SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
My bet is that since trending likes are a Graph DB problem, SoundCloud just chose not to solve it once it became too hard on their database. They famously had issues with early Mongo adoption so this would fit right in. Their most recent frontend HTML5 rewrite always winds up my CPU and hasn't changed in a couple years.
SoundCloud to me has always been a great idea with some great design that got ruined by some poor engineering choices from the top. And at the end by a desperate grab for stats and cash. I think producers would have paid more, better subsidizing free plans, if discovery hadn't gone downhill. I ran the numbers once on how CDbaby and Bandcamp became successful (based on stats trickled out over the years) while SoundCloud could never turn a profit. There's still plenty of room for someone to do this right.
I only use it for podcasts though, never music.
Comments would be littered with things like "hey, great, check out my stuff!"
That type of shallow "like for like" culture is absolutely cancerous for what was previously a very maker-heavy audience.
> That type of shallow "like for like" culture is absolutely cancerous for what was previously a very maker-heavy audience.
Man, I've been in there since day one practically and it was always like that, as has been every service of that kind I've ever used (hands up anyone who ever maintained an MP3.com playlist). Music runs on shameless self promotion. Players gonna play. Etc.
I eventually switched to Spotify, since I could have global keyboard shortcuts for the app. If SoundCloud had a desktop app I would use that instead of Spotify in a heartbeat (assuming I could play my own music as well).
They are failing not to provide an alternative and to prevent you from using an alternative.
I wish there was a firefox port.
(Apologies to those that work for one of those companies.)
Unfortunately for SC, IAC tends to price acquisitions based on historical revenues...
For anyone confused by this: SoundCloud can't play podcasts, but a small percentage of podcasters host their show on SoundCloud, and the app can (naturally) play those.
However, SoundCloud has probably seen the peak of its podcast-driven business. Podcasters have been wary of SoundCloud's fortunes for some time, and most have a Plan B in place. Today's news has likely expedited plans to find alternatives among at least some podcasters.
The music industry is a shade of what it once was, and both CDBaby and Bandcamp are tiny slithers off of that.
However, despite its shortcomings, Bandcamp is where cutting edge music lives in an age without Soundcloud. Labels like PC Music, Mall Music and Dream Catalogue have all pushed independent music to bizarre new limits in the last 4 years alone. Orchid tapes, an indie outfit, made their name off of Bandcamp releases. Alex G, Katie Dey, Elvis Depressedy, and a slew of other musicians have been recognized for their indie releases and now enjoy moderate indie popularity. As long as no one else is beating them, Bandcamp will continue to run on its skeleton frame and empower artists who use it.
They don't have to go crazy. But something less than the current clinical experience would be a step in the right direction.
But, like you said, most of my discovery occurs on YouTube and a small forum thread.
MATCH (u:User {Id:123})-[:FRIENDS]->(f)-[:LIKED_ON_2017_07_08]->(t:Track) RETURN t, COUNT(f) ORDER BY COUNT(f) DESC LIMIT 25
I made this if it helps anyone: https://github.com/kyranb/SoundCloud-Feed-Cleaner
I investigated your issues page and the previous comment may be related to the following issue.
https://github.com/kyranb/SoundCloud-Feed-Cleaner/issues/10
After loading a fresh copy of the page, the tab appeared.
With that said I opened an additional issue. Chrome console log did not appear to provide any relevant information.
As for Berlin, I am sorry to say: I had high-hopes for the tech culture there, but to call it Mickey Mouse would be a charitable statement. It was laden with confused hipsters who couldn't differentiate between language du jour and its monads and delivering a product.
When I applied, the warning signs were strong. Nevertheless I ignored them — to my own peril. Needless to say, I won't make those mistakes again!
Right before I resigned, it was revealed in a private leads meeting that 18 percent of the engineering force had resigned in that given quarter. Was I surprised? Not in the slightest. That knowledge gave me resolve to get out, which I hadn't yet announced.
What were the unintended negative side-effects?
I'm sure the company had a much nicer culture when they started, given that their product attracted so much original content.. So what went wrong ?
"We're all big believers in X here. But actually, we don't really believe in X"
"Great news, bro - we offer unlimited vacation! But actually you aren't expected to take more than 10 days of vacation per year."
1. I fully agree about the fractured organisation with lots of in-fighting.
2. I relate with the statement about "confused hipsters who couldn't differentiate between language du jour and its monads and delivering a product". I think it was more a matter of very clever yet immature kids that loved to play around with eccentric language features. That was not the root of any problem, though. The problem was lack of leadership to curb the in-fighting and give the engineers some direction so that they don't get lost on their drive to experiment around with whatever they feel like it.
3. It's ironical to blame the ex-TWers Brazilians _and_ the monad-loving hipsters. From my perspective, these were distinct groups. The Brazilians were not the stronger advocates of monads and other Scala typing tricks. Quite the opposite. The few Brazilians that were more fond of Scala were not ex-TWers. In short, simplifying the blame to one nationality is very short-sighted.
4. I'm very curious about who we supposedly bully. Or who was bullied at all, for that matter. Perhaps, I was too far from the director ranks to witness that. I'd imagine a director could do something about lowly engineers bullying people.
5. About ThoughtWorks, there's another misconception here. There's a strong cult-like culture there, yes. It happens that the former ThoughtWorkers that joined SoundCloud were exactly the ones that we dissatisfied with the cult, and joined SC in search for a better work culture. The ones that I knew personally have some quite strong feelings _against_ the "social justice" hypocrisy that is rampant at TW.
6. How were we "incestuous"?
I concur with the nepotistic networking in part. Everyone tends to refer people they know personally. Our network was strong enough to become some sort of inner joke. I doubt that this was what brought SC down. Immature acts were not restricted to us.
( I work for Pivotal but not Labs and am curious. )
I joined after the re-organisations that Phil mentions in the linked post here were well underway. From all I could tell, no one regrets it. At the position I head, I only heard rumours about the struggle that he went through trying to improve the engineering problems there.
Everyone (with perhaps a couple of exceptions) I know personally there (Brazilians or otherwise) was trying very hard to improve things. Their efforts could have been misdirected. Their strategy could have been even counter-productive. The intentions were good, though. And I did see some ill-intentioned people in other places.
I even think that thowaway999 was probably well-intentioned. However, an anonymous director calling people that he disagrees with "conniving and intensely political" and claiming a moral high ground is almost comical.
For me what was most difficult and disappointing was not being able to rally peers or their teams to get the necessary work done. Rather they were too busy sniveling amongst themselves — too jaded from burnout, I suspect. I felt incapable in the role at first until I recognized that it was really a maturity problem that pervaded much of the engineering organization.
I knew it was time to call it quits pretty early when seeing that nailing myself to the cross wouldn't affect change but hung on for two years. I was able to help a few people along the way by shielding them from the bullpen and the drama and giving some good career development opportunities. Let's face it: my peers in the leadership circle were long burned out, and I was quickly becoming so myself.
I have nothing but respect for the founders. They had their work cut out for them. Never asked a whole lot from them but they gave it their sincere all when I did. Maybe a learning opportunity for them would be having someone in their steed who was less conflict averse who could have helped referee the discord.
If anything, I wanted to caution folks to not be under any illusions with respect to SoundCloud's organizational and personnel context and work environment in Berlin. Everybody held it up as a panacea, which it sadly wasn't. Irrational exuberance is dangerous.
That's true. I only realised it later. My bad.
I think every nationality represented in the company gave a good contribution to make the place both good and bad.
I can't say the Brazilians there were an issue, but I can see how some folks, especially in the infrastructure team, wouldn't like them.
I personally had a lot more issues with German people, both in the company and outside of it, to be honest.
By being a director and having this sort of blaming outlook on other people, you most likely have a good share of responsibility for the downfall of the company.
If I sound angry, it was because I sacrificed a lot of time, energy, and giving up a good life I had in other city for taking the job. Worse was realizing how much of a lost opportunity all of it was. We could have achieved more had we more trust and decency.
If you're looking for examples, consider scouring the annals of the web for "shit Soundclouders say" - a Tumblr feed of leaked statements from our colleagues. I don't know who put that together, but it certainly didn't help the trust or maturity aspects of day to day work. To give an example of the shit posted on their, English was a second language for the majority of us at the company. There was a fair bit of mockery for peculiarities about how people wrote in their second tongue - among memorable immature tantrums recorded on the Tumblr. Do you see where I am going?
I bear responsibility for not being more persuasive. I tried to get this damn Tumblr deleted but couldn't. Nobody cared - especially because it predated me and them. Everybody accepted that immaturity as a given.
The backlash which is emerging now are really a products of pent up frustration. SoundCloud was never able to develop a culture which resolved differences. Lots of acquiescence, lots of political assassinations but no mechanism for reconciliation. That's where I point my finger at least.
when conflict cannot be meaningfully reconciled the whole system tumbles apart.
fwiw my critique focuses less on specific disagreements but the overall culture. i personally observed more innocent people eaten by this angry machine than necessary. that machine can't be the sole reason the company finds itself in this position today but friction from discord can't help an already uphill battle.
lesson number one: the no asshole rule is inviolable.
Maneuvering is a far better less inflammatory word here. Nobody died from disagreement working at soundcloud.
as i said they don't bear sole responsibility but rather signified the problem for the impunity of being able to break the no asshole rule. other immature apples spoiled the basket as well. plenty of innocent people suffered. none deserved that. burnout is evil. i hope we have all learned our lessons and become better people.
https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947
https://twitter.com/katalunia_/status/882992899893460993
> Well, SoundCloud just laid off all of its New York engineering
> Literally the entire payments and subscriptions team, ads-eng, monetization engineering, everybody
> Not really clear to me how the execs think this company will be able to make money from now on
The silver lining here is that recruiters are in a blood frenzy; I've had ~30 messages come in today.
When the whole finance team quit late last year, I knew it wasn't good.
I got out of there earlier this year. I feel bad for the new hires that were just coming in. I heard that a atleast one was just moving from the US to Germany, their things are still in transit in a shipping container and they just got laid off.
Ask HN: As an employee of a company, how do you assess its health? | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14653564
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14653741
Other indicators: delayed salary reviews
1. They haven't updated their iOS app seemingly in years. It lacks basic controls and makes it impossible to listen to more than a single song at a time.
2. The really shitty "artist engagement" sites that force you to follow 20 other social media accounts in order to get a download. I know this isn't Soundcloud directly, but they're the ones letting artists link off to these basically spam services through a button that promises a direct download. They could have easily required you to follow the artist before downloading directly to solve at least part of this problem.
3. Music discovery is absolute trash. Discovery on a platform like SC is even more important than a place like Spotify because there is so much underground talent that should be listened to. This was the entire point of SC and they largely failed at that.
4. I have seen countless artists on twitter calling out SC for taking down their own songs from their own accounts for copyright strikes. It also seems like their ability to work with artists in general is just utter garbage.
I actually liked SoundCloud a lot, before they introduced SoundCloud Go. It wasn't perfect, but since it was free I didn't have an issue to live with the flaws.
But they really burned all the goodwill they had with me and others when they introduced SoundCloud Go. Here's a list of the "features" of SoundCloud Go [0] and why it's difficult to accept them as a user:
1. Access the world’s largest music streaming catalog, a constantly expanding mix from established and emerging artists
It's not clear to me that any of this monthly subscription is going to the artists I like (e.g. like Patreon). So, I'm paying 10 Euros per month for you to run some servers while having a much smaller library than other streaming services?
I do not work in the legal or music industry, but it's my understanding that since most content on SoundCloud is indie remixes, they shouldn't have to pay royalties to the record labels because the content is not copyrighted by the record labels (legally remixes would fall under fair use). So unless I'm very wrong in this impression, SoundCloud bent over to the record labels because they didn't want to be sued out of existence like Grooveshark?
2. Full access to all 150M+ tracks
Versus 120M on a free account. I highly doubt this number, since after introducing SoundCloud Go, a lot of tracks from artists I listened to became "Previews" of 20-30 seconds long and you had to subscribe to SoundCloud Go to listen to the full song. It was pitched as a subscription to access additional/premium content, but this is not what it felt like as a user, seeing songs go from free to pay walled.
3. Offline listening
You updated the Android app to remove the caching option, where previously you could select 100% and have the app entirely cache the song offline, assuming you had listened to it at least once before. I used this feature to cache gigabytes of music on my phone so that once it was listened to on WiFi, I could go out and not consume my 3G data while listening to the playlist. That was a huge "fuck you" to users.
4. No ads
Install an ad blocker in your browser and never hear ads anyway.
5. Millions of premium SoundCloud Go+ tracks
Here's how Engadget covered the announcement:
"the subscription plan costs $10 a month and includes a library of additional content as well as the usual remixes, emerging artists and podcasts." [1]
Given what I've said in #2, this was not the user experience.
---
I'm sorry to the talented people who lost their jobs today, but I don't feel any sadness for SoundCloud. This hurt is entirely self inflicted. For any PM's reading, here's how to burn your reputation with users in 3 easy steps:
1. Introduce an expensive subscription service at the same price as your competitors, but don't offer as much content, and don't publicize that any of the money is going toward your content creators
2. Hobble your existing free product to force people to the paid service
3. Don't push any meaningful new features or notable bugfixes to your website or app in years (e.g. needing Flash to play a song, HTML5 which eats up 100% CPU so you can display... something)
Now I use Mixcloud. Not better for individual songs, but great for music discovery given all the podcasts/shows available. Their app is a bit meh, but there aren't any ads, and their website doesn't require Flash and doesn't use lots of CPU. Best of all: they've yet to screw over users by introducing a paid option.
---
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/03/29/soundcloud-go-hands-on/
Well, that's good to know and also super shitty. I guess like many other services, once they got the attention of the recording industry it was only a matter of time until they were forced into a licensing agreement.
Also, 10 bucks to remove ads is ridiculous, their catalogue is tiny and with overwhelmingly obscure/indie music (at least for me), AND I have no idea if the artists will actually get any of it! Cut it in half, have some sort of revenue share and I'm in.
Because you want to support the indie artist/label so they keep making music you like?
> Also, 10 bucks to remove ads is ridiculous, their catalogue is tiny and with overwhelmingly obscure/indie music (at least for me), AND I have no idea if the artists will actually get any of it! Cut it in half, have some sort of revenue share and I'm in.
100% this. I'm not going to pay that much just to remove ads and especially if that money is going toward big record labels instead of the indie artists/labels I actually listen to.
Wow, awesome! Never thought anyone from either SoundCloud or MixCloud would read this.
Short list of improvements I would love to see:
1. If an artist uploads a tracklist for their mix, support seeking directly to a track within the mix (similar to a cue file) via the app or website.
2. Introduce a better way to seek in the app. When the mix is 1-2 hours long and all I have is a seek bar the width of my phone screen and a fat thumb, it's very difficult to seek to somewhere specific in the podcast. Something like 10 sec forward and 30 sec back buttons would already be a huge win.
3. Sometimes the mobile app plays the mix but all you get is silence. This seems to happen most frequently in the middle of a mix when there are connectivity issues. Closing the app and opening it again when you have better connectivity still results in blank sections of the mix. Super weird and very annoying!
But otherwise, yeah, please keep it up! Mixcloud has basically replaced the other music discovery services for me because it's got the content I want and it just works.
No. Remixes are a derivative work. They are a copyright violation without permission from the owner. Fair use would be satire or an excerpt for the purpose of commentary. Remixing is just more involved sampling and Vanilla Ice can tell you how well that works out without paying the piper.
This is not the case on SoundCloud, where I'm almost always jolted back to reality when the next song comes on.
Don’t get me wrong - I agree that minutes played is a much better metric than play count - in fact I always wondered why Soundcloud wouldn‘t go a few steps further and not only show minutes listened, but also where those minutes were spent within your mix, like a heatmap over your upload‘s waveform to see which sections were most popular or where listeners stopped listening.
However, regardless of the fact that you use different metrics, for me it feels much harder to find an audience at Mixcloud. It‘s not that I‘m very popular at Soundcloud, but the small circle of like-minded followers I found there doesn‘t seem to translate very well to Mixcloud. Again, that may change with Soundcloud‘s demise.
There is just no real money in selling access to or hosting digital music.
Soundcloud used to be a place for DJs. They died when they tried to go mainstream instead of focusing on DJs and selling them services.
I hope you mean specifically on music, because that comment is laughable.
> Recommendation algorithms are the least of Soundcloud's worries as the platform just doesn't have any real business plan and just can't play the "growth game" anymore.
This 1000%
I generally don't subscribe to channels or upvote/downvote songs. Is that critical to getting good suggestions? I would have thought just listening history would be enough.
I get sometimes different version of the same song again followed by some other song that is also popular but has nothing to do with what I'm listening to followed by something else I "liked before" but obviously don't want to listen to since I already heard it many times. That is followed by a different version of the same song again finally eventually converging on pop music that I generally dislike.
SoundCloud on the other hand sometimes recommends interesting things that I like but have never heard of. Other times, it recommends things that are completely unrelated and that I don't particularly like. However, they're still new/interesting.
I've never had this issue with Spotify - mostly because of how differently its recommendations work - and it's probably one of the biggest reasons I've abandoned YT for Spotify.
I kind of feel too much money and not a strong org structure destroyed sound cloud.
Spotify recommendations are far from great. They crowd source based on popularity, Pandora's recommendation engine is far superior.
If your suggestions are based on crowd sourced data like play count, your recommendations will be further encouraged by recommendations and thus become obsolete over time.
Specifically, members of some online transgender communities use it to solicit community feedback on their voices. They'll record themselves talking, post it to SoundCloud, and ask the community for input on what they could do better.
I don't think there's enough of a market for "pastebin for voice recordings" to be a successful business though.
When I first heard of SoundCloud it was mostly used by self-releasing EDM artists as a place to upload their music, before YouTube was a popular alternative. Nowadays I see a lot of artists buying visualizer templates and uploading their music with that - or sending it to an aggregator on YouTube who displays a certain style of music (many of these aggregators don't seek artist permission and just upload popular songs and such, but many of the ones I follow get things sent to them by indie artists because a channel with 60,000+ subs will beat their own personal channel for recognition).
The problem when you're expanding is you need to have a clear idea of what you are. Because knowing what you are means you can scale by taking advantage of your strengths instead of dumbing it down. Amazon is a great example.
But if you just expand without knowing what you are, you'll end up like Soundcloud.
Also another thing is this idea of "what you are" (aka vision) shouldn't come from some media coverage or VCs or pundits. You should have already had the vision before these people started talking about you. See Snapchat for example, media pundits started calling them "a camera company", and Snapchat itself started believing the hype, and even renamed themselves "Snap". Snapchat is not a camera company. It's a social network that revolutionized private sharing. But they don't seem to think so anymore because they have to match the stratospheric expectation set by their IPO. Instead of expanding their own playing field they jumped into other giants' playground (competing with Apple in AR, competing with Instagram in public photo sharing, etc.), this pattern never ends well historically.
Soundcloud fell into the same trap. Their investor called them "The Youtube of Audio", instead of seeing it for what it is. If they had realized they were popular because they were a great service for indie musicians and focused on that aspect it is possible that by now they are more influential than any existing music tech companies. Instead they tried to become "the youtube of audio", which is the most uninteresting thing I've ever heard, it's the definition of "dumbing down" in order to expand.
And now, of course, (and for quite a while) YouTube is the YouTube of audio.
It should have been apparent that it was foolish to try and beat google on that turf. Google beat them easily with a simpler interface and raw performance. The biggest difference, though: The audio quality on YouTube is actually better. Nail after nail in the coffin.
Ta!
Spotify, Pandora, and Soundcloud fixed just about everything that people said was wrong with the industry from the consumer point of view. And don't give me that line about the labels screwing artists because thanks to fans who won't even pay for a premium subscription, Spotify literally can't afford to pay artists more without going under entirely.
TL;DR - music doesn't want to be free. Selfish people want it to be free.
I now use google music. It is still no way near as good as groveshark was (especially when it comes to having all the music and a simple interface) but it works pretty okay.
And of course they can afford to pay the artists: I get to pay way more to the music industry now, than I ever did before.
The only thing I fear is that they will shut the service one day for no good reason (because they have done this before). But since its a core part of their android offering I'm hoping it won't happen.
Also any Google iOS devs reading this: PLEASE ADD WATCH INTEGRATION. I love to listen to music while running, but currently there is no watch integration, so all I can do is play the next/previous song through my watch. Definitely more control would help :).
I wonder if this is us hitting some of the limits of capitalism? It's not that I mind paying, in fact, I want to support artists I like. But the entire ecosystem of media is set up in a way that it is just more efficient for everyone to get stuff for free.
I feel like financial transactions get in the way more than they help, but this is obviously from the consumer point of view.
But what if there's another possibility?
I think we're expecting the future and present of music to not look like the past of music. Music, like pretty much all forms of art, has a small number of professionals and a large number of very talented non-professionals.
What's changed is how professionals attain that status. Once upon a time it was impress something really rich enough to be hired on permanently. Then this complex system involving record labels came into being. Now we have a couple of different viable models at hand, and we have yet to settle on one as the dominant new model.
Couple this with a lowered barrier to entry and generally increased competition for entertainment dollars (which compete with mobile games, ebooks, etc.), and users have good reason to favor subscription models. Artists have yet to puzzle out how best to interact with this, but I have faith people will get there.
I wouldn't call it a limit of capitalism. I would call it a limit of the old music business model.
>You feel like maybe we're hitting some fundamental limitation of capitalism, whereby deserving artists aren't properly supported by the economic ecosystem around them.
It's actually the opposite. I would like the artists to get paid, but it's more that the payment barrier seems like a waste of time and energy.
> Couple this with a lowered barrier to entry and generally increased competition for entertainment dollars (which compete with mobile games, ebooks, etc.), and users have good reason to favor subscription models. Artists have yet to puzzle out how best to interact with this, but I have faith people will get there.
This is what I mean by seeing the limits. The subscription model makes no sense to me. It's inefficient at best, and it's clearly not working out.
It's not that I mind paying, it's that I don't want the work-flow for accessing new content to be limited by a payment barrier. But capitalism encourages the growth of artificial barriers for payment. It's just easier and a better use of time to bypass the payment method, even a subscription based one. It's more efficient for everyone if we could figure out a payment method and avoid that artificial barrier.
Any time your business is exchanging information for money - music, video games, movies, etc - there's always an incentive to circumvent it. The approach thus far has been to make it convenient, easy, and cheap enough that users are willing to pay in some fashion.
I am deeply curious what you imagine this artificial-barrier-free experience that still coerces payments to be like, however.
> Any time your business is exchanging information for money - music, video games, movies, etc - there's always an incentive to circumvent it.
Sure, but the new incentive is that it is currently a better product/service in almost every aspect. It used to be that circumvention was to save money, but that's not why a large number of people do it now. The service is better, the quality is better, the selection is better, etc. Maybe I'm missing something, but other than "the artist gets paid" I can't think of a single thing that going through an official route makes better.
> I am deeply curious what you imagine this artificial-barrier-free experience that still coerces payments to be like, however.
I have no idea, that's why I'm wondering if we've hit a limit to our current system. And it's not just music, basically anything that's digitally distributed is running into the same limit.
Curation, collection, access, and reliability are all value-adds. In my student days as a profligate music pirate, I had to put a non-zero amount of time into making sure the stuff I'd torrented was of a reasonable quality, tagged in compliance with my schema, and accessible where I wanted it to be. I was willing to do that because $10/mo was a lot of money to me at the time and I had time to spare.
Today, a new album from a band I like is one click and two seconds away from being actively in my eardrums. $10/mo is no longer a lot of money to me, and worth paying to avoid an hour of work a month.
That's even more of an argument that our current system isn't working. You might want to look into the current non-official music scene. Non-official sources of music come way better organized and faster than the legit sources that I've bought from. Tags are done correctly, quality is much better, and it's online before a lot of sites put it up. I've also had music that I paid for disappear because the company I "bought" it from went away.
Having a middle-man for this transaction has mostly been a waste of time for me.
In terms of artists posting on Soundcloud, the fact that there's any demand for Soundcloud at all pretty much torpedoes this entire worldview you're espousing.
It is extremely common for artists to simply give away mixtapes on Soundcloud. When/if Soundcloud is gone, those same artists will continue to release on p2p networks. It is bizarre and delusional to believe that some valley person has to be making money off of it for me to listen to the music I like.
People sell things to make money. People make things for all kinds of reasons. Music is fundamentally an artistic venture, and everyone who tries to turn it into this other thing can frankly get completely bent imho.
If we are going to have professionals they must make money some how & the current status quo requires them to be constantly touring.
Talk to them and this is taking its toll both in longevity & album quality. I listen to albums a lot more than live concerts so I find this concerning.
Or .. disconcerting?
https://github.com/orgs/soundcloud/people
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Lo9slf...
edit: now it's at 35... ouch
With these layoffs, I'm guessing it's hovering around 60
[1] https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882983954059595776 [2] https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882981765064871937
Quite different from when you voluntarily leave, when you give notice and do knowledge transfer and such. I imagine that is because the employee is unlikely to do anything bad, since they likely have a better future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...
I think I'm reiterating what has been said before, but the reposting is horrendous. It's made the listening experience quite poor from just using the activity stream. I've also been really unimpressed with the lack of track uniqueness - if 2 artists repost the same song, it'll show up in my stream twice. Even more frustrating was the lack of uniqueness between tracks & playlists, where one could conceivably listen to the same song multiple times in a row because artists would post the track and then a single-track playlist with that track inside it.
The UI is also lacking for quickly adding to playlists, etc. The simplicity was a feature, not a bug, and the power of SoundCloud has been their artist community.
https://soundcloud.com/miloh-fliger
https://soundcloud.com/wilddark
https://soundcloud.com/bedouin-official
https://soundcloud.com/hishamzahran
https://soundcloud.com/theokottis
https://soundcloud.com/ldsroom
Wouldn't be impossible to go rip them off the internet somewhere else but would require a lot of extra work etc.
Soundcloud should have stuck with boosting amateurs rather than play for the big guys and funded with subscriptions from the bottom up in my opinion. Leave the professional track streaming to spotify, this was youtube for sounds, a wild west just short of Grooveshark bootleg territory. Deep down, we know the ride is coming to an end and when soundcloud retires it will be missed.
Once groups were cancelled, the listens on the songs I post to Soundcloud plummeted to virtually nothing, and I really don't bother to upload my music there anymore, nor to go to Soundcloud to discover new music.
Should anything I like ever be taken down, I can still listen to it.
The good thing about music is that it is ultra portable so mixing music from many sources, services and providers is hardly a problem.
And you can clearly see that in how the market for online music works. Unlike video, which is so dysfunctional I'd be hard pressed to even say there is a market.
End result: despite streaming services I still spend $100s of dollars on music every year. 0 on video.
Hardly any service lets me buy and curate my own videos, without DRM, from several sources and build my own library which I can play on all digital devices out there.
It's just a few big giant services, each with their own DRM and limited platform support.
It's nowhere near a real market where I can pick and choose and providers compete on merit.
I know, because I worked on getting it shutdown. Not because I disliked the idea myself, but with no developers working on fixing it, the feature needed to be removed in order to cleanup the database spam and a huge chunk of a legacy code base.
We wanted to replace it, but nobody could convince management to fund it with headcount. But that's the story of SoundCloud, fantastic levels of miss-management.
Does SoundCloud see itself as an audio streaming service now, as opposed to an audio hosting service? That seems like a focus shift away from where they started, and puts them up against behemoths like Spotify. Maybe that's related to why they're struggling.
Tangentially: does anyone have any idea of how Bandcamp is doing?
The truth is that users are not loyal. If you are offering something for free, they will be happy to take it, and they will have no qualms about moving on when you stop giving them the free stuff that they came for. Selling eyeballs is a very tough business. People who want a realistic chance to make money should have plans besides "sell ads".
(Not that I use it.)
Realise that the flipside of such services is their real customers -- the adverts side. For online advertising, the two largest agencies claim over 60% of the market, and are named "Google" and "Facebook".
Everyone else is an also-ran. Which for any ads purchaser means "a lot more work for a lot less reach".
Couldn't the whole internet be generalized as "file hosting with a bunch of links"? A "file host" is a company whose primary purpose is for you to upload a file and give the link to someone else; they're a middleman that exists only because a more convenient/direct means of distribution to the intended network isn't available. This does not make the company nearly loud enough to establish its own identity/user base.
Facebook has always been its own repository of people intelligence. It was never just an "upload your photos here". Such platforms, like Photobucket or Imgur, sometimes prosper for a while, until the communication channels that reach the intended audience directly offer something easier. (imgur is going down now as reddit introduced its own image host last year)
Yep. There's simply no money in just "pushing bits" anymore. That business has been consolidated by people like Google and Amazon.
You have to both provide a valuable service, as well as create a "network effect" around your product. Otherwise you're easily susceptible to being out competed.
Apparently great[1] and profitable since 2012[2].
[1] https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/01/24/everything-is-terrific...
That said, music is extremely portable, so it's easy to buy from several online shops and combine it all in your own library later.
Based on that I sometimes remind myself that, unlike streaming services, where you are forced to put all your eggs in one basket and can only have one source, with music sales there might be other options too. There's actually a free market out there!
That's extremely rare on today's internet, and I want to support that. Therefore I consciously try to buy stuff from other sources too, like Ninjashop, 7 digital, Waste, etc. But it's just very easy to come back to bandcamp.
This is completely at odds with securely streaming unreleased music, as a preview for the final album. They always have charged producers, and now are charging both sides for (in many cases) the same content.
This shifted their product focus and shafted producers who didn't have a major label deal that could afford the streaming SoundCloud partnership deal. Basically giving the finger to the early community that made them popular.
I would have focused on the producers and dissemination of their tracks that led to more and better discovery. I believe producers would pay a premium for that -- they already do with other forms of media delivery.
It‘s my impression that the Bandcamp userbase is very loyal and full of music enthusiasts - at. least I buy there weekly, about 5-10 releases.
bandcamp has a very different business model from soundcloud. it's set up to cater to artists selling music, and they take a cut of any music sold through bandcamp. This is a valuable service and they charge a straightforward fee for providing it. the downside of this model is that it assumes people will buy music. Which, to be clear, they very much do today. Streaming is popular but there are still tons of people actually buying music.
soundcloud's early business model was for artists to pay for more storage, or something, and in recent years, I'm honestly not sure what their business model is.
So, not surprising that bandcamp is profitable and doing well and has apparently not raised tons of money yet gotten to profitability, and also not surprising that soundcloud, which has taken a lot of VC capital, is not going to be betting on a business model that seems to be going away (but in the meantime is presumably quite profitable).
I know that SoundCloud's interview process is tough, so I guess it's a good day for companies looking for talent around Berlin.
https://github.com/josephecombs/automated_soundcloud_downloa...
EDIT: I think it's broken right now for some reason but this should give you an idea of what to do.
I switched to Amazon music, which I pay ~ $6/mo. I couldn't be happier. I'm actually happy to pay money to have access to almost anything I ever want to listen to. they even have obscure Drum n bass albums (which surprised me). As great as AM is, it doesn't fully replace SC for me. No podcasts or indie music by random Australian dude without record deals.
Just a very steady decline over the past two years.
Their talented team will easily land of their feet anywhere else, it's a shame that someone's so previously unique is fading away due to trying to compete with Spotify.
Removing Likes & Groups have really pissed off their community.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/google-mulling-soundc...
$4.99 - SoundCloud Go $9.99 - SoundCloud Go+
According to the SoundCloud Blog circa 2016 (and most external reviews), "SoundCloud Go" is the plan with the expanded catalogue: https://blog.soundcloud.com/2016/03/29/introducing-soundclou...
However, according to the SoundCloud Blog circa 2017, "SoundCloud Go+" is now the plan with the expanded catalogue: https://blog.soundcloud.com/2017/02/28/introducing-new-sound...
Is there some sort of "bait and switch" going on here?
I can only think that SoundCloud purposely shuffled the product names around to make us think that the $4.99 plan includes the expanded catalogue, comparable to Apple Music / Spotify. Or am I mistaken, and the $4.99 plan does include a catalogue comparable to Apple Music / Spotify?
Furthermore, both plans advertise more tracks (120M+ tracks) compared to Apple Music or Spotify (30M tracks), making it even more difficult to reconcile what you're getting. And the $4.99 price point is further complicated by Apple Music, which also offers a $4.99 price point (for students).
The product branding, pricing and positioning here is bonkers for anyone comparison shopping, reading external reviews or simply trying to understand what you get. It's easier to do nothing, and simply continue using the free service (and switch to Spotify from time to time to fill in the blanks).
Quite a few artists I follow are on Soundcloud primarily for new material. I would happily pay for Soundcloud if they'd bother to update their app for Android Auto and Android TV.
Even in tech companies with no physical product to get out the door it is easy to get a 1:10 ratio. You just need an army of sales, press, marketing, social media managing, customer service, HR, management, legal, design, print design, accounting, finance, office management and other random people with important jobs to do.
How about a 1:75 ratio?!?
With three offices you are going to need nine receptionists at a bare minimum if you are to cover reception for an hour either side of when everyone turns up. At a minimum the IT guys that plug people in and get them setup on 'Exchange' are of a similar number if all the offices are to be covered.
So there must be a 'dev to total headcount' ratio, a maximum sustainable upper number, any higher and the company is doomed to 'miss the web' and get totally stuck in 1990's ways of working. I have seen a 1:75 ratio 'tech company' and saw great opportunity in changing it, although a long way off the desired 1:10 or lower.
There must be companies where the ratio is the other way around. A programming concern with little of the normal sales/marketing requirements could be a 3:1 company.
I hate people like this. "Oh I could build that in like a weekend with Go and React no need for 100s of devs..." Those statements only come from people who never built something even remotely in this size and have no idea how complex this stuff becomes when done proper.
I'm not saying this is exactly what happened there, but as a user of their product I'm disappointed because I simply did not see a growth in features or improvement quality that I would associate with a company that was scaling out like it apparently was?
In my personal experience, Berlin is very foreigner-friendly.
Big tech hubs are bound to see startups fail, especially leaking ships that never turn a profit.
Berlin isn't perfect but whatever happens to SoundCloud doesn't really say anything about its tech scene. Were SoundCloud be London/NYC/SF based, it would have gone under much, much quicker.
Presumably they're hurt by the presence of platforms such as Youtube or the 2010s' rebooted Myspace, where musicians can reach a larger audience and where both sides of the equation are subsidized by ads.
Meanwhile, more focused sites like Beatport appeared to have a successful recipe by selling actual tracks for download despite essentially offering unlimited streaming, yet even they ran into some trouble with their latest pivot.
It's a tough space to make money in, despite seemingly meeting a popular need.
looking at their accounts to Dec 2015 (latest available), they don't make great reading. The balance sheet value went from £8m to -£34m in one year...
We built http://www.layoff-aid.com/ specifically to help candidates and companies find each other, with the main goal of helping candidates find new homes quickly.
More on HN last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14647365
For those that have been affected at SC:
I am one of the co-founders of Terminal 49 and we are making global trade cheaper and more efficient for businesses. We are automating the first/last mile container trucking. We are looking to bring on our first 2 engineers to join our founding team (in SF/Oakland).
Would love to chat if you are interested, drop me a line at akshay [at] terminal49.com
Was it in order to find the right talent? There are great people in other, less expensive cities.
SoundCloud Application Registration
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNxc82RJuzC0DnISat...
Of course they turn you down for requesting access to implement a legitimate feature (listing the top most listened tracks from an artist).
When I first joined, it was a great place to share my music creations, and I enjoyed discovering other new artists who created the same sort of music I did too. There was always a lot of interaction and positive comments and I actually made some SC 'friend' in that time that I kept in contact with.
However, of late, I feel like I am throwing my music into a deep, dark hole in the ground. There are still the odd comments and interactions, but nowhere on the level that it was about 4 or 5 years ago.
You can actually see this from the stats on my channel [0], when you look at stuff I uploaded 3 or 4 years ago as compared to what I have uploaded in the past few months.
It will be sad to see SoundCloud go. For me, my channel still is a kind of roadmap of how my amateur music career has progressed in the past 10 years or so and I will never be able to recreate that on another platform...
You may well know all of this already, but a lot of people don't - or haven't fully appreciated the complexity, so I apologise if I'm telling you something you already know!
Butnwhat this means is that even if you have the agreement of the person who owns the recording to be allowed to use that recording in a stream, as soon as you make that recording available to stream you need the agreement of whoever wrote the music.
The complicated bit here is this - even if the artist owns the rights to the recording AND they wrote the song they may not actually be able to assign you the rights because quite often they have assigned the representation of their rights in the songwriting copyright to an organisation like PRS/MCPS (in the U.K. for example) - who are then required to pursue for a royalty payment anyone using the songwriting element (which is contained within the recording). The reason they assign these rights is that it makes certain things around songwriting royalty collection easier. Songwriters are paid for the use of their copyright - for example if their song is played by a DJ in a club - but the payments are often small and they cannot possibly grant a license to every single DJ who wants to play their song and they also can't admin the collection of that payment.
This causes a headache for people who want to provide streams of songs - because they need to negotiate a licence and associated payment with the organisations to which songwriters have assigned this element of their copyright.
And it means that - in essence - unless you've done that deal, at some point when you get big enough, one of those organisations is going to come knocking with a back dated request for payment.
https://www.beatport.com/charts
Regarding the early "exclusive" access - I think services that provide value for superfans or early champions are a big area of potential growth for the music business. Pledge Music has a great business built around this idea. Coupling that with the taste maker endorsement of DJ feedback etc is a great idee. The challenge - like all music services - is how you find an audience big enough to make it a viable business.
Pledge music and indeed Patreon are both doing good things for unsigned artists and I see potential for some crossover.
One of the major problems with beatport, is as they are the biggest and oldest store for electronic music, they take 50p on the £ and will only deal with "distributors" who generally take another 30% or so just for uploading your music. which leaves the label with roughly 35p in the pound to split with the artists. which is a terrible deal.
Also they don't offer any kind of promotion except for the charts. which are rubbish too. if an artist has a release, they will make a chart and put a few of their friends tracks in, it doesn't help with discoverability for most independents. the only thing which really helps sales on beatport are a banner. and that is curated by a person who works at beatport. which is flawed.
So yeah, in my opinion nobody out there has nailed it yet and there is still opportunities in this area. I'm confident that if you offer a service which is beneficial to independent labels and DJ's then they will use there social media influence to push fans to buy from you rather than beatport/itunes/etc. It's not a unicorn, but I believe it could easily be self sustainable (I'm hesitant to use the word profitable, as I'd rather it was profitable for the labels & artists than the platform, as long as the platform didn't lose money of course).
They really need to invest into building a more compelling product, there are some amazing scenarios they can tackle here but they seem to have no interest in it or maybe funding to pull it off.
Would love to hear details.
The company where I work (Starcount) is looking for people to work in data engineering (Hadoop and Spark), frontend (React), backend (Node) and Salesforce admin. If anyone is interested, my email is paul.jensen@starcount.com, and I'm @paulbjensen on Twitter.
Which means you can also add it in Overcast, or the Pocket Casts player and play it via the web:
https://play.pocketcasts.com/web/podcasts/index#/podcasts/sh...
They've been futzing around a bit too, they started as WeAreHunted, then got acquired by Twitter to become Twitter Music, then shut down, then restarted as Wonder.fm.
Making money in music is HARD.
I was actually thinking the same thing. My general advice after being at a company that went through multiple rounds of layoffs within 4 years: Get your resume together and start networking when you have any of the following scenarios: new management, new consultants, in acquisition talks, in a cash crunch.
now i'm out of the fancy shithole that startup land is. prefer working with a few ex-collegues from my hammock.
if you're in need for freelance work and don't bother writing ruby and sometimes php, get in touch. if you're into elixir get in touch right now. no erlang project yet but that can be changed.
8tracks and SoundCloud have been my home for years, sad to see them both struggling.
Not that it would be hard to get a job in our industry, but well.. :)
I'm also greatly disappointed that they seem to have settled on 128kbit MP3 as the peak of quality.
Essentially I want to pay them something to be able to listen to SoundCloud's uploaded tracks on my phone offline. That's it! Until they can compete with Spotify on a technical front and make me switch, I can't justify the $10/month, but I can certainly justify paying less for a sliver of that offering.
So they were in a bit of a chicken and egg situation - they needed to monetise the service but couldn't because they weren't legally able to, and to compound this they were sitting on a liability because technically they had been infringing the copyright of songwriters - but to do a deal to be legally able to monetise they had to be able to generate some sort of revenue stream to be able to get forward investment to settle the terms of that negotiation.
TL;DR - Soundcloud couldn't charge people without potentially being sued at some point about a copyright issue. To be able to charge people they needed to settle that problem and it seems like that all went on too long and now maybe they've hit a point where the model for monetising soundcloud isn't working as fast as they hoped.
If you are hiring, please reach out to people from SoundCloud. The decisions of who to let go were not based on performance. A lot of amazing people, both attitude and technically.
If any of you are not based here we can offer relocation/visa support, check my previous comments on whoishiring for more details or contact me directly stefan <at> fraugster <dot> com
- Mobile Engineering Lead - http://grnh.se/0sikan1
- Senior UX Designer - http://grnh.se/4hd0ix1
- Software Engineering Manager - http://grnh.se/8qix6m1
- Senior Product Owner - http://grnh.se/qdkir31
Edit: My company is also hiring backend devs for another team in London.
If there's a internal documents with links getting passed around (there was a similar thing when Skype shut down their London office) please add our company to it as we're hiring https://thoughtmachine.workable.com/
Speak is an AI English tutor that has spoken conversations with users who want to become better at speaking English -- so audio is core to our experience. If you were on the mobile team at Soundcloud we'd love to talk - email me personally at connorzwick <at> gmail.
That slogan took multiple passes to grok.
The fact that the word after 'turn' is 're-turn' makes my mind go to the usual purpose of prefixing words with 're': to do again. That's not how it's used here but then in 'repurchases' it is. There's too many twists and turns (no pun intended) from a language standpoint.
I actually did it for a while. I started my career in biotech and worked on an instrument. When I told them I was moving they wanted to keep me on and sent a couple of scanners to me.
I do realize that's a special case. They knew me for eight years prior, not nearly the same thing... but I thought I'd ask. There may be a fair amount of work that can be done via simulation, or applications level stuff, but yeah, a long shot.
If you are a frontend dev and hate speculative hiring phone calls, you can jump straight to coding excecise: https://github.com/Tout/tout_fe_interview
Ping me at tom@tout.com if interested.
1) 30 minute intro phone call to see if both parties are pushing in the same direction
2) technical review, which can take one of two forms:
a) 1 hour phone call (no computer needed)
b) take home coding exercise
3) in person phase to meet team, cross functional team members, and ceo
Because of the nature of this comment, I thought it'd be helpful to offer up option 2b directly if someone wants todo it without a phone call blocking things.
We offer the coding exercise as an option for a few reasons, but the most important one is that some great engineers are good on the phone and some aren't. While good communication skills are a must to performing well, doing well on a tech phone call isn't.
Others have mentioned engineers not being able to do fizzbuzz, and that is certainly the most important part. Another one is, I've personally worked in larger orgs where "engineers" stick around for years, but haven't really done any solid coding whatsoever in years. They use tools developed by others to "assist" their team, but are actually the least productive people. One of the strategies that help this is by not automating certain repetitive tasks, so that it seems to require the attention of a full time engineer. e.g. I knew a person whose job day in and out was clicking in the Jenkins UI to run the jobs (!).
Of course this is not universal. But a small coding exercise is a good compromise imo.
FastBill.com/jobs - We're Hiring, Go/PHP/Python/JS/React, but also non-dev positions
We are working on the democratization of entrepreneurship by making it easier to do company finances, write invoices and file taxes.
You can ping me via https://twitter.com/roritharr
https://www.thirdlight.com/chorus
Cambridge, UK.
Lead Backend: https://tungsten.workable.com/jobs/481949
Product Owner: https://tungsten.workable.com/j/B89A0EA7A1
San Francisco / Bay Area:
We're hiring UX Designers and Engineers at Common Networks (building a better ISP).
https://common.net | https://jobs.lever.co/common-networks
Feel free to reach out to ralston [at] common [dot] net
Here's the job posting: https://theinfatuation.com/careers/38/software-engineer-plat...
Feel free to PM me or reach out at buck@theinfatuation.com
We are hiring for several positions at Amazon in our Seattle office working on some really cool stuff. Please send resumes to sarthomp at amazon.com and say you found out on Hacker News. We'd love to make this work for you.
I'm not a recruiter
Software Engineer - AI and Learning: https://jobs.lever.co/askspoke/135f082c-de82-4875-bbd1-35f6a...
Software Engineer - Backend: https://jobs.lever.co/askspoke/cb915664-4ba0-482c-b824-73a3d...
You can email me - [HN username minus last letter] @ airbus-sv.com
Feel free to spread this to anyone in engineering in the NYC office (or anyone willing to relocate to NYC). Hit me up directly: jon.apostoles(at)nike.com
Mainly looking for native iOS and Android engineers, and backend engineers.
Thanks, and good luck!
Now is a good opportunity for you guys to go that road. It's never been easier to find projects and there are lots of companies that can benefit the experience you got and offer short-term contractor work.
If someone needs help to get started in Berlin ( taxes, advice, etc. ) feel free to contact me.
Wish you good luck!
Apply here: https://boards.greenhouse.io/demandbase/jobs/732055#.WV6CrhM...
- https://pandora.com/careers/position?id=oRme5fwg - https://pandora.com/careers/position?id=oSMG4fw8
These aren't under the best circumstances but if folks who are affected are interested in continuing their career in music in Oakland Pandora is an awesome place to work.
Feel free to contact me for any questions about our open roles, good luck with your search!
phowe at pandora dot com
http://www.aha.io | email: engineering-jobs@aha.io
Some highlights:
- You ideally have 4+ years of full-time experience and a salary expectation of $90-110k
- You have worked with or are interested in Unix, functional programming, Elixir, Elm, JavaScript, PostgreSQL
- We build cloud software for the marine shipping industry; thousands of people at companies like BC Ferries, Seaspan and many others use our products to build ships, reduce fuel consumption and manage their day-to-day operations
- We have a disparate stack with technologies like Rails, Meteor, Angular and React in production, but are standardizing our product line on Elixir/Elm
- We have group benefits, flexible time off, flexible work hours, working from home, and will buy you the tools you need to do your job well
mike [at] instagram [dot] com.
https://smartcar.com | sanketh@smartcar.com
I would like to think that engineers from Sound Cloud may be excited by the music, theater, film, and event domain.
Drop me a line at [hn_username]@timeout.com
My email is in my profile; feel free to reach out if you have questions.
Posted this as a top level comment already before I saw this one. Sorry about that: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=14713062&goto=item%3Fi...
Flexport is a freight forwarder, which is a really old industry. We're bringing it to the information era. (It turns out computers are really good at solving information problems.)
Flexport is growing the engineering team of ~35 in our downtown SF office. It's a great time to join: we have 20% MoM growth and we're about to enter the peak season where retailers are getting ready for the holidays. There's lots of opportunity for personal growth because we still have tonnes of stuff to build.
Our stack is React, Rails, Postgres, AWS. We're experimenting with GraphQL & Relay too.
We're hiring across the stack. Check out our careers page below. If you're interested in frontend, contact me directly! (email is in my profile).
Thank you for posting here, for making yourself available directly.
https://www.earnest.com/careers/#/engineering/730199/sr-soft...
We're a marketplace that connects people with studios and gyms so they can take yoga, martial arts, or other classes near them. We have a solid working business model and are growing. We're hiring for backend, frontend, full-stack, and infrastructure roles.
I'm a technical lead in SF and happy to talk to anyone on either coast. Contact me at (my HN username)@classpass.com or apply directly at https://classpass.com/jobs/openings.
Feel free to apply yourself, forward to recruiting, or give me a shout with questions.
Even if you don't join, very much appreciate you posting here and making yourself available.
We recently closed a $50m Series B from a consortium of the six largest global banks, as well as Google. We are growing rapidly (in Harvard Square, NYC and DC) and are looking for exceptional engineers to complete our team.
We are hiring across the stack. See more on our careers page: www.kensho.com/careers
You guys probably know, but we're located 5 minutes from the Factory :)
Or, better, just drop me a line directly: zach [at] plaid [dot] com
If any of your colleagues are interested, Square Cash (https://cash.me) is hiring backend/server, iOS and Android engineers in SF. Reach out to ayo (at) squareup dot com if interested: https://www.smartrecruiters.com/Square/743999652546124
Best of luck regardless. Looks like lots of great options in this thread.
Prefer(https://prefer.com) is looking at hiring both frontend engineer and product designer in both NY and SF. We are a Benchmark-backed company working on rebuilding the service professional marketplace.
Feel free to reach out, my email is siong [at] prefer [dot] com.
Twitch Berlin is hiring. We're looking for data scientists and distributed systems engineers working on one of the largest live video CDNs in the world at a huge scale that makes things interesting:
* Data Scientist, Fraud/Video: https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/17b5882c-6be0-41cd-a6ac-45b948e...
* Distributed Systems Engineer - Live Video CDN: https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/8929e219-138d-473c-8acd-4fcc3e0...
* Senior Software Engineer - Live Video CDN: https://jobs.lever.co/twitch/2fae3239-fe4d-4582-bfdf-7d43727...
Primary language is Golang so DSEs from SoundCloud are likely to be a great fit!
The latter two positions say "San Francisco", but we have a growing engineering office in Berlin with people working on the live video CDN and fraud detection. These positions can be filled in Berlin and we'd be very happy to do so (helps us grow the Berlin office).
Happy to answer any questions you might have. Hope this will help some of the folks affected by the lay off.
Ex-SoundClouder and Berliner here. I'm sad you haven't mentioned that in your previous comments in "Who is hiring?" threads. I once found a dead link in your comment and when I looked at job ads on your site I couldn't find any openings for Berlin.
Then, seriously -- have someone fix that, right now.
Anytime I get a sense that ad copy and the hiring team aren't communicating on some basic aspect of the role description -- that's always a big red flag.