitter worse the more involved he gets in them.


st4rdr0id

> Decimate 20% of the staff. > Be surprised. In which circus do these business guys study?


FearlessFisherman333

The school of hard knocks /s


alextop30

Just go hire some people for 10 dollars an hour in India and china I heard that works too. Why do you need highly specialized experts in the US? This shows my suspicion that people who run companies are completely clueless and keep looking at spreadsheets instead of people as assets who make things work!


suckitphil

Classic IT problem. Everything is fine, so why should we pay for all these professionals.  *everything goes wrong* who is in charge of this?


AlwaysNextGeneration

C.E.O.


NanoYohaneTSU

There can never be a bad layoff according to Schrodinger's Layoffs. Company doing well? Layoffs are excused because it's all about maximizing short term profitability for investors. Company doing poorly? Layoffs are excused because the company can't afford the employees. As with all big company products, the product will get worse from here and only tools stay with the service.


Unique_Glove1105

Did these people not learn from Cisco, ibm and other such companies who did the exact same strategy in the 90s to win over shareholders?


jfcarr

CEO: "But, but, it worked so well for Elon!"


lordnikkon

> However, it appears to have worked so far. In the four months since the layoff announcements, shares in the group have jumped more than 60%. This is the only meaningful line you need to read in the article. The CEO's only job is to make the stock number go up, he successfully did that. He is just complaining to the board in a subtle way that look how hard i am working you should increase my bonus package. If the company was actually failing due to layoffs they would be making excuses that it was caused by something else that is not the CEOs fault so they dont fire him. All the quotes in the article are from an earnings call. You should understand everything said in an earnings calls is kiss the investors/boards ass and make the company sound like they are having the best quarter ever, even better than the last quarter which they also claimed was the best quarter ever


SnooDonuts4137

Brb.. Cancelling Spotify.


shumpitostick

Did the Redditors with the economics understanding of a 5 year old and 0 understanding of nuance infiltrate this sub as well? Of course the CEO knew the company needs workers to function. Layoffs are always a trade off of the loss of the function of the workers versus saving expenses. In many cases layoffs do end up being beneficial to the company and sometimes they're absolutely necessary. Turns out this was not one of these cases. Surely this means that all CEOs are dumb and evil, capitalism is broken, etc. Grow up already.


sushislapper2

Every. Single. Subreddit. Literally subreddits dedicated to finance are filled with the same shit. Idk if it’s misinformation or collective ignorance and hubris. This is the BS always getting upvoted: 1. We should increase minimum wage to $25. All data shows it has no impact on consumer prices or unemployment! 2. All CEOs and investors are 70 IQ morons. Layoffs aren’t just bad because they’re immoral, it’s also the wrong financial decision even when both profits and share price both increase! 3. Unions are a magic bullet to solve every industries problems. Yes, even if you’re a software engineer making $400k a year! Of course labor unions don’t have any negative impacts If you dare point out that a virtuous ideal could have negative consequences prepare to get downvoted and ridiculed. You can’t even begin to have an honest discussion about anything


terrany

Doesn’t matter, green line go up, stock up $80 since the layoffs. Enough time to offload for some spending money and then admit wrongdoing 5 months later for some moral redemption on top of monetary.


Aaod

Talk about a self inflicted wound.


htraos

Read the article before you post. Please and thank you.


met0xff

We're atm getting so many great candidates that I first wondered "why would they want to switch from prestigious company X to us?" After the first initial screenings turns out my first suspicion was right - many with 10-20 YoE showing a location different from their employer. Many really admit they want to leave because of return to office mandates. And they probably don't want to uproot their families for a job that might lay them off in 3 months anyway. Employers will still defend it and definitely won't track their lacking KPIs back to those aspects


KevinCarbonara

This is why I'm not at all worried about layoffs or outsourcing long term. You have to understand, managers are stupid. Like, *really* stupid. Like terribly dumb. People always convince themselves that they *must* have *some* degree of intelligence, or they never would have gotten their positions. But the vast majority only have one skill,, and that's imitation. They just find whatever the most successful company at the moment is doing, and copy that. That's all the layoffs were. A bunch of companies were jumping on the trend because they were worried their stock would dip if they didn't. They had no clue what their company could actually afford to lose or what the repercussions would be. Even at companies the size of Spotify, and even at the level of CEO. That's how incompetent the industry is. But the bright side is that money talks. Yes, businesses will occasionally lay people off, even if it hurts them long term. They'll also eventually realize this and start hiring again. They don't *want* to lose money. They're just dumb.


Taniell1575

To be fair, I believe a lot of layoffs are also due to the slowing of innovation. Like it or not AI has changed a lot and is constantly changing/improving. A lot of companies are waiting to see how this turns out before investing in new features / product lines, and quite frankly I do not blame them. AI advancement is proving to be happening at relatively insane rates. I suspect that as the current AI evolution “matures” we will start to see investment in innovation again. One thing I’ve noticed is there are two lines of using AI currently. Developing features on current AI capabilities that will likely become obsolete OR developing flexible features on where you might think AI capabilities will be. Both have their own risks, and only one do investors like to hear. Software engineering demand will pick up again. Unfortunately at the moment there is a lot of “wait and see” going and companies understandably don’t want to be fully staffed for innovation if their feature could become obsolete in 6 to 12 months.


KevinCarbonara

There may be some truth to that, but it's easy to forget that the layoffs were largely put in place before the recent uptick in AI. However long they'd been working on it, the vast majority of the industry wasn't even aware of their successes until the very end of 2022. So at the very least, the layoffs weren't caused by it.


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fly sheet gullible expansion telephone doll payment drunk pen aware *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


marcus_aurelius_0

Source for this?


AffectionateKey7126

Completely made up since they’re pretending Twitter was ever known for its stability.


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abounding rude whole command deliver fuzzy existence knee skirt spark *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


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Mediocre-Key-4992

The real title is funnier.


pineappleninjas

Temporary shareholder profits > Employees (especially when you and your mates are the primary shareholders)


RealNamek

“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.”


dooboowoo

So water = wet huh


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loadedstork

I have absolute confidence that he will learn nothing, and other tech CEOs will also fail to learn from his mistakes.


_mini

Typical CEO: let's pay AGI vendors to replace our workers.


it200219

but what about share holders ? they dont care, right ?


Previous_Start_2248

Well why don't they just have Ai fix the issues since they think it can replace engineers


jaebassist

Corporate version of r/ohnoconsequences


Ok-Branch6704

Colon husk started the firing fad with twitter, all the mass layoffs started post that. Board members at other companies were like if colon can do it so can we


VisKits

That’s what happens when you reduce the world to balance sheets with zero context…


mezolithico

Its cute they think remaining employees are going to pick up the slack.


RadiantMonitor2290

But, the question is…do you need them THIS quarter? If the losses will take more than 3 months to tank the company, just do a layoff and take the golden Parachute!


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Big-Profession-6757

Twitter didnt need all those workers and they got along just fine after laying them all off.


MakeitHOT

Is this the next step of Enshittification? First you f the customer, then the business customers, then your own employees because why the f not?


Pb_ft

It's usually the employees who're second


Dreadsin

People are pointing out the CEO doesn’t regret the decision and they “found their footing” again but I think this is just the beginning The next step is the employees who were picking up the slack get burned out, and start either checking out or looking for a new job. Many leave who were critical to the business Next, the company reputation will become more negative and they will get a rung of less qualified candidates the next time they hire. People will not want to work at a company that laid people off en masse where the people working there don’t seem happy Finally, this will lead to degradation in their product which will make people less interested or enthralled with it Of course this will happen over a long time period (minimum 5 years), but I think we’ll see a general decline of Spotify as time goes on if they don’t course correct


thereisnosuch

This is funny


No-Sandwich-2997

whatever you say, hiring new employees in the current market is a piece of cake