Spotify Employee Reviews about "career growth"

Pros

Smart people Fast paced Work life balance Perks

Cons

Stagnant career growth Comp is laughable Terrible managers who are absent and let things slip through the cracks Difficult to get things done between different departments Lots of internal politics that slow us down

Pros

Office views Food options are plentiful and healthy Work life balance CEO isn't Mark Zuckerberg Very transparent

Cons

I've had 4 managers within 2 years. 1 left for greener pastures and the other 3 came from reorganizations. Countless reorganizations that lead to endless meetings on redefining strategy, manager chains etc. Very rare to find a manager that cares about your personal career growth. It's 100% on you to manage it, which is fine so long as there is proper training, opportunities, and guidance as to how to do that. How do you drive your own development here when managers are hesitant to let you embed and your team's work/culture is slow, unexciting and lacking any real technical challenge?

Pros

Day to Day: - Simply put, the greatest working experience I've ever had - Amazing, talented & diverse people - Amazing product - Amazing engineer infrastructure, tooling, and documentation - great compensation & benefits - plenty of personal career growth opportunities - very good interviewing & onboarding process

Cons

I was laid off along with my whole team and 6% of the entire workforce. This came as quite a shock as we were told by Daniel Ek himself in company town-halls that this would be an absolute last resort, but it felt a lot more like they did the mass layoffs because so many other big tech companies just did. It felt very blindsiding. My manager's manager was even unaware that this was going to happen. Day to day: - big company (~9,000 employees), so it could feel intimidating for some folks - some required travel (could be a pro for some folks) - international company so cross-timezone communication can be tricky at times

Pros

Smart people solving interesting problems Great environment Above average pay/benefits Lots of room and support for career growth Data driven decision making

Cons

Occasional issues finding time to meet with peers in Europe

Pros

Surrounded by fun, passionate, high energy and incredibly smart colleagues. I am forever grateful for this opportunity to thrive in this work culture & environment. I came from very rigid and structured companies in the past where I was limited in my wants and desires for my career growth. Here, I feel like I have it all with all. Thank you Spotify - for picking me!

Cons

Outgrowing current office space, slow elevators

Pros

* Great product to use * Interesting tech to work on * Tons of potential for new products and features * Opportunities to learn * CV booster * Will probably continue to succeed

Cons

* Frequent backstabbing in Tech and Management * Aggressive internal power struggles * Endlessly restructuring teams. 'Re-org' at least twice per year. * Most of middle-management was promoted into jobs they don't know how to do, so they accomplish nothing. * Upper-management absent. Who knows what they do? 'Upper Management' is ultimately responsible for the problems at 'the bottom', so Upper Management is not doing a good job. * 'Owning' a product or feature is inevitably a terrible curse * Nonsensical career growth program * Dismiss all problems as 'growing pains' * Discourage – even punish – maintenance of existing features. All that matters is writing new things. Mostly rewriting the same things again and again. * Constant feeling of panic and pressure. Always under-staffed, but always accepting new projects. Upper/middle management accepts the projects, and controls the (lack of) staffing, and then shifts the blame to the devs/designers/QAs/BDs. * Infinite meetings. Don't be surprised if you're triple-booked all day. Position doesn't matter. Same for devs, QAs, designers, managers. Senior and junior. * Certain people have much more power and influence than their positions are supposed to have. Upper management encourages it. Power comes from being in the right management clique.

Pros

- Friendly company culture but clicky - Good benefits - Welcoming to ship new ideas - Global company

Cons

- Lack of structure/procedures - High demand with no career growth - Managers with no relevant experience - Below average pay

Pros

Fun colleagues Free food Gaming rooms Great values (but unfortunately less than half of the people actually follow Spotify's values)

Cons

Mid-level managers are inexperienced and incompetence No career growth based on performance Most of the promotions are based on how many complains you did over the year Many products are done in a rush hence unscalable and unstable Take diversity to the extreme that female employee feel they are hired because of gender not because of what they can do

Pros

I love the people there. The company doesn’t mind to spend on business travels and off-sites. The projects were interesting, even though only about very few of the projects got implemented.

Cons

The Spotify team is known for being autonomous. However, it causes problems while the company grows to not a startup size. Each team only cares their own initiatives and priorities, and barely think of collaboration. The teams are scared of changes, and always try to push back. During my time there, every lead in my direct team left. Every person who sat next to me at my first week was gone. With all the parties and travels they offered me, I was still unhappy due to the reasons above. There are lots of politics and it was hard to see the career growth there. Btw, the recruitment team was also terrible to work with.

Pros

- free food and beautifully designed office spaces with stunning views - highly recognizable brand, looks great on your resume

Cons

- they sell a “growth mindset” to disguise the fact there is so much disorganization, lack of process and zero accountability -interview process is plagued with bias - Random interviewers from other teams will decide your fate rather than the team members and hiring manager you would directly work with -contractors are treated as disposable -lack of training opportunities, leaving you set up for failure -politics and favoritism can ruin your career growth -company structure/hierarchy much like the day to day process is so deeply disorganized = reorg hell -high turnover everyone has been in their roles for less than a year