12 ms·

Snap is laying off about 100 engineers

206 points by artsandsci 9y ago

theklr 9y ago
Poor Snap. Long live Snap.
tyingq 9y ago
Ten percent of all engineers is pretty significant. Curious what the motive is.
- Moto7451 9y ago
  I can posit a few things. My work is "down the street" from them and they hired extremely quickly. From murmurs I've heard that seemed to actually work out ok. Having experienced really fast growth at my work, but not their rate of fast growth, I can trow some spaghetti on the wall that will probably hit somewhere near the mark for some set of the 100 firings. 1. Managing out. If you hire quickly and perhaps not carefully, you'll hire people who don't necessarily perform as well as you thought (generally), don't perform well in your environment in spite of their talents (i.e. Chris Lattner's short stint at Tesla), or don't get along with the team and hurt culture. 2. Under the same fast growth, you may also hire a specialist for some technology you decide to get rid of. While the ideal situation is finding a new role or moving them to a different team with a similar technology (i.e. one NoSQL DB to another), you may not be able to do that if you hired lots of folks all at once. 3. They simply over hired. This can mean they don't have enough managers and people are being poorly utilized, they hired opportunistically, or they were just poorly coordinated. 4. They need to make their accounting look better. People cost money, until you stop paying them. Not much to say here.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Insightful...thanks for sharing. It's a shame companies don't consider the personal turmoil they create when moving that fast.
    - eitally 9y ago
      Meh. Remember, they're paying you for a service, and they can terminate the relationship largely at-will when that service is no longer required. I'm not saying I agree with how the US employment system currently functions, but them's the facts. If you value stability or loyalty, definitely don't join a hyper-growth startup.
    - ad-hominem 9y ago
      I would think it's pretty clear by now that "companies" in general have no morals. The only time a company won't take an action that would make them money is if that action is illegal. Usually. I mean, if corporations will spend hundreds of billions lobbying governments to pass obviously immoral laws in their own favor (net neutrality anyone?), why would you assume they give a shit about Gary, the Redis expert they hired and don't need anymore?
  - 6ak74rfy 9y ago
    2. Under the same fast growth, you may also hire a specialist for some technology you decide to get rid of. This would only lead to a very small (less than 3-5), if any, part of the 100 engineers getting fired. 3. They simply over hired. I guess some part of this could also have been because they de-prioritized some big features, that led to some engineers not having enough work.
    - Moto7451 9y ago
      Right. I’m not saying these suggestions cover every person being let go. My position is that rather than this being a doom and gloom event for Snap, like some other comments have suggested, there are many reasons. These are the ones I’ve seen happen personally.
- taprun 9y ago
  The motive is probably to save money.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Well, sure. But there's a higher level motive there. Like prepping for a takeover, pivot, etc. Reducing engineer capacity also means reducing pace of innovation.
    - g10r 9y ago
      Reducing engineering capacity does not necessarily mean reducing the pace of a companies innovation.
- justboxing 9y ago
  > Ten percent of all engineers is pretty significant Not if 20% or even 30% was from 'fat' / over-hiring -- they TRIPLED their staff from 600 to over 1,800 within a year[1] -- in the year leading up to their splashy IPO [1] Source: https://marketingland.com/snap-reportedly-lays-off-18-employees-will-slow-hiring-2018-226826 https://marketingland.com/snap-reportedly-lays-off-18-employ... > The company, which went public in March 2017, has been on a hiring spree over the past couple of years. > Between December 31, 2015, and December 31, 2016, the company’s full-time employee base rose from 600 people to 1,859, according to the company’s most recent earnings report.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Thanks. That's pretty crazy growth. Just onboarding and training them on how things work seems impossible at that growth rate. Also shows how little they care about the personal/family turmoil they create when doing that.
    - user5994461 9y ago
      Given the number, there is probably zero on boarding and training. Only a new employee surrounded by other new employees.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
aphextron 9y ago
I'm honestly curious if the massive headcount of some of these companies is even necessary. I was taking a look at Bumble[0] the other day. They are the #2 dating app in the US, turning down acquisition offers, and are profitable with >$100mm in revenue, yet I have been unable to find a single engineering job listing or find anyone on LinkedIn that is on their technical staff. Plenty of Fish[1] was built and scaled to hundreds of millions of users by a single person. When all you're doing technically is recreating functionality that has existed for decades now (messaging), and using 100% cloud infrastructure, why build out a huge engineering org? [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2017/08/23/women-first-app-bumble-turned-down-450-million-buyout-offer-from-dating-giant-match-group/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2017/08/23/women-f... [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped-plentyoffish-and-sold-it-for-575-million-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped...
- gizmo385 9y ago
  What exactly do all of these engineers do at single-focus companies like Snap? I guess I don't understand where you could find enough work for hundreds of engineers on a product like that?
  - zitterbewegung 9y ago
    Probably the Glasses and everything related to that? I don't think those were profitable so maybe it could be their hardware division.
  - tedmiston 9y ago
    There are so many features in the Snapchat app. If you really dig in, there are teams dedicated to each portion of the app. I'm not sure if that means a bunch of separate PMs as well, but it is a big complex app once you account for all the features... DMs, group messages, Discover, Memories, Stories, the map, filters/lenses, integrations like Bitmoji, ...
    - overcast 9y ago
spyspy 9y ago
And they'll probably end up losing 20-30% within a year. Engineers aren't stupid, and know they have tons of other options. This smells like VCs pressuring them to grow, grow, grow and management thinking they can just throw devs at the problem until the accountants stood up and said enough.
- nemothekid 9y ago
  >This smells like VCs pressuring them to grow, grow, grow They are already public
  - spyspy 9y ago
    That's a very recent development. And who do you think owns most of the company and controls the board seats?
maybeiambatman 9y ago
I got an email from them no longer than a month ago that they were expanding like crazy and opening a new office in Seattle. I don't completely understand their situation.
- cyrux004 9y ago
  same here. got a linkedin message from a recruiter in Seattle
nivals 9y ago
Former Snap engineers in Venice feel free to get in touch. We're hiring at our Santa Monica office for all types of engineering roles.
- greatamerican 9y ago
  what's your email?
  - __s 9y ago
    Their history is a lot of job posting for sureapp.com. Though not sure where their careers page is
    - nivals 9y ago
      Busy building a team and killer products... not much of a poster otherwise. I've been pretty happy that way for the past 9+ years on HN.
    - nivals 9y ago
      BTW, from the February 'Who is hiring' thread I'm happy to report that we hired a new front end team member in our NYC office!
  - nivals 9y ago
    If you write to our support@ address I'll keep an eye out for it
tabtab 9y ago
Layoffs? Oh snap!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Lynz14 9y ago
Headspace is Santa Monica is hiring for engineering talent. Feel free to email me at lyndsey.lustig@headspace.com for more details
- luckydata 9y ago
  Headspace is such a cool product. I love what you're doing, hope you have luck with hiring.
- skellera 9y ago
  I’d love to work at a place for something I use daily. Hope you get some great engineers to continue making it better.
kylnew 9y ago
Snap Engineers interested in working in Santa Monica - Join us down the road at YogaGlo! https://www.yogaglo.com/careers https://www.yogaglo.com/careers
guelo 9y ago
Could be hardware engineers after the Spectacles failure.
- cassieramen 9y ago
  Have they confirmed whether they are giving up on their hardware play or not?
  - brentm 9y ago
    They are reportedly working on two new versions: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/12/snap-is-developing-a-second-version-of-spectacles-which-may-include-augmented-reality/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/12/snap-is-developing-a-secon...
debt 9y ago
Probably gearing up to spend more on compelling original content as that's harder to produce than the software at this point.
mayneack 9y ago
adding to the set of hiring comments. Factual in Century City is hiring across engineering. benmayne@factual.com https://www.factual.com/company/careers/?gh_src=1pt2v8 https://www.factual.com/company/careers/?gh_src=1pt2v8
hans 9y ago
clearly a bad sign from management as the co is looking for growth: $22b can’t afford it and if you’re left, you’re next ..

206 points by artsandsci 9y ago

theklr 9y ago

Poor Snap. Long live Snap.

tyingq 9y ago

Ten percent of all engineers is pretty significant. Curious what the motive is.

Moto7451 9y ago
I can posit a few things. My work is "down the street" from them and they hired extremely quickly. From murmurs I've heard that seemed to actually work out ok. Having experienced really fast growth at my work, but not their rate of fast growth, I can trow some spaghetti on the wall that will probably hit somewhere near the mark for some set of the 100 firings. 1. Managing out. If you hire quickly and perhaps not carefully, you'll hire people who don't necessarily perform as well as you thought (generally), don't perform well in your environment in spite of their talents (i.e. Chris Lattner's short stint at Tesla), or don't get along with the team and hurt culture. 2. Under the same fast growth, you may also hire a specialist for some technology you decide to get rid of. While the ideal situation is finding a new role or moving them to a different team with a similar technology (i.e. one NoSQL DB to another), you may not be able to do that if you hired lots of folks all at once. 3. They simply over hired. This can mean they don't have enough managers and people are being poorly utilized, they hired opportunistically, or they were just poorly coordinated. 4. They need to make their accounting look better. People cost money, until you stop paying them. Not much to say here.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Insightful...thanks for sharing. It's a shame companies don't consider the personal turmoil they create when moving that fast.
  - eitally 9y ago
    Meh. Remember, they're paying you for a service, and they can terminate the relationship largely at-will when that service is no longer required. I'm not saying I agree with how the US employment system currently functions, but them's the facts. If you value stability or loyalty, definitely don't join a hyper-growth startup.
  - ad-hominem 9y ago
    I would think it's pretty clear by now that "companies" in general have no morals. The only time a company won't take an action that would make them money is if that action is illegal. Usually. I mean, if corporations will spend hundreds of billions lobbying governments to pass obviously immoral laws in their own favor (net neutrality anyone?), why would you assume they give a shit about Gary, the Redis expert they hired and don't need anymore?
- 6ak74rfy 9y ago
  2. Under the same fast growth, you may also hire a specialist for some technology you decide to get rid of. This would only lead to a very small (less than 3-5), if any, part of the 100 engineers getting fired. 3. They simply over hired. I guess some part of this could also have been because they de-prioritized some big features, that led to some engineers not having enough work.
  - Moto7451 9y ago
    Right. I’m not saying these suggestions cover every person being let go. My position is that rather than this being a doom and gloom event for Snap, like some other comments have suggested, there are many reasons. These are the ones I’ve seen happen personally.
taprun 9y ago
The motive is probably to save money.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Well, sure. But there's a higher level motive there. Like prepping for a takeover, pivot, etc. Reducing engineer capacity also means reducing pace of innovation.
  - g10r 9y ago
    Reducing engineering capacity does not necessarily mean reducing the pace of a companies innovation.
justboxing 9y ago
> Ten percent of all engineers is pretty significant Not if 20% or even 30% was from 'fat' / over-hiring -- they TRIPLED their staff from 600 to over 1,800 within a year[1] -- in the year leading up to their splashy IPO [1] Source: https://marketingland.com/snap-reportedly-lays-off-18-employees-will-slow-hiring-2018-226826 https://marketingland.com/snap-reportedly-lays-off-18-employ... > The company, which went public in March 2017, has been on a hiring spree over the past couple of years. > Between December 31, 2015, and December 31, 2016, the company’s full-time employee base rose from 600 people to 1,859, according to the company’s most recent earnings report.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Thanks. That's pretty crazy growth. Just onboarding and training them on how things work seems impossible at that growth rate. Also shows how little they care about the personal/family turmoil they create when doing that.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Given the number, there is probably zero on boarding and training. Only a new employee surrounded by other new employees.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

aphextron 9y ago

I'm honestly curious if the massive headcount of some of these companies is even necessary. I was taking a look at Bumble[0] the other day. They are the #2 dating app in the US, turning down acquisition offers, and are profitable with >$100mm in revenue, yet I have been unable to find a single engineering job listing or find anyone on LinkedIn that is on their technical staff. Plenty of Fish[1] was built and scaled to hundreds of millions of users by a single person. When all you're doing technically is recreating functionality that has existed for decades now (messaging), and using 100% cloud infrastructure, why build out a huge engineering org? [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2017/08/23/women-first-app-bumble-turned-down-450-million-buyout-offer-from-dating-giant-match-group/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2017/08/23/women-f... [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped-plentyoffish-and-sold-it-for-575-million-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped...

gizmo385 9y ago
What exactly do all of these engineers do at single-focus companies like Snap? I guess I don't understand where you could find enough work for hundreds of engineers on a product like that?
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Probably the Glasses and everything related to that? I don't think those were profitable so maybe it could be their hardware division.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  There are so many features in the Snapchat app. If you really dig in, there are teams dedicated to each portion of the app. I'm not sure if that means a bunch of separate PMs as well, but it is a big complex app once you account for all the features... DMs, group messages, Discover, Memories, Stories, the map, filters/lenses, integrations like Bitmoji, ...
  - overcast 9y ago

spyspy 9y ago

And they'll probably end up losing 20-30% within a year. Engineers aren't stupid, and know they have tons of other options. This smells like VCs pressuring them to grow, grow, grow and management thinking they can just throw devs at the problem until the accountants stood up and said enough.

nemothekid 9y ago
>This smells like VCs pressuring them to grow, grow, grow They are already public
- spyspy 9y ago
  That's a very recent development. And who do you think owns most of the company and controls the board seats?

maybeiambatman 9y ago

I got an email from them no longer than a month ago that they were expanding like crazy and opening a new office in Seattle. I don't completely understand their situation.

cyrux004 9y ago
same here. got a linkedin message from a recruiter in Seattle

nivals 9y ago

Former Snap engineers in Venice feel free to get in touch. We're hiring at our Santa Monica office for all types of engineering roles.

greatamerican 9y ago
what's your email?
- __s 9y ago
  Their history is a lot of job posting for sureapp.com. Though not sure where their careers page is
  - nivals 9y ago
    Busy building a team and killer products... not much of a poster otherwise. I've been pretty happy that way for the past 9+ years on HN.
  - nivals 9y ago
    BTW, from the February 'Who is hiring' thread I'm happy to report that we hired a new front end team member in our NYC office!
- nivals 9y ago
  If you write to our support@ address I'll keep an eye out for it

tabtab 9y ago

Layoffs? Oh snap!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Lynz14 9y ago

Headspace is Santa Monica is hiring for engineering talent. Feel free to email me at lyndsey.lustig@headspace.com for more details

luckydata 9y ago
Headspace is such a cool product. I love what you're doing, hope you have luck with hiring.
skellera 9y ago
I’d love to work at a place for something I use daily. Hope you get some great engineers to continue making it better.

kylnew 9y ago

Snap Engineers interested in working in Santa Monica - Join us down the road at YogaGlo! https://www.yogaglo.com/careers https://www.yogaglo.com/careers

guelo 9y ago

Could be hardware engineers after the Spectacles failure.

cassieramen 9y ago
Have they confirmed whether they are giving up on their hardware play or not?
- brentm 9y ago
  They are reportedly working on two new versions: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/12/snap-is-developing-a-second-version-of-spectacles-which-may-include-augmented-reality/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/12/snap-is-developing-a-secon...

debt 9y ago

Probably gearing up to spend more on compelling original content as that's harder to produce than the software at this point.

mayneack 9y ago

adding to the set of hiring comments. Factual in Century City is hiring across engineering. benmayne@factual.com https://www.factual.com/company/careers/?gh_src=1pt2v8 https://www.factual.com/company/careers/?gh_src=1pt2v8

hans 9y ago

clearly a bad sign from management as the co is looking for growth: $22b can’t afford it and if you’re left, you’re next ..