Creator of everynoise.com laid off from Spotify (opens in new tab)

Ford learned, as everyone does in manufacturing, that the “1,000 things” an intrinsically motivated, long term employee does are not interchangeable.

It was Taylor (of Taylorism) who proposed companies should work this way. It has never been proven to work & often disproven.

In every org, that I’ve personally seen the inside of, the concept of interchangeable talent has been an utter fiction.

Even at franchises, one key employee is often the difference between success & disaster.

However, our leadership class has both a social and educated POV that is articulated in this post.

While I don’t disagree that a shareholder-return driven entity can never properly appreciate the value of individual team members, Henry Ford took the case all the way to the Supreme Court to fight against that. He lost.

The preternatural rise of the entrepreneurial spirit - wherever it occurs - rarely devalues loyal, thoughtful team members. Those that do are sending up a flare gun that they are pushing to an exit with little concern for what happens after they cash out.

Unfortunately we’ve hit the zenith where finance philosophies (which is what they are, not facts) have become so ubiquitous it’s career suicide to say otherwise.

I’m so grateful founding is still a viable alternative path.

I've frustrated just about every manager I've had because of this. On the flip side, my spirit has allowed me to pursue paths others had dismissed. This has led to many situations where I've accomplished something that was thought to be impossible, or made significant improvements that compound and would not have been prioritized otherwise.

Everyone does their job with love and belief until they get punched in the face with a pink slip.

The discovery algorithm in general has never been as good as say Pandora, but I guess I agree that it's felt worse recently.

Most annoying to me recently is how there seem to be three different ways to indicate I like a song, depending on which device I'm listening on (desktop app on my laptop or desktop, or mobile app on my Android phone) - I swear I've seen hearts, plus signs and thumbs-up symbols, without any clear indication of any differences. I know a sibling comment mentioned this change, but they made it sound recent - I _feel_ like I've had that point of confusion for over a year...

I've been generally very happy with the Spotify app for years and it's disappointing to see the quality slipping.

To add, I think I’m seeing less discovery and more popularity bias. I used to discover a lot more.

There is a limit to "delightful serendipity". At some point, you will have heard everything you could potentially be interested in but not normally listen to. After that, it will be either not your thing or more of the same.

Also, algorithms don't read your mind, they just match your usage patterns (mostly what you are already listening to) to other people usage patterns and give you what they have and you don't. For example you may listen to psy trance, and the algorithm notices that many people who listen to psy trance also listen to folk metal, so it will give you some of that. And there is a good chance for you to like that even though it is a completely different genre you may not be aware of.

But once all the matches are done, that's the end. There may be a few paths left for you to explore, because you are an individual and not an average, and tastes change, but there is no easy way for any algorithm to find that. The only solution is to go with stuff you probably won't like, so, not so delightful serendipity. Or just give you more of the same.

I never like spotify's "for you" playlists.

Everything is owned by the same tiny group of people and they need the number to always go up.

More and more frequently, as the blood is squeezed out of the stone, that means laying everyone off and dumping the work on fewer and fewer people.

I can choose pretty much any "song radio" and the same set of artists shows up. I mean, I like Alice in Chains, but not in every play list.

Need to show growth > Hire more and more people > A lot of them have nothing to do because companies always over hire > Change parts that work in the name of improvements because they have to show they are working > enshitification