Spotify, in turn, is laying off yet another tech giant from an already sizable roster.
Spotify is laying off 6% of its payroll as part of a major restructuring, CEO Daniel Ek said in a message to his employees. The exact number of people who will lose their jobs has not been released, but according to the latest earnings reports, the company employs about 9,800 people. In addition, according to Daniel Ek, content manager Don Ostroff is also leaving his position.
Spotify, in turn, fires with a vengeance
Like Google’s Sundar Pichai, Daniel Ek explains that he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that brought us here today.”The company will offer an average of five months of compensation to affected employees, as well as unused vacation time, medical coverage for the duration of the break, immigration support and assistance with career plans. The majority of Spotify’s employees are based in the United States, followed by Sweden and the United Kingdom.
According to Daniel Ek, the company is “fundamentally changing its approach to management”by delegating its engineering and product work to new product and operations managers. “These changes will allow me to get back to what I do best, which is to spend more time working on the future of Spotify.”
Another tech giant on an already long list
Like other technology companies, Spotify has grown very quickly in recent years, especially in the podcast segment. She has spent over a billion dollars on podcast networks, hosting services, and series like The Joe Rogan Experience. According to Daniel Ek, most of these initiatives are credited to Dawn Ostroff, who increased the content of the podcast by 40 times. Unfortunately, she leaves the company as part of this restructuring.
Spotify joins an already long list of tech giants that have initiated big waves of layoffs, in part due to the global economy and mass hiring. Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Google have laid off more than 51,000 people in total in recent weeks. However, between 2020 and 2022, these same companies have hired many more employees. Spotify, for example, welcomed 6,617 new faces in 2021 and another 9,800 in 2022, prior to these layoffs.