We’re not surprised that another big tech company is announcing layoffs in its ranks — there has been a lot of that already in 2024. You can now add Snapchat social network to the list announcing layoffs — about 529 employees. Not surprisingly, the company gives reasons like less market spending on digital ads. Still, interestingly, the company mentions the Russian-Ukrainian war as one aspect of the employee reduction that we haven’t seen explained, and Snap didn’t specify the areas for the targeted layoffs.
Snap is restructuring, which includes the cancellation of the original series. Earlier this year, the company signed extended content arrangements with Disney, ViacomCBS, and NBCUniversal.
In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission today, Snap disclosed its layoffs. Snap stated it was doing so “to best position our business to execute on our highest priorities and to ensure we have the capacity to invest incrementally to support our growth over time.” The corporation will incur a one-time charge of $55 million to $75 million, mainly to cover the severance payments of the impacted employees. Still, the company will save approximately $500 million annually in costs once the payout is done.
Snap cut about 20 percent of its staff in 2022, and at the beginning of 2023, Snap had about 5,300 employees and cut about 3 percent of those. Snap will report its fourth quarter 2023 earnings tomorrow, which may give greater insight into what’s going on with the company.
Snap seems to have had trouble growing outside its main social networking layout and offering. Other hardware initiatives, like a selfie Pixy drone, were abandoned almost immediately after its debut — and the augmented reality glasses weren’t even widely made available (even to those of us who tried to purchase them).
The CEO of Snap, Spiegel, set some aggressive goals for 2024, hoping the daily users will grow by 17 percent and bump up Snapchat+ 750 million monthly users and Daily Active Users (DAUs).
