Back in 1843, the most well-known novel by Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, was released in London. The book – telling the story of a rich miser called Ebenezer Scrooge who changes his mean, skinflint ways after being visited by a ghost and three spirits – was a huge success and got a life of its own.

But what became of Ebenezer Scrooge himself? Well, it turns out he’s alive and well – and lives in a home worth around $50million in Stockholm. He’s also changed his name to Daniel Ek and founded a streaming website called Spotify – which made him a billionaire.

Now, a billionaire announcing that he’s making job cuts in his own company is never a good look – it doesn’t take a genius to work out how it’ll be framed by anyone reporting the news. But for Daniel Ek to declare that around 1500 of Spotify’s employees will soon be shown the door in an apparent cost-cutting exercise just three weeks before Christmas?

That’s a new level of stupid. Explaining himself, Ek says:

“Considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to right-size our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives. While I am convinced this is the right action for our company, I also understand it will be incredibly painful for our team. To be blunt, many smart, talented and hard-working people will be departing us.”

Coming on top of previous job cuts – 600 were axed back in January and a further 200 got the boot in June – this just leads to more questions than answers on what’s going on inside the company. Still, let’s not forget the most important thing – Daniel Ek’s $3billion net worth remains unaffected by the cuts…