Sep 19, 2024
Spotify Software Engineering Manager reviews
3.5
82% would recommend to a friend
Daniel Ek
81% approve of CEO
77% positive business outlook
Race / Ethnicity
Gender
Sexual orientation
Disability
Parent or family caregiver
Veteran status
Reviews by job title
3 reviews
2.0
Mar 2, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
Musical artists at all hands Good work-life balance Heavy investment into onboarding and training, though this also means it takes a long time for new hires to get started. You will spend a lot of time wishing you had something to work on.
Cons
Management is terrible at planning. I did not have a team for the first two months of joining Spotify. This is a big deal because everything is tied to your team/squad - mailing lists, meetings, infrastructure you have access to, etc. My management did not have a plan for me, or a lot of people in the org. I was told I was joining during a "slow time" but honestly I couldn't see this group ever working quickly. Everything has huge process overhead and there are no strong voices. Engineering culture is heavily document driven. Before anyone can do any work, there MUST be an RFC. Even if you want to remove some dead code in an old service. No one can agree on what information should be in an RFC - there is a real lack of engineering leadership and culture. RFCs take months to write and review before work can actually begin, but then when code is delivered the design is re-litigated, so the RFC really served no purpose. Recent layoffs in Jan 2023 are referred to internally as the "Blood Sacrifices". In Dec 2022 the company announced cost cutting measures for 2023 - no travel, no fun budgets. Then in Jan, just one month later, they said these cost cuttings measures did not work and that is why they must do layoffs. In reality, the layoffs were just so inventor confidence could pick up and the stock price would go up (and it did!). The layoffs were cynical and unnecessary.
2.0
Apr 25, 2022
Great culture, but Spotify has a lot of stuff to figure out
Former employee, more than 5 years
New York, NY
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
- Great work-life balance. Spotify really does care about your wellbeing. They were very responsive to the Covid Pandemic and were ahead of a lot of other tech companies in creating a WFH policy. - Intro-days was a great benefit. Hopefully they do bring back in person Intro-Days in the future, as it was fun to go to Sweden to see the leadership team in person - You are encouraged to grow and learn new skills. There are plenty of opportunities to learn new skills internally, primarily through TechU courses. I've been a huge fan and do encourage co-workers to utilize this benefit - Related to the above, you are also encouraged to use your newfound skills to challenge yourself. - People are really passionate about what they are working on, and is very easy to strike up conversations with subject matter experts when needed. The general culture is that everyone wants to see you succeed.
Cons
- A lot of engineering policies and practices seem to be taken directly from FAANG companies. It seems at times that the decision makers really just wanted to work for FAANG instead. - Teams are chasing metrics with their portion of the Spotify app. This comes at the expense of the holistic user experience, which has degraded quite a bit IMO. - Promotion policy is a bit heavy-weight, especially at the Staff level. It's better to just apply and interview externally at that point. There seems to be no transparency or avenue for feedback on packages. It's also significantly easier to get hired as a Staff engineer than to be promoted to one. - The culture seems to have taken a hit ever since the company went public. This makes sense, as they are beholden to the shareholders. - Compensation needs to be re-evaluated. Equity refreshers do not happen unless you are promoted or explicitly asked about. Cost of living increase is also well below inflation.
