I actually disagree with the premise & ironically so did Henry Ford.
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.
It's a really good post, "The secret truth of business advice is that it's mostly about how to grimly extract residual value from the luck you already had, and the unearned love you were already unguardedly given, because there's really no method for making more of it."
If I am looking for a co-founder, who that person and their very unique combination of skills, perspectives, etc, matters a ton. If I am looking for SRE #20,000 for a FAANG, I need them to do the basic SRE role in a way that aligns with how we think about our caliber and culture. Obviously the person can do that in their own way to an extent, but we're not really looking for them to have insights like "actually, I don't think reliability matter - I am gonna stop doing it"
I don't think that's necessarily what the author is trying to communicate.
First of all, "If I am looking for a co-founder, who that person and their very unique combination of skills, perspectives, etc, matters a ton." Is that not just a well defined slot by another name? It sounds like your whole process is slots from conception to death.
"Obviously the person can do that in their own way to an extent", can they? This feels like a platitude. I can't speak to the SRE roll but most places I've worked you might get to choose from a list of pre-written algorithms and a few small UX details. And when you talk about collaborating on larger problems most individuals don't usually even get a choice of code style.
At a mature company I will agree that no, you shouldn't be hiring SRE's for product insight. Unless they fit into an insanely small bucket insight into your product is well outside of their scope. A contracting firm like McKinsey & Company would be a better fit for that kind of guidance. But tech insight? yes, you should be getting that from your SREs.
Also your example "insight" just feels... bad faith.
agreed! at small scale, we are persons engaged in meaningful relationships. at large scale, we are faceless cogs in the machine, numbers on a spreadsheet. being a faceless cog is dehumanizing, stripping our very identity away. how to reconcile the efficiencies brought by scale with the dehumanization it inflicts is a unique challenge for the technological society. I have yet to see a plausible answer.
This post feels taken straight out of my mind. I've never been good at being just another cog. My value as an engineer comes not from the things that I'm told to do, but from the things I choose to do because I think they're important or worthwhile.
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.
This is well-written, insightful, and heartfelt. I’ve lived both sides of this, but the dedicated people who led with their heart stay with me, even while the crushing logic of business reality kicks and renders their passion an aberration.
This really bummed me out when I heard about it. I always thought Every Noise was a kind of 'magical' website in the sense of: I didn't understand how it could exist, as it seemed to be situated at a strange intersection of 'level of access to a huge corporation's data' and 'level of playfulness in using that data'.
After learning about the layoff and the role that the person behind it had at Spotify (namely that of 'crazy scientist', as far as I could tell), it suddenly made sense... but hearing that, even if you've impacted so many people's lives positively, you seemingly still can't escape the 'rules of the game' indefinitely also just made it all the more sad.
But still, I've found so many cool genres through Every Noise (my bachelor's thesis was largely written to The Sound of Neurofunk), and I've introduced so many people to the site... I'm really grateful it existed in the first place!
As an aside - but not completely, because it speaks to incidents such as this re Spotify... but have people been noticing a deterioration in the Spotify experience recently? For example, the UX of the app getting too complicated; the algorithms no longer have the "delightful serendipity" they used to, etc and so on. I suppose that is to be expected from any behemoth (especially one that is not particularly profitable and subject to the squeeze from other parts of the industry)... but the loss of the ecosphere that built around it seems to only hasten the problem.
I've always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Spotify - for the most part it's great, and I'm happy to be paying for a service that provides so much value (and it's a great example of how having a reasonably priced option defeats piracy, for uh, people I know). That being said, being advertised podcasts and audiobooks is super annoying (and yes, I consider "being presented with" as "being advertised" if I can't hide them) as it wastes a large area of the home screen.
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'm in the same boat - have been very happily paying for Spotify family for many years, love the access to music, but hate the way they push crap I don't care about. And their recommendation algorithm has never really worked for me.
In part out of frustration with Spotify, and in part to hedge against streaming disappearing one day, I'm in the process of ripping my exiting CD collection to FLAC, and buying either digital or physical copies of my favourite albums.
I've found it pretty refreshing to open my music app (Finamp) and only see exactly what I want to.
It’s nice to be in control for once. I am getting more and more into offline consumption, and to me if quality of the media isn’t the highest but decent Im okay. My attention though is extremely valuable to me to let companies services try to mess with it.
> In part out of frustration with Spotify, and in part to hedge against streaming disappearing one day, I'm in the process of ripping my exiting CD collection to FLAC, and buying either digital or physical copies of my favourite albums.
This is bizarre to me. So to punish the record industry for ruining Spotify you're... giving them even more money?
In 2024 you can buy directly from the artists in many ways that are more beneficial to them than a streaming subscription.
I make it a point to buy a couple of albums a month from Bandcamp. The artists get a much larger cut than whatever I have been streaming of theirs, and in exchange I can listen as much as I want, completely offline, without any surveillance of my listening habits.
I too have been noticing a deterioration in recent months. Things that generally worked smoothly before have random bugs now. For example, turning off shuffle and resuming a song will sometimes just stop playing Liked Songs after the song ends, shuffle will turn off/on seemingly at random, etc. Also there seem to be odd inconsistencies in the UX between mobile and desktop such as liking songs and seeing Smart Shuffle songs in playlists.
I've been generally very happy with the Spotify app for years and it's disappointing to see the quality slipping.
> the algorithms no longer have the "delightful serendipity" they used to
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.
The UX changes every other month it seems, which is upsetting and jarring every time. Lately, the app keeps forcing me to update my password which is annoying. I miss the heart button. Why would they remove it?
Yeah super low quality of recommendations, fake mixes that are clearly made automatically and have no relevance to the title or between songs. Sounds like they tried to replace humans by computers and it shows really badly. That's the next one I'll consider in my regular review of subscription (Waking Up is another close contender, together with duolingo)
It has been drastic. Some of the UI changes have been off putting to me, but I can chalk that up to taste, or their pursuing other forms of engagement. But along with those changes has come a sharp decline in quality. There are days that it seems like half of my clicks are dead! I would happily move to a new platform at this point.
The app refreshing every time it comes into focus is annoying. Not sure when this started but it’s frustrating when what I click on isn’t there after the app refreshes
Not just that but the mobile app has changed from purely vertically scrolling categories (with horizontal selections of playlists/albums/music in the category) to song cards that try to preview a short clip of the song/video. It has to be some attempt to capture the "infinite scroll" of social media apps while pushing well-monetized tracks, but it's very frustrating for any attempt to actually, you know, listen to music.
Yea it's a mess. The heart conversion to plus recently was idiotic. Trying to combine the functionality of two distinct actions was not a smart idea. I also keep getting sponsored shit that I can't turn off even with a premium subscription.
Where should I go? I looked at Tidal, seemed like a possibility, but I'm not sure if they have the same selection. I have no interest in YouTube Music, Apple Music, or Prime Music.
Rotate through some 30 trials and see. I did this with Tidal and Qobuz, both were good in different ways.
I ended up with Bandcamp+Spotify. I find new stuff on streaming and then buy it on bandcamp. Store all the FLAC files in a plex server and stream as much as I want from my library.
Plexamp even has some new ML features where they can generate playlists based entirely from your own library.
I think this is more a matter of me having already heard all the songs in a certain genre over time? I mean, I feel it's getting worse, but only because I keep hearing the same things.
Yes, it's gone from recommending me interesting new music that fits my tastes to a mix of only songs I've heard before, or top billboard hits with no in between.
Their recommendation algorithm has gone to complete shit. I used to get a stream of good songs I was actually interested in whenever the album I was listening to ended. Now It seems to just play the same 4-5 songs immediately after my album finishes which fills me with an intense rage and has made me hate some songs that I otherwise would enjoy.
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
There are also features for "hyper local" discovery, i.e. finding the individual tracks that are most popular in your city. For music lovers, this site provides the initial breadcrumb for many fascinating rabbit holes.
The pendulum is already swinging back from subscriptions to ownership and on device apps. I hope this little foray of our industry into SaaS and renting software comes to an end soon.
Are there any music download services showing numbers to support that assertion? I know that HN and the like talk about it a lot, but I feel like the public at large isn't trying to buy anything. They certainly aren't canceling a $15 Spotify account and turning around and spending $1000 to restore their playlists.
I basically did exactly that.. I canceled Spotify and pretty quickly bought tons of stuff. Check my "collection" at Bandcamp: https://bandcamp.com/amatecha
In a casual manner, I allot myself ~$15/mo (or more) to buy new stuff on Bandcamp. As you can see, it's going nicely and I have a ton of music from my favorite artists, also stored permanently on my NAS in mp3 and FLAC formats.
I'll step out on a limb and say that the kinds of consumers I'm talking about think that NAS is a rapper and think that FLAC is a short way of talking about the company with the talking duck. :-)
A long time ago, there was spotifynewmusic.com, which converted top albums from 40+ music curators [NME, among others] into comprehensive Spotify playlists.
The website was maintained by jlarome. Who, i suspect, is a spotify employee.
The website was abruptly abandonned, some years ago. And i have always wondered the reason why.
Never heard of every noise but I enjoyed his blogpost linked lower down. His name is Glenn McDonald and he's a (former) "Data Alchemist" at Spotify according to LinkedIn.
https://www.furia.com/page.cgi?type=log&id=473