Spotify to reduce its workforce by 6%, resulting in 600 people being fired globally

BY Javed Baloch | 23/01/23 Images via Unsplash

Scribbled Underline

Spotify, the popular music streaming service, has just announced a round of layoffs that will affect a whopping 6% of its global workforce. 

According to their most recent earnings release, the company had a total of 9,808 full-time employees, meaning that today's move will impact a staggering 600 people

The service announced that they want to ensure that all Spotify employees who are impacted by the layoff are taken care of so they are inviting them to one-on-one conversations over the next few hours. 

As part of this process, they'll receive severance pay from Spotify that's tailored to their local notice period requirements and employee tenure at the company. 

The company is committed to treating departing employees fairly, offering them severance pay, unused vacation pay, healthcare coverage, immigration support, and two months of outplacement services. 

The average employee will receive approximately 5 months of severance, the CEO of the company mentioned in a note shared on the news blog of Spotify online.

The tech industry has had a difficult few weeks, with Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, Salesforce, and many other smaller companies all having to make the difficult decision to lay off thousands of employees. 

And today, Spotify has followed suit, announcing its own round of layoffs that will impact 6% of its workforce globally.

In a note sent to its employees, Daniel Ek, co-founder and CEO of Spotify, wrote, "Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us,..."

"In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth. And for this reason, today, we are reducing our employee base by about 6% across the company. I take full accountability for the moves that got us here today."

"for those of you who are leaving, I thank you for everything you’ve done for Spotify and wish you every future success." CEO concluded in his email.

Read the full note here 

According to Spotify's CEO, the company wants to "drive more efficiency, control costs, and speed up decision-making," and therefore a restructuring of the organization was much needed.