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by textminer 4568 days ago
Surprised I've heard nothing about the bloodbath at Dr. Dre's Beats Music/MOG online service. They hired up a huge data scientist contingent, then fired them all. Strange considering how aggressive their recruiting was. Also strange to ponder hiring data scientists for a yet-to-be-launched service (with little data).
2 comments

A friend was let go, as was an acquaintance who was hired in senior management of the group (Todd Beaupré). Investigating his LinkedIn page, he had circular recommendations with five others on his team, all who had finished working there at the same time (not including my friend).
Really? any references to this?
Just did a quick google search, mostly because I would think being a data engineer for Dr. Dre, even if you got laid off soon after, would be hilarious to have on the resume. The first reference I found was this August 2013 story:

> Beats Music is also hiring to fill 13 positions, indicating that much work remains to be done if this music service is going to launch by the end of the year, as expected. The company is looking for everything from iOS and Android developers to visual designers and an ingesting specialist (the person at any music service who’s responsible from grabbing music from artists and labels and putting it into the system). In addition, it wants to hire a “data engineer,” a “data scientist” to focus on machine learning, and a “senior software engineer – recommendations,” indicating that some degree of machine recommendations will be built into the system.

Here's their current job listings:

Billing Software Engineer San Francisco Data Engineer San Francisco Data Engineer, Ingestion - Warehousing San Francisco Full Stack Web Developer San Francisco iOS Developer San Francisco Project Manager San Francisco Senior Android Developer San Francisco Senior Data Pipeline Engineer San Francisco Senior Software Engineer San Francisco Senior Systems Engineer San Francisco Senior Windows Developer San Francisco

PRODUCT

Data Analyst San Francisco Senior Product Manager San Francisco

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough: OP referenced people at Beats with a data background getting fired. This was the first I had ever heard about it, which is why I asked for references. I remember they were trying to ramp up a team from scratch crazy fast a few months back.
Posted details to another respondent.