Ex-Morgan Stanley engineer gloats on WFH in South of France
When Morgan Stanley VP Xavier Seneque left for Spotify in November, we observed that it was an interesting move. While Morgan Stanley has been making efforts to get its staff back in the office, Spotify is much more amenable to working from home. Spotify's employees have the opportunity to work from any location in which Spotify is a registered company. Remote working, in-office and hybrid options are all available (including opportunities for coworking space).
Seneque is now taking the company up on that. A French national who's been based in Scotland since 2015, he's just moved to the south of France to work from home (WFH). He says he initially came to the UK "17 years ago by myself with a single suitcase", after completing a master’s degree in Toulouse.
Writing on social media, Seneque says Spotify's work from anywhere (WFA) policy allows him to "be closer to family, explore different cultures in depth" and "try something different for a while." Beyond that, he highlights WFA as a "fantastic way towards improving" initiatives in "mental health and diversity."
At Morgan Stanley, meanwhile, CEO James Gorman has been pushing staff back into the office and telling them where they work is "not an employee choice."
France has been something of a popular destination for Spotify movers. Staff engineer Nicholas Brenwald, who spent six years in banking across Deutsche Bank and Barclays, made the switch from London to Nice last August, while product lead Alena De La Cruz spent over eight years working in Barcelona before a move to Grenoble.
Spotify continues to attract top finance talent in 2023. New York based engineering manager Jasmine Chan spent five years at Goldman Sachs, while senior engineer Brian Hackett was most recently a senior associate at JPMorgan. He joins in Glasgow.
Fintech engineers love Spotify as well, with Klarna being a top source of talent. Senior engineer Katarzyna Dusza and software engineer Lou-Lou Pei have both joined from the BNPL fintech this year. While the industry is more WFH friendly than finance, attitudes to it are far more mixed than at Spotify.
For students enticed by the proposition, Spotify's 2024 internships open this fall. It certainly helps that, according to levels.fyi, intern hourly pay is $58, higher than Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and more.
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