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Spitfire business things

  • Thread starter Thread starter thereus
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Kent said:
I'm surprised that in a discussion of business direction, recent Glassdoor reviews aren't mentioned, e.g.:

Spitfire business things


I have very high respect for the boots on the ground at Spitfire, but if this sort of c-suite buffoonery is accurate then the future trends bleak.
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Fake glassdoor reviews are unfortunately a frequently used tool by people brigading companies online who they don't like. Glassdoor only very selectively verifies employment status, and even when they do, the documentation can be pretty minimal.

This "review" in particular really just reflects/confirms all the garbage speculation that's in the fanclub-style trash that exploded after "the tweet" without providing any actual detail that an employee would be privy to. The "series of chief officers" and implying that this employee would know what their wages were in relation to the previous "series of chief officers" is somewhat ridiculous, and the last year's history of Spitfire employment on Linkedin paints a different picture than "hæmorrhaging staff on a weeklly basis".

edit: one of the "reviews" even has the classic Spitfire-VI-Control trope of "why do they keep releasing so many new products without fixing the old ones". So on the one hand, there's no new projects and no money for new libraries and nothing interesting to do and on the other hand too many new products.

Some of the 2022 negative review seems legit, with people saying they worked there a short time and felt overworked. Also lots of positive reviews that look legit. But a couple post-tweet negative reviews look like they were written by somebody from either here or KMR
 
Kent said:
I'm surprised that in a discussion of business direction, recent Glassdoor reviews aren't mentioned, e.g.:

Spitfire business things


I have very high respect for the boots on the ground at Spitfire, but if this sort of c-suite buffoonery is accurate then the future trends bleak.
Click to expand...
Sounds like this may be what Benn Jordan was hinting at in his video about Private Equity in the music production industry ("The Private Equity Buyout of Music Production")... Granted his 'prediction about what may happen is a completely unknown, but it sure does sound like they're in trouble. It also sounds like the kind of financial peril where company's start entertaining bad ideas, like positioning themselves to be acquired by a larger entity. (Again though, who actually knows, but it sure doesn't sound promising)...
 
Glassdoor has no way of verifying reviews posted on their site, so in this day and age where anyone with a computer can use the Internet, it’s probably a good idea to read anonymous online reviews of any company with a healthy dose of skepticism.

People writing a review on Glassdoor can have all sorts of intentions with it which we as readers do not know about.
 
Perhaps a small grievance in the grand scheme of things, but not unimportant I think. I have twice complained to Spitfire now that it is not possible to have only essential cookies on their website. You are presented with a vast array of explanations if you want to know more and how to manually disable cookie's in web browsers, but there's no straightforward way to opt out like almost every other website. Pretty sure this is illegal under GDPR. Both times they thanked me profusely for pointing it out, and then did absolutely nothing. Hard not to conclude that it is this way by design, that data harvesting is clearly important to them and they never intend to change it.

It'll be interesting to see what Crow Hill's overall strategy is. Not since the end of days at Tonehammer...
 
jcrosby said:
Sounds like this may be what Benn Jordan was hinting at in his video about Private Equity in the music production industry ("The Private Equity Buyout of Music Production")... Granted his 'prediction about what may happen is a completely unknown, but it sure does sound like they're in trouble. It also sounds like the kind of financial peril where company's start entertaining bad ideas, like positioning themselves to be acquired by a larger entity. (Again though, who actually knows, but it sure doesn't sound promising)...
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Private equity is buying up a ton of companies in the industry I work in, as well. When original owner companies get purchased or take on VC partners, there is an inevitable shift of focus from passion for the product to ROI (Return on Investment) and "professional management" to at least some degree. It comes with the deal.

That said, I take any individual Google or Glassdoor reviews with a grain of salt.
 
This is all very sad. I feel sorry for all of the people at Spitfire. I'm sure that for most of them, it's much more than just a job. (Having been through something like this myself many years ago.)

Personally, I hope this doesn't ultimately result in many expensive libraries that can no longer be authorized.

:emoji_disappointed:
 
I don't think Spitfire is going anywhere anytime soon. I do think we'll see a reduction in the smaller niche libraries and more of a focus on high-end (read: expensive) products, though. That may mean that the Labs, Pianobook and Originals lines won't be as vibrant or active as before, however.
 
Since 2015. I've purchased a number of SA products, incl. some more expensive ones. Right now, I have most of what I objectively need and want to have in my toolkit. In the foreseeable future, I will probably get mostly their more affordable titles.

Speaking of which, I still think that the Originals and other similarly priced ranges were an excellent move. I hope that this series will continue, if nothing else, through re-releases of legacy content. I always suspected that their aim was to convert their older products running in the full version of Kontakt to Spitfire Player. I'm not a big fan of the latter, but the quality-quantity-price of the Originals is hard to ignore.

When it comes to LABS, I had rather high expectations, especially since they've announced a dedicated studio that will develop future instruments. After many years of constant monthly releases, it's been quite a while since the last LABS instrument. So I'm intrigued to see what the future holds for the program.
 
It's always hard to read demeanor when you are dealing with marketing, but I have to say that, for instance, Paul's recent videos both for AR1 and on his own channel don't really show signs of the dysfunction suggested in the embittered employee missive posted above. I do, however, think that his relocation back to London was motivated by feeling he needed to be around SF headquarters more. The other SF videos have been similar in not showing visible marks of stress in the various talking heads, even when they've been asked to do things that are outside their comfort zone (more common now that they are having to do much of the work that used to be handled by Henson). The most distinctive thing in recent months has been that the calendar for the AR1V1 release was clearly moved up and without a lot of time for everyone to adjust to the new schedule, so it all felt more like a scramble than is typical for a SF release.
 
Kent said:
I'm surprised that in a discussion of business direction, recent Glassdoor reviews aren't mentioned, e.g.:

image.png


I have very high respect for the boots on the ground at Spitfire, but if this sort of c-suite buffoonery is accurate then the future trends bleak.
Click to expand...
It's a shame that the company went from being recognized as one of the UK top tech companies to work for to this kind of vibe in a few short years.

Former CEO Will, and Christian created a great work culture and fostered a community. That was something that other music technology companies just didn't have. The value of that might be difficult to see for new management.
 
If it wasn’t for Spitfire offering BBCSO Discover for free (after a waiting period) I probably wouldn’t have gotten back into writing orchestral music and, in turn, spending way over £1K on their sample libraries. I hope they don’t forget what offering free or severely low cost products can lead to.
 
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