
Ask HN: What's Spotify NYC culture like? - tastefulcakeful
I recently saw my dream opening, user researcher, posted for the NYC and Stockholm office. So I&#x27;m thinking of applying and just wanted to ask if anyone could describe more of the team&#x2F;&quot;missions&quot;?<p>Any input and advice would be appreciated it particularly on the UX research team!
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jasonmotylinski
NYC Spotify employee here. Spotify has a very honest, open, and autonomous
culture. Spotify is comprised of many Missions which are defined by a business
purpose like ads, user engagement, or analytics. Within a Mission you will
have one or more Tribes. Each Tribe is loosely associated with the Mission
goal and addresses a portion of the overall Mission. A Squad is a delivery
team/product team. Squads are accountable for building great products. They
are given autonomy to make the right decisions for the direction of their
product. Squads function as "mini-startups", if you will. A grouping of many
Squads is called a Tribe. A Mission will have one or more Tribes. It's a tad
confusing and I'm sure I've gotten some of definitions wrong, but you get the
general gist.

As for the people culture, Spotify values the growth of employees. We focus
heavily on personal growth over product delivery. We believe if we build good
people they will build good products. I was doubtful before joining Spotify
that they would fulfill everything I was told (about the culture) during the
interview process but everything has held true.

For better descriptions of Spotify check out the engineering culture video:
[https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-
cult...](https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-
part-1/)

I would encourage you to apply. Spotify is a great place to work.

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tastefulcakeful
Thanks I really appreciate the perspective! Quick follow up, are you assigned
a team from the get go and what's the the mobility between missions/tribes?

I'm definitely going to apply, but I image they get inundated with apps so I'm
trying to learn as much I can for that cover letter (hopefully that counts for
something,haha?).

Would you suggest I email a recruiter directly on top of applying online?

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halflings
That seems like a very specific question, maybe something that you could get a
faster answer to by messaging Spotify NYC employees on LinkedIn?

I worked at Spotify Stockholm (doing my master thesis there), and it was quite
nice. Pretty much what you'd expect from bigger tech companies (Google, FB),
only on a smaller scale. I'm sure you'll find a lot to do as a UX researcher
since they are constantly experimenting with new features.

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8draco8
Glassdoor is a great place to start your research
[https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/spotify](https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/spotify)

