Ek said Spotify employees were doing too much “work around the work” as he laid off 17% of the group’s workforce in December.
Ek said Spotify employees were doing too much “work around the work” as he laid off 17% of the group’s workforce in December.
There’s two parts to being successful at a job: successfully accomplishing the work that fits into your role, and successfully messaging to your bosses that you’re doing a good job.
So when executives lay people off, it tends to catch people who are bad at that second task (the messaging/perception side), which may or may not include people who are good at the first task (actually doing good shit for the company).
That’s why mass layoffs are damaging, and should be avoided if possible.
Layoffs also shake every other employee in an immeasurable way.
Even if you didn’t lay someone off they may now change their priorities. Maybe they focus on the people pleaser tasks. Maybe they focus more on what is good for them to keep their job vs what is good for the company.
Layoffs should be a last resort but tech companies are just playing follow the leader right now. In a few years we’ll see memoirs and books stating “in hindsight we may have made a mistake, but we made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time”, it’s all absolutely bullshit. This is all being done for a temporary stock boost.