Great forward-thinking company with a desire to be consistent
Pros
I have been at Spotify over 3 years now, and it's an excellent employer. I don't think we are comparable to Google or Facebook in terms of engineering competency but we are one of the best employers in every other way. - Great benefits - Incredibly diverse (in many ways - terms of gender, ethnicity, languages, etc) - Passionate about audio - Incentivizes learning (via conferences, internal trainings, embeds) - Easy to move around, either team or role - Plenty of colleagues with personality - A handful of world class engineers that are easy to talk to - Daniel and C-level management are refreshingly transparency. Huge fan of Daniel, Gustav, Barry's personality and approach to business. Honoured to work under them. - Positive work environment - Never afraid of change - Truly autonomous, each team mostly operates as its own "business" - We make decisions primarily based on our own insight/views, secondly what our customers are saying, and thirdly what our competitors are doing. Priorities are right - We are 100% working on the right thing. Everything proves towards it - Incredible afterworks and summer/winter parties - Huge emphasis on team over individual - Great investments in technical infrastructure, ie Kubernetes/Kotlin/Swift - Real work-life balance, in true Swedish fashion
Cons
- It can be slow to make decisions or ship (but being here for a while, I'm not entirely convinced if this is just due to a sprint vs marathon mindset. But yes it's very intentional from management) - Astoundingly poor manager retention (I am seeing managers leave left right and center, unclear why this is the case, and this will affect your personal growth) - Constant state of change in terms of restructuring (although you do get used to it, but it will affect your individual goals potentially significantly) - Promotion culture is weak. It has good intentions, but fails to work time and time again. Two examples: first is one person didn't get promoted because "they didn't ask for it" (and others don't because "they ask too much rather than doing") and the second example is I saw someone not get promoted because they did not show enough loyalty in their tribe. Has nothing to do with our newly introduced promotion framework and plays a part in why we struggle to maintain senior talent. - To my surprise, the longer you've been at Spotify the lower your salary has proven to be (and the new hires get offered significantly higher base salaries). I am not even sure if it is a good idea to just leave and come back 6 months later. Intentions are good, but in reality performs astoundingly with varying results. I am also unclear how this compares with other companies. - Increasingly political and process-driven, which doesn't suit individuals who want to stay as individuals. This makes us increasingly slower to execute - HR seems to rule the business. No exceptions exists in Spotify. This seems to stem from Swedish business culture where there are no exceptions. Don't work harder, it is not valued. Work hard during your paid hours and you'll be fine. You have to be a role higher than HR, such as a senior business leader, to be remotely considered as an exception.
