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Comment by DoesntMatter22 | Hacker News Reader

Had a convo with a top Spotify developer getting paid really well. He was, I thought, incredibly arrogant, he talked about Spotify as if was OpenAI or something.

He was open in discussing how they only want the best candidates and how hard their interviewing process is, he explained that is why they are so successful.

I pointed out that Spotify is losing money at an unsustainable rate. The whole thing to me was comical. Spotify exists in a space that is a complete commodity at this point. I switched to YT music recently (because I didn't want to see ads) and to me YT music is as good or better.

Spotify had a sort of first mover advantage but drastically over hired like Twitter and everyone else did. I guess we'll see if they can get to profitability.

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> how they only want the best candidates and how hard their interviewing process is

I sometimes feel like those algorithmic challenges at interviews are more for making developers feel they work at the "top team" than filtering the candidates. I am not salty about it - I am very good at those, did lots of Topcoder back in the day.

Most of the people in the industry agree that they have a terrible signal-to-noise ratio (or any other standardized interview method for developers). Any method that works doesn't scale, but large IT corps don't want to hear that.

> I sometimes feel like those algorithmic challenges at interviews are more for making developers feel they work at the "top team" than filtering the candidates.

I think that's partially correct, but a side effect. I think the real function is to make managers and execs feel that their devs are the "top team". But totally right about it being more about feelings of superiority than objective and relevant qualities for the job.

So long as those algorithmic challenges are actually in-use. Warranted. If it's just to flex that last little bit of grey matter, not warranted. The issue is software complexity is such a spectrum that so too must the interview process. No standard "developer 101" interview exists because each company has different software needs. An entry-level exam at Google will look different than an entry-level exam at Dunder-Mifflin. I think better expectations and better communication are the way to have successful (and meaningful) interviews. Yes, code test and all that but you should formulate the interview so that it gives you a good understanding of what they would be like to work along-side. I agree though with what you said.

Makes sense there is a lot of self worth or pride people attach to their work. It is quite common in software devs I know.

Especially young and impressionable ones. I am past 35 so I am past all of that. I know I do good work and I don’t need external validation as much as I was 20-something.

> Spotify exists in a space that is a complete commodity at this point

There is massive lock in since they have years of my music listening history and have the best recommendations around. I also share an account with 2 other people in the same boat where it'd be extremely disruptive to switch.

That's hardly a commodity type situation and what you listened to + how long per song has never been a transferable thing in the industry and music recommendation algorithms significantly fluctuate in quality (youtube only redently improving theirs thanks to Tiktok competition doing it better than them). Spotify is top of the field. The hifi (finger quotes) stuff like MQA they have coming soon means they'll be competitive with TIDAL for quality, and there's only 2 hifi options in the industry with large libraries.

You are probably an exception in how much you care because of history. Spotify to me stinks because they keep recommending the same 20 songs to me.

No way I'm an exception. Every person I know is obsessed with the weekly discovery list... It's a major reason Spotify is as popular as it is.

It sounds like you don't really listen to music if you're only getting the same songs. I don't see how that's possible in any other way, unless youre the one listening to the same small group of songs and it has no data to make useful recommendedations.

Every person you know? That's nuts because I know 20 or 30 people who use Spotify and none of them even mention that.

I'm guessing it's an age gap thing

Weird it's a common thing that music discovery was basically solved by Spotify. You don't have to follow blogs, magazines, review sites, or seek out recommendations etc. Making playlist for friends was also common but now I feel way less of a need now since I know Spotify will do a better job of tailoring it to them so I just occasionally share individual songs.

I'm 35 not sure how old you are but Ive been using Spotify forever and recommendations has been a major part of that UX. And I used Last.fm before that like 40 million other people, which Spotify killed after ending their deal with lastfm and building their own one.

Considering you don't get proper recommendations says enough about how much you use it IMO. You won't get anything back if you don't tell it what you like aka listening to music often.

I'm 42. I listen to spotify nearly everyday, though I'm not nearly as interested as you in finding the latest music as you are.

I'm sure there is a significant segment who loves the discovery like you, and that segment is probably in the millions buy its probably still the minority.

Even in this thread you are the only one I've seen mention this specific aspect.

Most people probably don't care except for a segment of ultra interested people like yourself.

Fwiw YT Music gives me a huge variety of songs it suggests for me at least.

A good example is radio. If you pick a song and do radio Spotify will start to repeat songs after 7 or 8 of them. YT doesn't do it nearly as often.

Ymmv

More anecdata: I do not mind much my spotify historie. We choose mainly radio channels or listen to a specific artist. In general (news, music, movies/netflix!) I think recommendations suck big time and are overrated. Better ask friends.

Alas they flush all that data down the toilet and play you whatever, based solely on Payola deals

I use both and I prefer the Spotify interface by a mile, but I'm "stuck" with YT Music because they let me upload my own MP3s (Spotify does not). Without that ability, I can't make playlists I want because I don't have access to the songs I want.

But yeah, they bare essentially interchangeable, unless you care a lot about your "year in review" stuff.

It’s extra sad, because you used to be able to put your own MP3 files in Spotify. If I recall correctly, it would even sync those files to other devices!

But this is long ago now, I might be mistaken

You aren't mistaken. I used to use Spotify for that purpose as well.

I had an account with Spotify premium, which allowed you to download playlists to listen to offline. On my computer, I would select a local song to add to a playlist, and on my phone I downloaded it to listen to.

I believe it still does that, but cannot confirm, because the way it syncs the stuff is kind of aligning the stars in a specific way. I've followed instructions and it never seemed to work quite right. It skips some, it dupes some, some might only work on the same network (even when everything is marked for offline)

I do have local stuff (mp3 based) on my Spotify still on my iPhone. Not sure if it is a relic of an old feature. But it's not the entire directory and it's not easy to manage.

Yt has year in review as well now I think. As far as the interface yt seems like a complete clone of spotify

You're kidding, right? YT Music is like a 20 songs playlist. It's not worth anybody's time even if it's free.

I guess you mean the auto-playlist/radio stations play the same 20 songs?

I've had same experience as parent, Apple/Spotify/YT Music are interchangeable but for a few exceptions in who got a license to what, in which case YouTube wins because of bootleg uploads (Mos Def's Ecstatic comes to mind, ain't nobody got a license to stream that, but there it is on Youtube)

For my taste Yt music has almost everything, but spotify hardly has half my playlist.

I've found most of the music I listen to through youtube. So it's not suprising.

But I'd wager that almost every song on spotify is uploaded to youtube as a video. Then it should be available on yt music unless they have flagged massive amounts of videos as not musical.

YT Music has the roughly the same library as Spotify. They all do. They really are mostly-interchangeable.

> He was, I thought, incredibly arrogant, he talked about Spotify as if was OpenAI or something.

What do you mean? They revolutionized everything...by putting an iPod in the cloud. /s

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