Too much remote work - Product Manager Spotify Employee Review

3.0
15 Feb 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- good work life balance - varies by department, but engineering is nice to work with (fewer egos, people are actually graded on working well with teams vs many places that value individual "rockstars" over team dynamics)

Cons

- in my interviews, management was not transparent about the amount of collaboration that has to take place with the Stockholm office - in the NY office, get used to very early meetings, being excluded from decisions, or being jetlagged and using personal time to fly over - very slow moving company, very hard to get teams to cooperate with each other, and management doesn't realize this is a problem - senior leadership isn't experienced or won't bring alignment between teams/departments, and the ceo is young and "fratty" - many of their titles aren't standard, which hurts people's resumes. I don't see the purpose of calling teams "squads" and departments "tribes" except to create an unnecessary insider clique. - overstaffed on "leadership" roles like agile coach, honcho, product manager, and chapter lead relative to number of engineers, which contributes to the lack of speed and difficulty creating alignment - some roles like "agile coach" and "honcho" don't seem to contribute anything to the department

Explore other reviews about Spotify

5.0
3 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great team morale and work styles

Cons

Sadly impacted by company layoffs

5.0
14 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

It has started moving much faster than in prior years and there's a lot of emphasis on moving fast through AI. The culture is still pretty fun and it feels like you're working for a fun product

Cons

Spotify, as an app, is trying to find out what the next ten years look like for them. Right now leadership is experimenting with different directions and features so expect ambiguity and changing of scope and orgs

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