cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/30272690
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 @[email protected] for the paywall-free link: https://archive.ph/wdyDS
Are you a poor CEO in need of more income? Just fire ALL of your employees and run the whole company your damn self since you think it’s so easy! Now you get 100% of the profits! GREAT SUCCESS!!!
Someday, a large corporation is going to finally figure out that firing the people who make their products work results in shitty products no one buys. And instead of firing those people, they’ll fire the bean counters and outside consultants who promised that this quarter’s revenue will look great if they stop employing people to make their stuff.
But today is not that day.
Nah. It’ll be never. So long as they can spend good money to have Mackenzie tell em firing X employees will raise profit .0Y%, they will do it. Because anything else to improve profits would require actual work and investment. And that doesn’t show immediate profitability.
Let me play him the world’s smallest violin. You don’t get to fire 1500 people because shareholders think it’s neat and then cry about how hard you have it. This guy can fuck off.
I mean, it’s nice to hear some regret. Maybe other CEOs will take note… Probably not. But maybe
Call him a skitjävel. He’ll understand.
