👉 Background: Spotify revolutionised the music industry back in 2006. And since then, Spotify has grown to over 550 million users, including more than 220 million premium, paying users.

👉 What happened: Over the past 2 years, Spotify grew rapidly to over 9,000 employees. But over the past 12 months, it has gone through a series of layoffs:

• In January, Spotify laid off more than 500 employees
• In June, it laid off 200 more employees
• Now, it will lay off another 1,500 employees in its biggest redundancy so far

👉 What else: Spotify's CEO has blamed it on the slowdown in the global economy. So now, its aim is to refocus on "efficiency" and "resourcefulness"—the traits that its CEO claims helped Spotify succeed in its early days.

What's the key learning?

💡As companies transition from being scrappy startups to well-capitalised companies, they often face the challenge of scaling efficiently.

💡As companies hire more and more employees, it can often create diminishing returns. In other words, each new employee is not producing the same output as each employee before them.

💡Spotify grew rapidly during the pandemic, and this meant a significant increase in staff numbers. But now, with the economy slowing down, they've re-evaluated the needs of the company.