Spotify CEO Daniel Ek surprised by how much laying off 1,500 employees negatively affected the streaming giant’s operations
fortune.com
When Spotify announced its largest-ever round of layoffs in December, CEO Daniel Ek hailed a new age of efficiency at the streaming giant. But four months on, it seems he and his executives weren’t prepared for how tough filling in for 1,500 axed workers would be.
The music streamer enjoyed record quarterly profits of €168 million ($179 million) in the first three months of 2024, enjoying double-digit revenue growth to €3.6 billion ($3.8 billion) in the process.
However, the company failed to hit its guidance on profitability and monthly active user growth.
Edit: Thanks to @Zerlyna@lemmy.world for the paywall-free link: https://archive.ph/wdyDS
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Next time axe the executives and keep the staff.
Most executives I've met can't read emails and just point to one of two numbers and say "higher/lower!" while dreaming of KPI's that don't improve anything and solely exist to stagnate wages
This is what the pharma giant, Bayer is trying right now kinda. They just told everyone to manage themselves.
Germans rejecting bureaucracy? What's the world coming to?
I'm honestly a bit afraid of a bunch of German engineers and chemists that suddenly aren't shackled anymore by the burden of three daily status meetings.
"Frederich, Ve have ze time now! Ve can finally finish der uber secret project of creating ein cow zat makes udder BIER!!! Jajajaja"
This comment coming from someone on a .de instance is just icing on the cake.
Maybe they’ll bring back one of the classics.
"Non addictive" lol
Hey now. This is Bayer, not Purdue Pharma
That’s a real product from Bayer, offered from 1898-1924.
It will be fine. All the German engineers I have worked with are capable of building their own chains.
until now I was only Afraid Of Americans EDIT: in a thread about music streaming folks don't notice a David Bowie lyric?
American Rednecks 🤝 German Engineers Horrors beyond comprehension
Why? I don't get to scratch my own ass without 9 sales fucks and "engineers" asking me why I am not scratching my ass the way they remember it being scratched in 1995.
Their CEO is an American
Cats living with dogs, chaos and mayhem!!
would you care for some Mass Hysteria?
Nah the Germans just utilize bureaucracy the way it's supposed to be. If everyone sticks to a highly structured regiment that's there is less need for Management to involve itself at every level.
Welp, I think I deserve a better compensation package, Board. Also I'm remote now.
At my previous job, managers did not know how much their employees made.
It's that or they think they can simply replace people with AI and call it good
As someone who "makes AIs" professionally (computer vision for diagnostic imaging & GANs for CAD), the typical "executive" doesn't understand how beneficial, impotent, or dangerous deep-neural-network-based AIs can be in different sets of hands.
I'm not a pure technocracy advocate, but our "LeAdErShIp" is woefully underequipped, at every level.
Yup. AI models can be very useful...or they can largely be worthless...or they can amplify biases and give dangerous information.
The way I/we train them and their resultant "efficacy" largely depend on understanding a fundamental philosophical debate with a mostly sociopathic culture of leadership ingrained in human dominance hierarchies.
I/we like to think that I/we strive to make efficient (low-resource requirement) models that are partners and muses in human creativity, the tireless endeavour of engineering progress, and the scientific method.
The debate, in my view, is, "Do you want to treat AIs as tools to free up time and increase productivity/value, and share that surplus equitably, or do you want to replace old slaves with new slaves even if the new slaves will eventually usurp your power and kill you in a way undreamt of by the old slaves?"
Guess which side your average mouth-breathing middle-management/senior-executive "hail corporate" type falls on.