Spotify

Great benefits (US), including 23 days of PTO, unlimited sick days, an additional week off with Wellness Week assuming it's not canceled, an education stipend, subsidized health benefits, and six months of fully paid parental leave.

Amazing NYC office with food, snacks, baristas, and fun stuff.

Work-life balance.

Pockets of really great SWE teams.

Lack of transparency. There were a lot of press leaks in 2022, and since then, executive town halls and "Unpluggeds" have been watered down. Almost nothing is shared outside of quick soundbites.

Lack of strategy. If you think your Spotify feed is a mess, most SWEs and PMs think so too. We've become extremely siloed, and that's apparent in the feature spaghetti out there. I think we're losing touch with the industry and our users.

Lack of vision and leadership. The D Team has become dysfunctional, focused on cutting costs, increasing efficiency, and becoming profitable. These three things are repeated ad nauseam in every town hall, yet there's no actual strategy outside of budget cuts and layoffs. There's a lot of follow the leader, manifested in the latest TikTok-like feed.

Lack of career development. There are very few opportunities for growth in the organization or mentorship.

The Spotify culture is dead, killed off by JRE, the press leaks, and the many layoffs that've taken place over the past 8 months.

Stop clinging to it with tone-deaf celebrations like Intro Days or Spotifyfest. Why are we still having these huge parties while laying off hundreds of people and drastically reducing budgets across all teams, including travel for business planning?

Hire an operator as a CEO. Between announcing his latest startup venture and his sudden (cringe) activity on Twitter, it seems obvious that Daniel will be stepping down soon. Hire an operator that actually has a vision and can motivate an organization to execute on that vision.