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 @Zerlyna@lemmy.world for the paywall-free link: https://archive.ph/wdyDS

  • Suavevillain@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    115
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    6 months ago

    People keep trying to paint every CEO as this smart and hardworking class of people. We continue to see it isn’t true.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      50
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      6 months ago

      There are a lot of smart hardworking CEOs. But none of them ever seem to get to this level. At some line in the sand CEOs just become idiots playing chess (poorly) from their yachts.

      Good leaders that care about their company seem to universally get pushed out at IPO.

      • zaphod@jlai.lu
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        57
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        Good CEOs are bad for short term profits because they’re more interested in keeping their company alive longterm.

      • jorp@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        Once a company is publicly traded it can easily pervert the incentives so that the goal of the CEO becomes to enrich the investors as quickly as possible even at the expense of long term benefit, because stock price and investor satisfaction become the factors contributing most to executive compensation. A CEO who doesn’t care about maximizing their own compensation in favor of employee welfare or company long term success doesn’t keep the support of investors for very long either.

      • orrk@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        6 months ago

        well ya, the very nature of the shareholder system demands short term profits, the rug pull has become the industry norm, dismantle the company to make your numbers seem better, inflating value, and sell before it collapses, find your next victim “investment opportunity” and repeat

      • axus@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 months ago

        Daniel Ek founded the company. He got to where he’s at by having lots of money. He got that money to found Spotify by being hired into other companies which were acquired. You’re describing “Executive Vice Presidents” that were promoted from within.

    • SolarPunker@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 months ago

      At that level of wealth, concepts such as meritocracy (if ever it’s a positive term) are meaningless; let us still tell the fairy tale that capitalism rewards the best of us and not the recommended.

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      6 months ago

      You do have to be hard working to be CEO, there’s just a ton of stuff that needs to be handled around a company at all times. But they are not uniquely smarter or have better decision making skills than other people. A good CEO will understand that they don’t know everything and surround themselves with experts to help them with decision making instead of thinking they know better.

      That’s not to say that workers aren’t necessarily equally as hard working, especially when your asshole CEO fires a ton of your coworkers and expects you to pick up the slack.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      6 months ago

      Who’s doing that? The only people doing that to the CEOs everyone else knows they’re useless.