Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, is to lay off 20 percent off its employees.
The Verge reports that the company will start letting a fifth of its 6,400-strong workforce go from today, citing the usual “people familiar with the matter”.
It’s claimed that the staff losses won’t be evenly spread throughout the company. Apparently, the team working on ways for developers to build mini apps and games inside Snapchat and those working on social mapping app Zenly will be severely impacted.
Snap’s hardware division is also set to be hit by cuts. Earlier in the month, the company cancelled its Pixi drone after just four months on sale.
Elsewhere within Snap, the company’s ad sales operation is set for a shake-up. Chief business officer Jeremi Gorman has announced that she will be heading up Netflix’s new ad team as it prepares to launch an ad-supported tier.
Snap appears to have suffered from a post-pandemic slump like many of its tech contemporaries. After a familiar hiring splurge in response to a world that was locked down and eager to reach out and touch someone digitally, the company has endured a lean 2022.
Recession fears combined with Apple’s ad tracking crackdown have reportedly hit the company’s bottom line hard, despite an expanding user base that outnumbers Twitter’s. Snap’s stock price has dropped by around 80 percent this year, and it posted deeply disappointing financial results for Q2.
Ahead of this big Snap lay off, the company has continued to bring fresh features like Director Mode to Snapchat in 2022, and launched the Snapchat Plus subscription tier earlier in the year.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.