I imagine there's a big team dedicated to getting inventory on the service through negotiations with music producers around the world. You'd need to keep them to continue expanding, adding newly produced music, and re-negotiating expiring deals.
There will be a large editorial team producing playlists, curation, tuning the algorithm with expertise, etc. That all needs to be localised and to cover lots of niche music tastes. That's also not evergreen content or work, it needs constant updates to remain relevant.
Then there's international expansion and enabling the tech to work for more countries, more languages, more payment methods, more types of music publishing.
Product stand-up, agile stand-up, team fika, cross-team fika, town hall, team activity, tribe activity, one-on-one, backlog grooming, team retro, incident post-mortem, ping pong, live music.
If you do scrape together a few minutes to get part of the codebase into your head (despite the open-floor-plan chatter), you've got no way to trigger that bug you think you saw.
But persevere anyway and diagnose it. Oh it looks like it's happening in someone else's microservice. File a JIRA? Bring it up at the next meeting? Try a different fix anyway. Happy with the fix? Wait in pull-request limbo until it's sorted. Release it straight into prod? You could bring down prod... Maybe you didn't really see that bug after all. Coffee time!
Except it's not just that, is it? They have more than one product. They have the desktop app, the web app, iOS app, Android app, apps for smart TVs, apps for smart speakers, internal admin apps, apps for artists, apps for venues, apps for labels.
Even if you narrow down to focusing on just one of those like the desktop app. There are so many sub-features. Playlist management, playback management, search, audiobooks, podcasts, merch, event ticketing, groups, collaborative playlists, local files, upsells from free to paid, notifications. I could go on.
I think your representation of a software engineer's work is made in bad faith. There may be some like this, but from anywhere I've worked and anyone I've spoken to in the industry, it's a small minority. I haven't worked at Spotify but I have worked with an ex-Spotify engineer who was very productive and one of the best engineers I've worked with.
The representation is in bad faith because it overstates the balance of non-coding tasks, but also because it assumes these are "not work" or worth less than coding.
200m on Rogan has caused more than few of my friends to drop spotify permanently because they couldn't get him off their home screen recommendation for months. If only one engineer added a dismiss button.
Yeah but the dismiss button has to be directly tethered to the machine learning analytics that is also tied to the retention team, so if too many people trigger it, the retention team is alerted to a potential user-retention risk. You need to write the API to hook into those two services, then make sure you have benchmarks before your pull-request will get approved.
You could do this, but I think the profile pictures would look better with rounded edges.
Note: For all I know, they really could be making that error. Or perhaps someone inside Spotify feels the need to make the Rogan investment at least break even, consequences be damned.
I want to dismiss Rogan as much as anyone, but I think this underestimates the complexity involved. It's not just a button, it's what the button does, it's respecting opt-outs like that in a scalable way for many millions of customers, it's having a way to un-do those for users and for support agents when customers inevitably accidentally hide a podcast they want to see, it's GDPR data export and deletion of those flags to hide things, it's UX testing around whether users even understand what the button does.
I agree that a good product would do all these things and have a way to not show recommendations you don't want, but I get why these things might not exist.
When I worked in a <100 person startup we'd "just build it" and I'd probably spend a few hours on this, but we didn't have all these concerns. We didn't do user testing, we didn't care about scalability at this level. Now I work on Google Play, and if you want to add a button like this (that will need a database query) to a frontend it's a ton more work because the scale is so different.
> I want to dismiss Rogan as much as anyone, but I think this underestimates the complexity involved. It's not just a button, it's what the button does,
This is the kind of statement that leads to people saying "Should have fired 80% of their employees years ago when service was reasonably feature complete." by making it sound like a big development team creates an unwieldy product then struggles to implement even the simplest of features.
The button is absolutely not missing because of any technical difficulty implementing it. Spotify is already storing per-user preferences - and doing all sorts of algorithmic stuff to make smart recommendations and suchlike, all with the ability to scale.
The button is missing for a business reason: They want their purchase of Rogan to be a success because they've spent a lot of money on it.
> The button is missing for a business reason: They want their purchase of Rogan to be a success because they've spent a lot of money on it.
Precisely. If everybody was opted out by default, podcast growth would be anemic, and the product managers would find themselves on the list of people losing their jobs.
No, they're right: your understanding of each other diverges when you write "it's not because of any technical difficulty" --- correct, we all agree there. However, it is still difficult.
Big companies have big processes and that, at least at Google, would have prevented this from happening for at least 12-18 months. Then those things aren't pursued because of A) the literal cost of getting that arranged over 18 months B) the individual's decision not to invest in beating their head against a wall for 18 months for something that'd be done in a week if leadership cared. Leadership does not care, so QED, it will not be a positive for your career.
Things either get done because A) leadership cares and has skin in the game and everyone is afraid of getting in the way of whoever delivers B) leadership cares and will keep asking about it over and over again for a year or two or C) no one cares so no one will get in your way.
That's also the crux of why things at Google go sideways. A) is only true over a year long cycle (I.e. you need to get to launch) B) people are afraid to do because it's hectoring and C) if no one cares its probably not much of a game changer anyway, there's no incentive to do it, and especially in FAANG's Efficiency/Focus(tm) era[^1^], you can actually get pretty easily brow-beaten for it by middle management. Then what are you going to do? Appeal to a VP that your manager and managers manager are big ol meanies?
> Big companies have big processes and that, at least at Google, would have prevented this from happening for at least 12-18 months.
Well gee, if all these software developers are making them slower at software development, it sure sounds like they should have fired 80% of their employees years ago when service was reasonably feature complete.
It's not the software developers. Companies and processes aren't run by software developers. I wish you were more curious about the gap between your understanding and others, it'd be a much more enlightening discussion with your interlocution, as it stands, we keep circling back to "all companies with long launch lead times should fire 80% of their software engineers"
danpalmer believes ads for Rogan can't be dismissed because of 'the complexity involved' in specific technical areas such as being scalable; providing a GDPR export; offering an undo option; and providing a comprehensible user experience.
I would say questions like scalability and data exporting fall squarely upon the software development arm of the business; and if they had chosen an architecture which made it hard for them to deliver value, that would reflect poorly on them.
I am also arguing they probably didn't choose a bad architecture, because I don't think a technical issue is making it difficult to dismiss Rogan ads.
It's far more likely this is the same as Youtube making it difficult to dismiss Shorts, and Amazon trying to trick you into a Prime subscription every time you check out: They've decided their strategy is to make a number go up, and your personal experience is less important to them than that strategy.
I get you, but at the same time I'm more than little suspicious that they paid 200m for Rogan and just happens to plaster his face on my podcast tab like a permanent ad for months on end. IIRC it was right after also just acquired Bill Simmons also permanent thumbnail, basically fully visible unlike the third listing in the carousel that required scrolling. I find it hard to believe they couldn't rotate recommendations, or move it below the fold. This complaint was all over their forums, reddit, social media at the time. Their default answer on forum was, not yet, but features constantly coming. Avoided all the question of why can't they just remove the banner until feature implemented. I buy scaling features for 500m users is hard. I also buy using technical complexity is a cover for other motivations.
For something as simple as a dismiss button for a particular promotion, it's reasonable to store the bit on device. This will work for mobile and desktop apps, which I assume are the vast majority of Spotify usage.
Or they could invest in a generic "misc settings" column in their DB - to store random stuff like this in a blob. You could even query/index on them w/ something like Postgres's JSON support.
> For something as simple as a dismiss button for a particular promotion, it's reasonable to store the bit on device. This will work for mobile and desktop apps, which I assume are the vast majority of Spotify usage.
No it isn't. When you "dismiss", the service needs to have a point of view (or UX to clarify) whether you want to dismiss it permanently or temporarily (I'm not in the mood for it right now).
You also need to deal with the cases where someone accidentally hits the button.
You also need to think about people who use multiple devices.
Should the algo's now update to say you don't like podcasts? You don't like talk shows? You don't like podcasts with themes that Rogan covers - what themes would that be?
Well, sure, there's infinite room for scope-creep. That doesn't take away from a minimal solution that works well from the user's point of view - "I don't want to see this, make it go away".
Now take that thought and apply it to someone proposing to put a permanent Rogan-ad on the home screen. One of the first things that is going to come up is "but how can users remove it?" At the level of thought you're talking about here, someone somewhere already made the conscious decision to not make it removable.
It's not that crazy. Not Rogan-specific, but the podcast-first UI prioritization made Spotify on CarPlay a pain in the ass to use. There was no option to say, "No thanks, just give me music only going forward." Spotify clearly didn't want to serve my needs (i.e., to access music quickly), so I took my business elsewhere.
It's crazy to stop using a product because it's UI got worse by pushing content you don't want at the expense of what you do want?
Ignoring the Joe Rogan of it all - it's frustrating to open spotify to listen to music and it the page is full of overly produced podcasts instead. I think that's a pretty normal reason to not like a product.
That's like saying people dropping Windows 11 for pushing Candy Crush and TikTok in the start menu si crazy. Is it really crazy? I don't think so.
If I'm a paying customer I want to be treated with respect. If you keep making my UX worse to push your own agenda I WILL drop you for the HDD of "definitely legit" MP3s ready to go.
I'm probably not the common usecase but I don't use Spotify for recommendations either.
I hate recommendation engines in software. One of the first things I always turn off when I install Spotify is the "When we finish your playlist we'll just keep playing similar music we think you'll like" option.
All I use Spotify for is to save myself the trouble of maintaining a media server and tracking down all the music I like to put on it
>You don't buy the OS for entertainment recommendations and listening/viewing/playing/reading.
Huh? I definitely use my OS for entertainment but I don't want it to shove their own content in my face, same how I don't want that from Spotify. If I want to discover new content, I'll explicitly seek it out, otherwise GTF out of my way and play my songs.
I didn't switch because of Joe Rogan, but Spotify kept changing the UI and at some point it got so annoying to browse music over the crappy podcasts being shoved in my face that I switched to Tidal.
It's kinda like how I judge most for-profit businesses based on the checkout experience. Usually (there are certainly valid exceptions), the process of me giving them money is what I expect to be the best experience I will ever have with that company.
Am I going to refuse to shop at a store simply because nobody cared about a payment process? No, not unless it's particularly painful or damaging to me in some way.
However, it's certainly a red flag and a warning that the rest of my interactions with them aren't likely to be better.
Same with the case here. If the landing page for a service product is so heavily pushing particular content in place of actually being useful for them, that's a pretty big red flag.
tl;dr by itself, it's a silly reason to drop it, but it can definitely reveal where business priorities currently lie.
Why not? I don't have time for many ads and will go to great lengths to get rid of them - especially ones I don't like. With Spotify this is even easier because there are a number of replacements available.
I think I'm using a different app to the rest of these commenters, I don't have anything as bad as people are talking about. Or do people just use the free version of the app?
I stopped my sub after Rogan AND Peterson pinned on my homescreen, and it just wasn't worth any drama it could stir with how often spotify is passively open. I like me the occasional Rogan, but Peterson is not someone I want to associate with, especially where I am, who I'm generally with, even accidentally. Like it's just dumb shit design for no good reason.
It was enough of an issue that I remember multiple support threads topics at the time.
Switched to plexamp for a while. Half a year later, I'm free riding off someones spare family plan slot.
If I had Spotify open and Peterson was pinned to my Home Screen in an office setting, I’d be embarrassed. It would be a strong signal of a lack of education that could harm my professional career.
And the the "tolerant" Left wonders why the Right is so upset at them, and the response globally is the election of strong pro-nationalist, "populist" candidates.
Why should someone walk around afraid of being seen associating with Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson? They're certainly not promoting Jewish genocide, unlike others.
I never claimed to be tolerant ;) Listening to Rogan or Peterson are indicators that you might be into alternative medicine trash like horse dewormers and vagina rocks; or you might oppose public health policies, or gender care for people dissimilar to you. There's an entire universe of podcasts to listen to on every possible topic, and you choose to listen to the one that hosts quacks. That's not the kind of person I'm interested in supporting or associating with, hence the side-eye thing.
Or they simply see this as the indictment of American society that it is. People preoccupying themselves with such obvious, dim-witted charlatans can disgust anyone, regardless of their popularity.
> I stopped my sub after Rogan AND Peterson pinned on my homescreen, and it just wasn't worth any drama it could stir with how often spotify is passively open.
If the image of the most popular podcast causes drama then it's those people who are on the fringe.
It is a shame for Chicago that groupon didn't continue to find success. I really think that if they had continued to grow the Chicago tech scene would be significantly larger than it is today.
Lefkofsky and the underwriters butchered the IPO for personal gain. I don't think it was a viable business model but they could have at least tried to steer the ship.
Citadel is moving to Miami because Chicago government sucks - the move was due to "riots, an employee stabbed, and the attempted hijacking of his Ken Griffin's car"
I find their algorithms for recommendation (song and artist “radios”) far inferior to 2000’s Pandora, so at least in that area I agree with GP that throwing 1000 times the resources at the problem doesn’t seem to be doing anything…
I agree that it feels like the product from an engineering perspective was "finished" a while ago, however when I think about it for a while I can come up with many things that will need ongoing engineering work. For example, bug fixes (no one ever finishes this), support for new devices/phones/smart speakers/TVs/cars, support for payments and authentication in new regions, scaling work to scale to users in more regions, reliability and operational work.
And that's just the stuff that isn't about growing more. I think it's reasonable to expect that businesses want to grow, and this isn't always anti-consumer either, as it can result in services that appeal to more users and cost less. This means engineering work on the marketing funnel, onboarding, new markets like podcasts, and lots more.
Let's look at some of your examples and see where things can logically be cut.
>I imagine there's a big team dedicated to getting inventory on the service through negotiations with music producers around the world.
This can be streamlined considerably through standardized contracts. I'd wager 90% of the inventory that said team gets is from niche artists, independent artists or small labels. Very few artists actually have the clout or resources to negotiate their own deals with Spotify. That's sort of the point of having executives - to handle the Taylor Swifts of the world. Your local band, rapper, singer-songwriter or producer doesn't matter to Spotify.
Have a clear and straightforward tier system for compensation. You get a billion streams a year? You get $X. You get 10,000 streams a year? You get $Y.
>There will be a large editorial team producing playlists, curation, tuning the algorithm with expertise, etc. That all needs to be localised and to cover lots of niche music tastes. That's also not evergreen content or work, it needs constant updates to remain relevant.
You don't need a large team to curate playlists when you can have users curate playlists. In fact, they already do. You don't need a huge localization team either. Users already take care of the legwork for you. Same goes for algorithm tuning.
>Then there's international expansion and enabling the tech to work for more countries, more languages, more payment methods, more types of music publishing.
Spotify is kinda already there in terms of international expansion. Anywhere they aren't already, they probably won't get there for political reasons (such as China).
More languages? Sure, but that doesn't require a massive team. Fortunately, there are a few dominant languages around the world, and Spotify has those covered.
More payment methods? Let the creators of those methods handle that - that's their job. Credit Card companies or banks or whatever don't create their own payment platform tech and just say "now it's yours to try to implement", they have entire teams dedicated to that.
More types of music publishing? Like what? There's only so many methods of publishing music, and I'd wager there's going to be very little (if any) innovation there for a while. Spotify doesn't really distribute any other forms of published music besides digital streams. They aren't selling records or CDs, are they?
EDIT: you could also say Spotify has vastly overspent on the likes of Joe Rogan, no matter how popular he is. $200 million dollars to a company that isn't very profitable, no matter how large, is just bad business. He's worth nowhere close to $200 million.
I imagine there's a big team dedicated to getting inventory on the service through negotiations with music producers around the world. You'd need to keep them to continue expanding, adding newly produced music, and re-negotiating expiring deals.
There will be a large editorial team producing playlists, curation, tuning the algorithm with expertise, etc. That all needs to be localised and to cover lots of niche music tastes. That's also not evergreen content or work, it needs constant updates to remain relevant.
Then there's international expansion and enabling the tech to work for more countries, more languages, more payment methods, more types of music publishing.
Honestly, where do you get "80%"?