Spotify

Day to Day:

• Simply put, the greatest working experience I've ever had.
• Amazing, talented, & diverse people.
• Amazing product.
• Amazing engineering infrastructure, tooling, and documentation.
• Great compensation & benefits.
• Plenty of personal career growth opportunities.
• Very good interviewing & onboarding process.

I was laid off along with my whole team and 6% of the entire workforce. This came as quite a shock, as we were told by Daniel Ek himself in company town-halls that this would be an absolute last resort. But it felt a lot more like they did the mass layoffs because so many other big tech companies just did. It felt very blindsiding.

My manager's manager was even unaware that this was going to happen.

Day to day:

• Large company (~9,000 employees), so it could feel intimidating for some folks.
• Some required travel (could be a pro for some folks).
• International company, so cross-timezone communication can be tricky at times.

The mass layoffs should not have happened at all. Spotify could have increased its subscription cost by $1 and prevented all of this. There were also many expenses the company could have cut before affecting its people (travel, real estate, food program, etc.). For a company that prides itself as a leader in valuing its employees, it certainly doesn't feel like it in an event like this.