Tech Industry
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Tech companies to avoid as a white guy?
Tech Industry
Yesterday
1882
Lack of diversity in engineering division at X
Layoffs
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2118
Fired without warning, no severance. Top performer.
Tech Industry
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27974
How did this happen? (Meta Stock)
Tech Industry
Yesterday
670
Can't get a word in during meetings
Same buzz language of "we were too ambitious" that other CEOs have been using when announcing layoffs. Like Nicki Minaj said, "these birds copy every word, every inch" š¤¦ From the CEO: Team, As we say in our Band Manifesto, change is the only constant. For this reason, I continue to reiterate that speed is the most defensible strategy a business can have. But speed alone is not enough. We must also operate with efficiency. Itās these two things together that will fuel our long-term success. With this in mind, I have some important news to share today. While we have made great progress in improving speed in the last few years, we havenāt focused as much on improving efficiency. We still spend far too much time syncing on slightly different strategies, which slows us down. And in a challenging economic environment, efficiency takes on greater importance. So, in an effort to drive more efficiency, control costs, and speed up decision-making, I have decided to restructure our organization. To start, we are fundamentally changing how we operate at the top. To do this, I will be centralizing the majority of our engineering and product work under Gustav as Chief Product Officer and the business areas under Alex as Chief Business Officer. Iām happy to say that Gustav and Alex, who have been with Spotify for a long time and have done great work, will be leading these teams as co-presidents, effectively helping me run the company day-to-day. Theyāll tell you more about what this means in the coming days, but Iām confident that with their leadership, weāll be able to achieve great things for Spotify. Personally, these changes will allow me to get back to the part where I do my best workāspending more time working on the future of Spotifyāand I canāt wait to share more about all the things we have coming. As a part of this change, Dawn Ostroff has decided to depart Spotify. Dawn has made a tremendous mark not only on Spotify, but on the audio industry overall. Because of her efforts, Spotify grew our podcast content by 40x, drove significant innovation in the medium and became the leading music and podcast service in many markets. These investments in audio offered new opportunities for music and podcast creators and also drove new interest in the potential of Spotifyās audio advertising. Thanks to her work, Spotify was able to innovate on the ads format itself and more than double the revenue of our advertising business to ā¬1.5 billion. We are enormously grateful for the pivotal role she has played and wish her much success. In the near term, Dawn will assume the role of senior advisor to help facilitate this transition. Alex will take on the responsibility for the content, advertising and licensing work going forward and youāll hear more from him on that. The need to become more efficient That brings me to the second update. As part of this effort, and to bring our costs more in line, weāve made the difficult but necessary decision to reduce our number of employees. Over the next several hours, one-on-one conversations will take place with all impacted employees. And while I believe this decision is right for Spotify, I understand that with our historic focus on growth, many of you will view this as a shift in our culture. But as we evolve and grow as a business, so must our way of working while still staying true to our core values. To offer some perspective on why we are making this decision, in 2022, the growth of Spotifyās OPEX outpaced our revenue growth by 2X. That would have been unsustainable long-term in any climate, but with a challenging macro environment, it would be even more difficult to close the gap. As you are well aware, over the last few months weāve made a considerable effort to rein-in costs, but it simply hasnāt been enough. So while it is clear this path is the right one for Spotify, it doesnāt make it any easierāespecially as we think about the many contributions these colleagues have made. Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us. In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth. And for this reason, today, we are reducing our employee base by about 6% across the company. I take full accountability for the moves that got us here today. My focus now is on ensuring that every employee is treated fairly as they depart. While Katarina will provide more detail on all of the specifics around the ways we are committed to supporting these talented bandmates, the following will apply to all impacted employees: Severance pay: We will start with a baseline for all employees with the average employee receiving approximately 5 months of severance. This will be calculated based on local notice period requirements and employee tenure. PTO: All accrued and unused vacation will be paid out to any departing employee. Healthcare: We will continue to cover healthcare for employees during their severance period. Immigration support: For employees whose immigration status is connected with their employment, HRBPs are working with each impacted individual in concert with our mobility team. Career Support: All employees will be eligible for outplacement services for 2 months. Whatās Next In almost all respects, we accomplished what we set out to do in 2022 and our overall business continues to perform nicely. But 2023 marks a new chapter. Itās my belief that because of these tough decisions, we will be better positioned for the future. We have ambitious goals and nothing has changed in our commitment to achieving them. Weāve come a long way in our efforts to build a comprehensive platform for creators of all levels, but thereās still much to be done. To truly become the go-to destination for creators, we need to keep improving our tools and technology, explore new ways to help creators engage with their audiences, grow their careers, and monetize their work. In fact, looking at our roadmap, with the changes we are making and what we have planned to share at our upcoming Stream On event, Iām confident that 2023 will be a year where consumers and creators will see a steady stream of innovations unlike anything we have introduced in the last several years. I will share more about these exciting developments in the coming weeks. Finally, I hope you will join me tomorrow for Unplugged. And again, for those of you who are leaving, I thank you for everything youāve done for Spotify and wish you every future success. ā Daniel
And a whole lot of nothing was said with this long message. The TLDR is we're copying the playbook set forth by other tech companies and here are your severance package details. I don't understand why these CEOs must go on and on with these long convoluted buzzword-filled emails.
They were just waiting for some CEO to write the scriptā¦ Jokes apart, this is bad. Itās like November 2022 reoccurring again where every company is announcing layoffs every other day.
Whoever wrote this for the CEO missed the target on tone and empathy, this is not a great way to deliver this bad news. Feels like the layoffs announcement is an after thought to everything else written here.
Yeah, this looks the worst of all CEO layoff message for me. So much about "speed" and "efficiency". Wtf.
They also just posted a bunch of DS/MLE jobs today. Like within the last 12 hours.
5mo of severance. Thatās on the higher end of what weāve seen so far
Iām gonna use āI take full responsibilityā as my go-to response to any fuckup or mistake I make. - me: officer, I apologise for speeding and I take full responsibility - the police: understandable, have a nice day sir
Sorry to those impacted, but on the bright side god damn 5months+ severance seems really good
Does anyone know which teams? I thought they already axed podcast employees in the last layoffs but looks like itās happening again there
Wide variety of roles and teams. Many orgs. Lots of eng.
> Personally, these changes will allow me to get back to the part where I do my best workāspending more time working on the future of Spotifyāand I canāt wait to share more about all the things we have coming. āpersonally this is good news! so donāt shed a tear for me! as for you, f uā. fucking moron
You quoting Nikki Minaj is cringe and low-brow AF
I know bro!
If OP wrote Chuck Norris with the same quote, you wouldn't know