[HN Gopher] Snap lays off 20% of employees
___________________________________________________________________
Snap lays off 20% of employees
Author : no_wizard
Score : 306 points
Date : 2022-08-31 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Brystephor wrote:
| Evan also released a report this morning. Some departments such
| as Snap Minis & games, snap originals, and a few other things
| like that pixy will be cut heavily/stopped entirely.
|
| Team members in the U.S. are stated to receive at least 4 months
| of "compensation replacement". Those relying on work
| authorizations will receive additional support and flexibility
| according to the email.
|
| Other notable pieces is that Jerry Hunter is being promoted from
| SVP of engineering to COO.
|
| As a side note: I've had several recruiters reach out to me since
| yesterday. Yesterday (08/30, day of verge report release) I had 9
| unprompted recruiters reach out. Door dash, 2 from Amazon, and a
| few from some lesser known companies as well. This is with my
| LinkedIn profile set to "not looking for a job".
|
| sources:
|
| [1] https://www.axios.com/2022/08/31/snap-restructuring-layoffs
|
| [2] I'm a snap software engineer.
| choppaface wrote:
| Prior to these layoffs, Evan recently pushed a change to do a
| Founder Stock Split that would benefit him materially without
| losing his voting power:
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/as-snap-melts-down-its-fou...
|
| Snap stock to fell ~25% the next day.
|
| How do Snap engineers feel about all this? Are they so into the
| product and their work that they just don't care? Or rather,
| are they also deeply supportive of Evan's stewardship? (ignore
| the non-believers)
| robocat wrote:
| "Spiegel and Murphy [CEO&CTO] own a whopping 99.5% voting
| control of the company."
|
| Why would anyone expect their Class A shares to be treated
| "fairly"?
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| <not a snap employee> I'd bet most of them just want to work,
| get paid enough, and left alone to do other things with their
| lives.
|
| Strong opinions about what a founder does to their comp
| package is something people who are either close to the top
| or in an early stage company would worry about.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Some departments such as Snap Minis & games, snap originals,
| and a few other things like that pixy will be cut
| heavily/stopped entirely.
|
| I wonder how much fat is being debated to be trimmed at
| GOOG/AAPL.
| avrionov wrote:
| I can't predict the future, but there is one big difference
| between Snap and the FAANG companies. Snap hasn't been
| profitable for the last 5 years.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Based on the increase in daily recruiting attempts I receive
| from those companies, I would guess that they are _not_
| looking to trim fat.
| jbigelow76 wrote:
| _I wonder how much fat is being debated to be trimmed at GOOG
| /AAPL_
|
| I bet Apple is going to let the mini-revolt over the return
| to office policy naturally thin its herd.
| peppertree wrote:
| Snap and Meta are getting their lunch eaten by TikTok. Google
| Apple Amazon are fine.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Amazon's gonna bleed the quarter after they introduce ads.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Amazon is massive in ads. I believe they are 3rd now.
| Even ahead of Microsoft+LinkedIn
| Brystephor wrote:
| According to the Amazon recruiter that reached out to me
| for Amazon Ads, their growth has been significant and
| they're now one of the largest sources of income for
| Amazon at $30B+ a year in income.
|
| All the Amazon devices are likely whats being targeted
| for Ads. Kindles, Amazon Prime, Audible, alexa,
| firestick, and now that Prime has access to Thursday
| night football they'll get some of that ad revenue too.
|
| TLDR: Amazon is going big on advertising.
| peppertree wrote:
| Amazon already has ads.
| collegeburner wrote:
| Anecdotally as the target demographic of short video, i'm
| starting to have friends send around the occasional insta
| reel not just tiktoks. I think they're making up some
| ground.
| ronnier wrote:
| Amazon was hurt deeply by TikTok. TikTok pushed Shein which
| is now the top shopping app. shein is direct from china
| sales and is now insanely popular for cheap fashionable
| clothes. TikTok is eating many.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/18/shein-overtakes-amazon/
| eunos wrote:
| Also I read that Tiktok e-commerce is now home to brands
| that were delisted from Amazon.
| xtracto wrote:
| Just yesterday I got contacted by a Google recruiter
| through LinkedIn asking me whether I was "interested in
| discussing our current remote opportunities!" .
|
| Given the infamous Google 5-7 stages interview process I
| promptly rejected the offer. IMHO It's just not worth it
| for an employed person to go through that hell...
| temp_praneshp wrote:
| I applied at google the last time I looked for a job
| (dec2020-jan 2021). The 5-7 stages interview process
| isn't even the worst thing about it. Unless you disagree
| in principle, it's basically a day's worth of time.
|
| After confirming that the hiring committee had said yes,
| and a level, the recruiter found some teams that were
| atrocious (either they were looking for a completely
| different skillset, or so far out from my stated
| preferences). We then did a 2nd round of interviews and
| did a level jump (mid Feb-2021), and found a team in mid-
| March. After okay-s from both sides, it took them till
| mid-April to come up with an offer.
|
| My entire h1 transfer for the company I chose took less
| than how long google took for the last step.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The top-end players operate _way_ outside the norms for
| mid-market (as in, the "trimodal" software developer
| comp graph). Among the 8 or so software job offers I've
| accepted in my career, I don't think I've ever had one
| take more than 7 calendar days from initial contact to an
| offer.
|
| I do see some paying mid-market rates and taking a month
| or more for their process. I bet they believe it's very
| hard to find software developers.
| xtracto wrote:
| I had a thought around those lines. I am sure Peter
| Norvig didn't have to go through 7 asinine whiteboard
| coding questions to get hired into Google.
|
| Now, I am way way way far away from being Peter Norving,
| but in my 15 years career, I have found companies that
| value my experience enough so that they treat me well
| during the hiring process. In my last 3 jobs (10 years) I
| didn't even have to do "interviews" for the places I got
| into. I have been spoiled...
| bushbaba wrote:
| Google still is an ads company. It's not as well
| diversified as apple (hardware, services, ads) and amazon
| (cloud, retail, consumer electronics, logistics,
| healthcare,...etc)
| sanedigital wrote:
| Google is in all of those areas as well, they're just
| minor plays.
|
| Last quarter, ~10% of Google's revenue came from non-
| advertising Services and ~7% came from Google Cloud. The
| ~82% that comes from ads is split between Search,
| YouTube, and the Network.
|
| Amazon by comparison is 83% dependent on Amazon retail.
| Cloud fills the remaining 17%. They're not any better
| diversified, by revenue.
| master_crab wrote:
| This completely misses the importance of the cloud to
| Amazon.
|
| AWS profit margin is around 30% whereas retail is
| probably hovering in the low to high single digits
| (5-8%). AWS makes profit for Amazon, and retail offers
| free cash flow to Amazon. Both are important and to say
| Amazon isn't diversified due to revenue is simplistic.
| mh- wrote:
| I don't think you can look at Amazon's "dependency" on
| revenue through that simplistic of a lens. AWS is
| purported to be much more profitable than their retail
| operations.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| What are the margins on Amazon's retail revenue after all
| logistics costs versus the margins on Google's
| advertising?
|
| I'm going to take a guess and say retail probably breaks
| even (almost by design by Amazon but not sure if it'll
| ever be more than a 10-20% margin business because by
| design they are offering traditionally expensive services
| like fast shipping, very lenient returns at very low
| cost/price to the end user) whereas advertising is
| probably... 80% margin?
|
| I know there are server costs, engineers to maintain
| them, but if Google stopped investing in growth as far as
| diversifying/expanding advertising services goes
| engineer/developer/management wise... how lean could they
| run?
|
| Could they support Google's current ad offerings with a
| core team of... 1000 engineers? 500? 200?
| bushbaba wrote:
| Amazon doesn't want to show profit in retail. It instead
| re-invents much of the profit into their logistics and
| technology. Buying all those 747s for prime air these
| past few years wasn't cheap. Amazon go wasn't cheap.
| Alexa sure ain't cheap. That all comes out of the margin
| of retail.
|
| Amazon retail isn't just getting revenue from e-commerce
| sales. There's multiple diversified business units part
| of that division. For example people pay for amazon
| logistics, amazon warehousing, etc.
| paxys wrote:
| iPhone hardware sales account for 50% of Apple's revenue,
| and that number goes up significantly when you allocate
| revenue from Apple Care, services, ads, App Store and
| more that are directly driven by iPhone. The entire
| company is reliant on that one device, so not quite as
| diversified as people think.
| wiremine wrote:
| True. I think it's also fair to say it's more of an
| ecosystem than a single product. The switching costs to
| another similar ecosystem are high.
| matwood wrote:
| It's better to say Apple is becoming less reliant on
| selling every iPhone user a new iPhone every year.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| Apple can deploy several levers to increase non-iPhone
| revenue which they haven't yet.
|
| First party games. Ads. Increase first party paid app
| costs (final cut pro goes back to being a pro service).
| Developer services. All on the mac side. They also have
| cloud infrastructure they haven't focused on yet, but can
| potentially be a major source of revenue with the right
| hires and focus.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Is Google trying to be anything other than an ads
| company?
|
| If so, what? I know they are famous for spinning up
| projects and killing them super quickly.
|
| If not, what are they doing? They have 140k+ employees
| worldwide. Is that what is needed to maintain their core
| ad business without focusing on growth of any kind (ad
| related or not)? If not... how many
| engineers/managers/whatever positions could they afford
| to "layoff" if we were to see US recessionary
| pressures/consumer spending pullback?
| chucksmash wrote:
| Another justification people give for Google staffing
| levels is keeping talent locked up/not competing with
| Google. To the extent that's the case, thinking wouldn't
| be along the lines of "could we get by with fewer
| workers?"
| twblalock wrote:
| Google also makes the most popular mobile OS in the
| world, the most popular web browser in the world, runs a
| major cloud provider, runs an app store, and provides
| services in hundreds of countries which requires a large
| amount of employees to do all the legal, compliance,
| localization, and support work.
| scarface74 wrote:
| The most popular mobile OS in the world that according to
| evidence that came out in the Oracle trial, only made
| Google $27 billion in profit from inception until then.
|
| For reference, Google pays Apple a reported $14 billion a
| year to be the default search engine on Apple devices.
| It's highly likely that Apple makes more from Google in
| mobile than Google makes from Android.
|
| Chrome is just another gateway to advertising.
|
| Google's Play store game revenue is $48 billion a year.
| But if they count revenue like Apple does, they are
| counting the gross amount people pay net after they give
| developers their cut is 30% of that excluding other
| expenses.
|
| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/
| twblalock wrote:
| Those things are why Google has a lot of employees. It
| doesn't mean they are successful business ideas.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _the most popular mobile OS in the world_
|
| ... which is free for consumers, and also for
| manufacturers to license ...
|
| > _the most popular web browser in the world_
|
| ... which is free ...
|
| > _runs a major cloud provider_
|
| ... which is unprofitable ...
| kcb wrote:
| Android Open Source Project may be free but check out any
| Android phone sold in the west at least and it will be
| loaded with closed source Google software.
| meken wrote:
| What about the google play store? Don't they get x% of
| every in-app purchase?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| That is a good business. But the point is still pretty
| clear that Google seems to make very large investments
| into products that are then given away for free to
| many/most users (Search, Chrome, Gmail, the whole Google
| Workspace product suite, YouTube) with the no obvious
| business plan other than to drive ad revenue, sometimes
| in ways as indirect as just having people spend more time
| on the Internet.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Google is putting a lot of resources into enterprise
| productivity software with gsuite. Google's strategy
| there largely revolves around letting students use the
| software for free and giving away chromebooks to school
| districts so that ten years from now every college
| graduate will be more comfortable with gsuite than
| microsoft office, so a bit of a long game there. This is
| basically microsoft's entire business, so there's
| definitely a huge market there. They also have GCP which
| is chugging along I guess.
| substation13 wrote:
| They sure missed boat with Teams / Slack.
| arebop wrote:
| 1/3 of Microsoft's revenues and operating income come
| from their cloud business, which has done much better
| than Google's.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Azure has largely been propelled by microsoft's strong
| business relationships. I think it's likely that google
| sees gsuite and GCP as synergies given how successful
| msft has been at parlaying their office contracts into
| azure signups.
| scarface74 wrote:
| You assume that Google has any competencies in dealing
| with the enterprise or anything that requires high-touch.
|
| And then they hired an _Oracle veteran_ to head GCP. What
| could possibly go wrong?
|
| https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/google-cloud-ceo-thomas-
| kuria...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Oracle is probably the most competent enterprise software
| sales organization other than microsoft, seems like
| that's a pretty reasonable decision if they focus on
| building out the sales team. And Google probably realizes
| enterprise sales is a huge problem for them which is why
| they're investing in these products to make it easier to
| grow the organization. Selling to enterprises is
| something Google needs to get good at if they want to
| grow long term, having strong products to sell helps
| attract talent and close sales which gives their team
| experience.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I have never in 25 years - most of that in the enterprise
| - has dealt with Oracle enterprise sales and came out
| feeling good about it.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The measure of success here isn't how good you feel. It's
| the amount of money they make relative to the quality of
| their product. Feels indisputable to me that oracle is at
| the top of the charts with respect to that ratio in
| enterprise software.
| xapata wrote:
| To some extent, that was Microsoft's strategy in the 90s
| and 00s.
| paganel wrote:
| MS also famously has lots and lots of pretty decent re-
| sellers all around the world, which re-sellers have their
| own very deep lists of business contacts.
|
| Afaik Google has tried to get something out of the
| enterprise space for a good 5 years now (I'd say), ever
| since they launched GCP, but it's just not in their DNA
| to do and especially to maintain business sales.
| Melatonic wrote:
| GSuite (now Google Workspace) is actually chugging along
| nicely and continuously improved. I bet it becomes one of
| their reliable long term products.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| What enterprise would want to buy products from a company
| infamously known to cancel products left and right?
| bushbaba wrote:
| Google has tried at least since 2002. So it's been 20
| years.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance
|
| The Google Search Appliance was a respectable business in
| of itself. They deprecated it as it wasn't large enough
| for "Google". It would have been in the ranks of peer
| unicorn startups given the revenue prior to being killed
| off.
| giobox wrote:
| It was also a business for which the writing was _very_
| clearly on the wall. How many companies are left that
| still sell a SaaS /PaaS that requires you to install
| bespoke on-prem server hardware? I'm guessing its a much
| smaller list than it was 2002. For crawling/indexing, I
| can't even imagine convincing IT we need a dedicated
| appliance today! For the problem GSA solved, its just not
| needed anymore and subsumed by other google
| products/services that don't need me to install a rack-
| device like:
|
| https://workspace.google.com/products/cloud-search/
|
| As someone else has pointed out, GSuite has seen success
| in the enterprise space, so their enterprise efforts
| aren't a total write-off. With so many students now on
| GSuite at their school or colleges and a generation
| effectively raised on Google Docs... I certainly wouldn't
| bet against it today.
| chris11 wrote:
| I can imagine on prem hw being a benefit if a company
| didn't want a 3rd party to index material. But yeah, I
| wouldn't want to manage an on-prem setup unless it was
| necessary.
| [deleted]
| SteveNuts wrote:
| The Google graveyard will probably double in size
| Brystephor wrote:
| I imagine their businesses are more resilient due to more
| income streams. Snap is pretty dependent on advertising
| income. I have no idea what Google's dependence on
| advertising income is, but I'd assume the ratio is less.
| Apple has multiple sources of income and I would be surprised
| to see them do layoffs.
|
| I'm more curious about other companies such as Meta.
| Especially since Zuckerberg has openly stated there's
| probably people who shouldn't be there.
| ssharp wrote:
| I hypothesize that Google's Ad business is much less prone
| to fluctuation than Snap's as well as Meta's. With Google's
| ads targeted so heavily towards search and remarketing,
| there is significantly more purchase intent baked into the
| audience compared to social ads. It's also able to have
| more diversity since Facebook and Instagram are a lot more
| similar than Google Search and YouTube are. There's so much
| D2C on social and those types of businesses have really
| rode the COVID economy rollercoaster.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Would you agree that you and I are "aware" of growth
| projects Apple is working on, but not necessarily aware
| of what growth projects Google is working on?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > I have no idea what Google's dependence on advertising
| income is
|
| basically 100%. Cloud makes a little, but mostly it is all
| paid for by ads
| sitkack wrote:
| Cloud has yet to turn a profit, but they are on the path
| to extract blood from stone.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| Cloud is high margin, its just that the battle with Azure
| and AWS is really bloody
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| > I have no idea what Google's dependence on advertising
| income
|
| Over 80% of Google's revenues are from advertising [0]
|
| Also, I can't find a source for it now, but I remember
| reading from a trusted industry journalist that roughly 25%
| of this advertising revenue is from startups and high-
| growth businesses. Seems too high to me, but I would expect
| at least 10% to be from startups.
|
| 0:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093781/distribution-
| of-...
| Retric wrote:
| Investing in stuff like self driving cars should be
| independent of current market conditions due to the size
| of their war chest.
|
| The profitable parts of the business are so profitable
| that would would take massive drops in advertising to
| really impact the bottom line.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| That's been true for every big company that faded away
| into obscurity. Or at least lost its erstwhile dominance.
| They usually have a product or division that does so well
| that it completely dominates the organization. Every part
| of the business becomes designed, organically or
| intentionally, to support this division. Innovation
| falters and new trends catch the incumbent off guard.
|
| While its not even close to dire straits for Google yet,
| the Gen-Z shift away from search is clearly a red flag
| and a sign that there's an entirely new trend that has
| caught Google off guard. Luckily they have YouTube,
| otherwise I'd be way more bearish on Google's future.
| Text-based search isn't going to grow by leaps and
| bounds, at least not in developed markets.
| Retric wrote:
| Google seems fairly diversified compared to many large
| companies. At least if you separate Search, YouTube, and
| other web properties from AdWords. Android and Chromebook
| is largely self sufficient via the play store, it's
| really just Chrome that's designed to support the rest of
| the business.
|
| https://fourweekmba.com/google-subsidiaries/
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| None of them really make any money. At least not anywhere
| close to the scale that could justify a $2T valuation.
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| It's 1.4T with a 20.5 P/E ratio and 0.12T in just cash in
| hand. Considering their past growth curve that really
| looks undervalued.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-
| annual-gl...
|
| Anyway take away any single element and it's still a 1T
| dollar company, it's not like search needs Ad Words they
| could use a different advertising network.
| nekoashide wrote:
| As soon as they can quantify remote work as a metric that
| they can make personal decisions on.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I'm sorry, I don't understand, can you expand?
| mixedbit wrote:
| Do you know if the PlayCanvas game engine will be affected?
| Brystephor wrote:
| No idea. That's not my area of expertise/work. Sorry about
| that.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| Sorry to hear this; It is tough to lose jobs when there is a
| fear of recession. I hope everyone will land on their feet. The
| package seems to be generous, I am glad that Snap is
| considerate to people on visas.
| Brystephor wrote:
| I appreciate the condolences. I have no idea if I'm affected
| or not, but I don't expect to be since I work in payments.
| I'm waiting to see who will be affected and how I can help
| them.
|
| edit: I've received notification that I'm not affected by the
| layoffs. Part of me thinks having 4 months full compensation
| would've been nice to have. Part of me is glad to not need to
| do the interview process again (at least not immediately).
| kyleblarson wrote:
| According to the historically accepted definition the US is
| already in a recession.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| TikTok and Instagram are the hip internet properties where young
| people share stuff. Snap Chat is essentially a dying service.
| Evan Spiegel is not a visionary like Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos,
| Brin and Page. That said he is smart enough to run Snap which in
| my opinion is a boutique web site some people find interesting.
| Snap won't matter in a few years, it is better to sell it to a
| bigger social media network.
| gnz11 wrote:
| According to my teenage relatives, Instagram is out, TikTok and
| Snap are in. Instagram is just to keep up appearances.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| India banning TikTok has really helped Instagram in India.
| Instagram is the top player for short form video there. India
| will give instagram a large user base to test out new
| features and keep their expansionist vision going for the
| rest of the world.
| tssva wrote:
| That is what I see with my teen daughter too.
| yannis7 wrote:
| not according to Pew - Instagram is still strong amongst
| teens https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-
| social...
| gnz11 wrote:
| > Instagram is still strong amongst teens
|
| Yes, see "Instagram is just to keep up appearances." Still
| in use but out. As in out of style, not cool, for the
| parents, etc. Teens are using it to keep the parents at bay
| for what they are doing on TikTok/Snap.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > Evan Spiegel is not a visionary like Zuckerberg
|
| I'm not here to defend Spiegel, but this sentence kind of reads
| as a joke based on the amount of "copying Snapchat to put into
| Instagram" that Facebook spent _years_ doing.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| ok, fair. Spiegel came up with some new features for his app
| which people found interesting, and maybe even copied. That
| will make him an above average Product Manager, not a
| visionary leader in the caliber of Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos,
| or the Google Duo; all these people are empire builders, they
| used their initial success acquire/build multiple billion
| dollar conglomerates that own multiple internet properties.
|
| Granted, Spiegel has kept snap some what relevant all these
| years, but he is not an empire builder, and to be a big
| player in the social media space you need a leader who is an
| empire builder.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > they used their initial success acquire/build multiple
| billion dollar conglomerates
|
| Snapchat _currently_ has a market cap of $18B. Snapchat has
| acquired (at least, from my basic google search) 12
| different companies.
|
| Your measuring stick here is so extremely off.
|
| I not-so-secretly hope Spiegel sees this, has a laugh, and
| updates his LinkedIn position to "above average Product
| Manager @ Snapchat"
| psalminen wrote:
| I've seen this happening for the last couple years, which is
| disappointing. It's always been the only social platform I use
| with frequency, but that's becoming harder with fewer of my
| peers using it.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Zuckerberg is no visionary. He didn't create Instagram, he
| bought it.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| No one prevented Spiegel from buying Musical.ly and turning
| it to TikTok.
| askafriend wrote:
| What a silly take.
|
| Instagram was barely anything when Facebook acquired it -
| there was only an iOS app, barely 27m users and 0 revenue. It
| was a hugely controversial move to buy it for $1B and there
| were countless articles about how the acquisition made no
| sense and how Zuckerberg is making a huge mistake.
|
| It's one of the greatest acquisitions of all time and a
| masterclass in strategy and execution.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Psssssssssh
|
| All they've done since they acquired it is CLONE SNAP (aka
| stories) and add it to IG, and now they're just cloning
| TikTok because Facebook hasn't ever had an original idea.
| askafriend wrote:
| That's not true. Frankly, it's clear you simply don't
| know what you're talking about.
|
| They've built an entire monetization engine around it,
| made a TON of improvements around how media works, added
| several new formats, built a ton of anti-spam
| detection/eradication/moderation that works at scale and
| makes the product actually usable, launched in so many
| countries with language/accessibility support, and so
| much more that Instagram couldn't have done as a
| standalone company.
|
| When Facebook bought Instagram, it was just a speck - it
| wasn't even a business. It's not even close to the
| juggernaut it is today.
|
| There's a ton of stuff that goes into scaling products
| like this. If you want to have a rational conversation
| about this you have to go deeper than using all caps
| CLONE. You don't go from 27M to >2B users and from $0 to
| >$25B in revenue just...randomly.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| You're joking right? Zuckerberg a visionary? In what world?
|
| As far as I can tell the man has never had an original thought.
| All he knows how to do is see what some other company is doing
| and have his team clone it and/or buy it.
| the_duke wrote:
| Certainly not at all what I'm witnessing.
|
| Instagram seems to still be used by teens, but slowly fizzling
| out. Tiktok is popular. Snap seems the preferred chat app for
| most.
| mathverse wrote:
| Obviously I cannot be familiar with every app under the sun but
| Snapchat, given its size and brand struck me as one of those
| companies that should be used all around the world. But I have
| not seen anyone using it or talking about it in Europe. Always
| thought it's mostly a US thing.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Snapchat has 86m DAU in Europe vs 99m in North America.
| Definitely big in many demos in Europe.
| Ivovosk wrote:
| It was about time they started thinking as a public company.
| Looking after shareholders value (s)
| cfors wrote:
| Lays off 20% of employees and the stock jumps 9% immediately.
| Really drives home a good message to all CEO's out there /s
| time_to_smile wrote:
| It's common for stocks to rise after layoffs. Investors already
| know the company is in bad shape, and the layoffs signal things
| might be changing.
|
| But why in the world is the comment currently being downvoted?
|
| Anyone in tech, working for a non-profitable publicly traded
| company should be ready for layoffs. This will typically happen
| _after_ earnings (otherwise you signal there is a problem
| before your investors know the current state of the company
| which is bad).
|
| This is clearly the message being sent by this stock price
| rise. Everyone can pretend it's just a snap specific problem
| but this is coming to everyone.
|
| edit: to add, if you look at Wayfair stock the day they
| announced only 5% layoffs, 8/19, their stock _dropped_
| considerably. The message from wall street is not "layoffs"
| but "serious layoffs"
| rr888 wrote:
| Its still trading a tiny fraction of what it was a year ago. I
| dont think anyone would look to SNAP as a good way to run a
| company.
| belval wrote:
| Taking your comment in good faith. Snap has a lot of fluff
| around it that has questionable value (TV Shows, Games). In a
| recession the investors like to see that fluff gone because
| it's harder to raise money.
|
| Snap with 20% of its employees gone is more valuable because it
| focuses on the business that actually makes money instead of
| hopeful moonshots. You most likely wouldn't see a large uptick
| in value if this was an industrial "value" company.
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| Cost centers vs revenue centers
| rconti wrote:
| The message is not (necessarily) lay off 20%.
|
| The message can be "we should not have hired so fast"
|
| Or perhaps "take decisive action to respond to market
| conditions". O
|
| Or any number of other messages.
| hackitup7 wrote:
| Layoffs suck but they're done to preserve the value of the
| overall entity, which includes the benefit of all remaining
| employees. You cut some jobs but it allows you to keep others.
| bombcar wrote:
| > Spiegel said the company's revenue growth had reaccelerated to
| 8 percent from being flat in late July, suggesting its ads
| business is starting to rebound. Still, that is a far cry from
| the more than 40 percent revenue growth Snap was seeing before
| Russia invaded Ukraine, which it blamed for a slowdown in
| marketing spend, and the digital ads market started to contract
| earlier this year. In a filing with the SEC, Snap said it expects
| the layoffs, which were first reported by The Verge on Tuesday,
| to save it $500 million in costs annually.
|
| I get that Putin is to blame for everything, but this seems a bit
| of a stretch.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| I don't think it's that far fetched. Because of the war, many
| if not most international western HQd companies pulled out of
| Russia - that's a loss in revenue from that region for all of
| them. The first thing that goes is marketing spend when you
| need to reallocate your budget.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You really think the war has more to do with it than global
| governments NOT handing out 50% of global GDP in free money
| anymore?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think the bigger culprit would be the massive inflation
| shock to consumer confidence.
|
| Less people buying things equals ads chasing fewer dollars.
| mrhands556 wrote:
| 20% of their employees had salary + benefits of 500 million?
|
| Edit: Snapchat has 32k employees!? :o
|
| How does Snapchat have 4x the employees that twitter has?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It's not just employees that contribute to the cost. They're
| essentially shutting down entire businesses, which also come
| with a lot of operating expenses.
| [deleted]
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| The very first line of the article includes Snap's headcount:
|
| "Snap is laying off around 20 percent of its more than 6,400
| employees"
|
| Original number of employees: 6,400
|
| Approximate number getting laid off: 1,280
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| Mission creep but taken to a whole new level
| conradfr wrote:
| > 20 percent of its more than 6,400 employees
|
| So ~1280 employees laid off
|
| > Snap said it expects the layoffs, which were first reported
| by The Verge on Tuesday, to save it $500 million in costs
| annually.
|
| So $500M / 1280 = $390,625 per employee per year, ~$32,552
| per month, wow.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Snap had very high salaries for engineers. On Blind, many
| times I saw TC offers of $500K-700k.
| raydev wrote:
| Snap definitely pays on the mid-to-high end of base
| salary, but TC numbers are always inflated 100-300% by
| RSUs, so I don't see how TC is relevant.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| That's the cost of an employee, not their salary.
| subsubzero wrote:
| > How does Snapchat have 4x the employees that twitter has?
|
| This seems absurd for the size of snap, they are involved
| with hardware so theres headcount there for that, twitter is
| all software. $500M seems about right, given that that would
| amount to 6400 employees getting cut thats an average of
| $78,125 per employee which seems a bit low but they are based
| in socal and engineer salaries are lower there than the bay
| area. I hope these folks find new jobs quickly thats alot of
| people out of work all at once.
| adrr wrote:
| They hired like crazy during Covid.
| dominotw wrote:
| SNAP has one of the highest TC for engineers. FB/SNAP ect set
| a new standard of comp of software engineers. Sad to see
| these companies biting dust.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They have to offer more compensation to offset the higher
| volatility of their businesses, as evidenced by these
| layoffs.
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| they are not biting the dust, at least for now, they're
| just going lean and shedding few pounds to weather the
| storm.
| doublerebel wrote:
| Dupe from 20 hours ago, 114 points, same article:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32654226
| dang wrote:
| Hmm, believe it or not that one only made the front page for 1
| minute. Given that the submission didn't get frontpage
| attention and that the thread there is rather poor, I think we
| can let the current post escape the fate of dupeage.
|
| I've been working on software to detect such threads (i.e.
| highly active discussions that are 'underwater') but it's not
| hooked up yet.
| ryandrake wrote:
| HN has an "active" view which shows threads with lots of
| discussion, regardless of their front page status. I find
| it's a much better way to browse HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/active
|
| EDIT: LOL, looking at the parent, I'm replying to dang about
| his own site. I'm an idiot sometimes. Feel free to nuke this.
| dang wrote:
| That's no problem! Lots of people probably don't know about
| it. But it would be good to link to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/lists (also linked in the
| footer of every HN page) since there are other obscure
| things there too.
| [deleted]
| hotpotamus wrote:
| You're replying to the (as far as I know) solo mod of HN. I
| suspect he knows about the active view ;) though that's new
| info to me.
| jibe wrote:
| Wonder why that's isn't in the nav - to cool down active
| discussions?
| dang wrote:
| Yes, they generate enough heat as it is.
| doublerebel wrote:
| I basically do the same. My primary interface is
| https://www.hckrnews.com which shows active/popular stories
| in chronological order. Makes it much easier and faster to
| tell what I've already seen.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Just wondering behind-the-scenes, is a thread like that
| flagged or something... or did it just not hit the right
| metrics at the right time to float up on the front page?
| dang wrote:
| Not flagged, but that domain is downweighted, as are most
| major media/web sites on HN. The downweight is pretty
| carefully calibrated to allow the (hopefully) most
| interesting (or at least most upvoted) articles through,
| but then we get these weird outliers that stay underwater.
|
| I'm not so worried about a major news piece (someone else
| will just repost a different version of the story, as
| happened here), but sometimes there are really cool and
| interesting posts that get lots of upvotes and even
| comments without ever reaching escape velocity.
|
| It's a bit Rube Goldbergian but my thought is to have
| separate software watching for those, and maybe plugging
| them into the second-chance pool or something
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308).
| Brystephor wrote:
| Maybe this one can be updated with the axios article?
|
| https://www.axios.com/2022/08/31/snap-restructuring-layoffs
| sremani wrote:
| Looked at SNAP stock market analysis..
|
| Net Income: -487.96M
|
| Public companies that cannot turn profitability will be under
| microscope during the 'current/coming' recession. Yanking 20%
| staff is not going to turn SNAP profitable.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| But look at their stock price today, up nearly 10% on the news
| of layoffs.
|
| I've been saying this a lot but nobody really want to hear it:
| unprofitable tech companies only make sense when money is cheap
| and consumer spending is high. Both of these preconditions are
| changing at the same time.
|
| Wall street is going to continually put pressure on
| unprofitable companies to rapidly reduce costs, and reward
| those that do.
|
| You are correct that this huge cut is not enough, but it's
| enough for wall street to gain more confidence in snap for now.
|
| If you work at an unprofitable (or even rapidly decreasing in
| profits) tech company, especially one that's IPO'd, expect
| layoffs.
|
| This is the case for me and I am very seriously expecting
| massive layoffs coming in October, I have been since May,
| hoping to dodge the bullet but not optimistic.
|
| And this is not going to be like the pandemic where you can be
| laid off from a negatively impacted company and quickly get
| rehired by a positively impacted company because this time
| there are no positively impacted companies.
| lossolo wrote:
| Anecdotally I'm -61% on SNAP in my portfolio, great investment
| on my side..
| nawgz wrote:
| > Yanking 20% staff is not going to turn SNAP profitable
|
| I'm not sure I follow your logic. SNAP claims they'll save
| $500M per year by laying off 20%, which I'm sure you can see
| the reasoning behind given the only number you've posted...
| jeffbee wrote:
| If they actually save a net $500 million annually, as they are
| claiming, then this move will absolutely turn SNAP profitable.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| They don't only reduce cost, but by shutting down products
| also lose revenue.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Those products don't make any meaningful amounts of
| revenue. That's going to be a rounding error.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Still the maths not necessarily goes the way the GP
| posted. They won't necessarily become net positive.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It's more likely they won't become profitable because
| they overestimated how much they'll save - not because
| they underestimated how much they'll lose.
| nawgz wrote:
| But products cost money to run and maintain - isn't it
| perfectly plausible they were able to identify 20% of the
| people worked on a set of products that were in totality
| not profitable or even costing money?
|
| Given the nature of branching from your core competencies
| into dice rolls, that sounds not just plausible to me, but
| even probable. Maybe I am missing something though.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Well, they have the financials but the products that were
| shut down were the most unprofitable ventures?
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| But how much revenue do they actually make from games and
| drones?
| jedberg wrote:
| Interestingly NFLX is up today on this news, partly because one
| piece of this is two of SNAPs ad execs are moving to NFLX.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| and some amount less competition for original content
| jeffbee wrote:
| Interesting. Snap is one of the few along with TikTok and
| Instagram, that are still heavily used by teens, according to
| recent Pew research.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social...
|
| A couple days ago they also got Protocol to reprint their press
| release about cutting cloud expenses:
|
| https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/snap-microservices-aws-g...
|
| Sounds like they are moving decisively toward profitability
| instead of growth for growth's sake.
| atyppo wrote:
| Anecdotal obviously, but I'm barely outside this demographic at
| 22. I can tell you that nobody around my age in NYC uses snap
| anymore. In fact, it's looked at with shock or disdain if
| someone mentions that they opened it for one reason or another.
| tssva wrote:
| I have a high school aged daughter and Snapchat is the
| messaging platform of choice among the kids at her school. It
| is not just a local thing. She also participates in a sport
| which has her travel across the US frequently for
| competitions. All the teens at these competitions also seem
| to use Snapchat as their primary messaging app. When she
| meets competitors from other places that she wants to stay in
| touch with it is Snapchat ids that they exchange.
| klabb3 wrote:
| I have relatives in age 17-20 and they use snapchat a lot,
| and have not abandoned it for something newer and cooler.
| Some use tiktok, but I think it's more for entertainment.
| Snap is for connecting with their real life friends. In fact,
| I wouldn't be surprised if it has the least churn in its
| category.
|
| Social media company perceptions are skewed by hype cycles.
| For instance, snap has more DAUs than Twitter (plus bots
| likely inflate Twitters numbers more), but everyone talks
| about Twitter as if it's a giant that everyone uses. It's
| important to look at the data sometimes, and not just high
| profile drama.
| cercatrova wrote:
| I know people in high school and early college who are using
| Snap heavily, even over Instagram. In fact, many of them have
| zero Instagram posts and simply use it as a group messenger.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| Anecdotal as well. Also 22.
|
| Moved from PR to WA for a couple months to intern alongside
| others my age. _Everybody_ used Snapchat. It was the group
| message app of choice.
|
| Back home, people still use it for keeping up with close
| friends via stories and whatnot. And, y'know, the _other_
| stuff Snapchat is _great_ for.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Anecdotally, what is the app of choice for this cohort if
| they've moved away from Snap?
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| TikTok, presumably?
| sergiomattei wrote:
| TikTok isn't a messaging app, though.
| raydev wrote:
| Based on my kids' usage, TikTok is for passive
| consumption, whereas Snapchat seems to be primarily a
| messaging service with content as a sideshow.
|
| So if Snapchat stopped existing tomorrow they'd probably
| move to iMessage. Until one of their friends gets an
| Android.
| quequeque wrote:
| I do not see the same behavior among this age group/younger,
| I see many people give out their snap in lieu of giving out
| their phone number to strangers, I've seen snap become more
| of a non-committal peer-to-peer temporary messaging app with
| people met in a casual setting (ie dating apps)
| berz01 wrote:
| Spreadsheet warrior kinda shit. CFO needed 500M for a stock-
| buyback. CFO wrote down some napkin math, let go 1/5 of the team.
| Murdered all innovation into the ground. Wallstreet loved it.
| Snapchat is a cashcow on a spreadsheet. CFO knows he needs
| another 20% layoff in Q1 of 2023 to drive his cost of capital
| down further. Expect more pain from the suits.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| Are they doing a buy back? Didn't Steve Jobs say trading cash
| by buying back stock the worst idea ever?
| advisedwang wrote:
| https://techstory.in/snapchat-announces-a-new-500-million-
| sh...
|
| Both of these take a few months to plan, so from the timing
| of that story they must have been planning them
| simultaniously.
| ssharp wrote:
| For Snap? Probably. For Apple? Steve Jobs was never sitting
| on $100+ billion in cash. Though, Apple's buy backs +
| dividends made more sense given how profitable they were and
| how much cash they had on hand. Snap has never had positive
| operating income.
| htrp wrote:
| Depends on when the options of the executive team were
| issued..... and whether a buyback gets them back into the
| money?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| but the stock jumped 9% so wouldnt that be counter productive
| for buyback? (ie now you get less consolidation of ownership
| than before)
| robocat wrote:
| They don't need more ownership: "The result is that Spiegel
| and Murphy own a whopping 99.5% voting control of the
| company." - https://www.marketwatch.com/story/as-snap-melts-
| down-its-fou...
| treis wrote:
| I think it's just really hard for a company to keep innovating
| like that. Once you get to a certain size about the best you
| can do is refinement on your existing product or muscle into
| adjacent products.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Buried in the announcement is how Snap is shutting down Zenly and
| firing everyone who worked on it in Paris, France. Zenly is a
| location-based social application (think: you can see & connect
| with your friends on a map). Snap bought them in 2017 for a
| reported $250-350M when they had ~4M installs. Now Zenly is at
| 40M MAUs, growing strong as I heard from employees working there.
|
| Zenly is (was?) popular in Japan, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe
| and the Nordics. In Japan, it is head-on-head as the most used
| social app with Line.
|
| I find it odd that Snap just shuts down an app that was so
| popular in regions that is hard to gain foothold for any social
| media team. They could have likely sold it or spun it out, but
| chose not do so.
|
| It's also not like the app is a major cost to the company. Less
| than 100 people work on it across Snap, most based in Paris,
| France.
| derefr wrote:
| > They could have likely sold it or spun it out, but did not do
| so.
|
| Doing either would have required de-acquiring the team that
| develops and runs it. Whereas I assume the whole point of
| acquiring Zenly was to acquihire those folks to work on Snap
| (and likely then lay off the now-redundant engineers previously
| working on Snap's geo features.)
| jollybean wrote:
| $300M is too much for an acquire unless they are super AI
| scientists who have know-how that's worth a few billion.
|
| $30M - maybe. If they have 30 person team and they are really
| good.
|
| I remember that deal and it stunk. It feels like one of those
| pilfering Private Equity deals where someone is getting
| payback for something or the other.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Or it was to kill off the competition intentionally. They
| may have seen Zenly as a major threat at some point.
| aabhay wrote:
| Divide that price by the # of users and the $300M can make
| sense...
| jollybean wrote:
| They had 4M users, it's not enough unless it was growing
| hyperbolically, which it wasn't.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Updated with how shutting down Zenly means firing the whole
| team. The Zenly engineers always worked on Zenly, and not on
| Snap. If the goal was to acquihire, they are letting their
| whole acquisition go.
|
| It smells like a complete change in direction. I am just
| unsure why not sell an asset that seems pretty valuable, or
| spin out, keeping ownership stake.
| origin_path wrote:
| You don't actually know if it's valuable. Users = costs,
| they are only valuable if you can monetize somehow.
| Inability to develop a workable monetization strategy would
| lead to this sort of outcome.
| swatcoder wrote:
| There's cost, time, and unknown returns in spinning it off.
|
| _And_ it would apparently give a geographically dominant
| 40 MAU to a competitor.
|
| It's an insult to users and team members for Snap to just
| shut it down, and it could become bad PR, but there's a
| reasonable case to be made on near-term business strategy.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Presumably they're going to write off the cost of the
| acquisition for tax purposes. I suppose that doesn't
| preclude selling the assets like the brand and the
| software, but since it looks like they're in a hurry to
| reach profitability, the certainty of booking tens of
| millions of future tax offsets must have seemed appealing.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| If you've never made any money - how much are you really
| thinking about taxes?
| twoodfin wrote:
| That's the point: They're clearly attempting a shift from
| growth to profitability. Those future profits look that
| much better to investors if they have (say) $50M in tax
| offsets already banked.
| tempsy wrote:
| Never heard of it which doesn't seem like a particularly good
| thing for a social media app/product.
| galdosdi wrote:
| > Zenly is (was?) popular in Japan, Southeast Asia, Eastern
| Europe and the Nordics.
|
| Would you clarify which of the above regions you're in?
| Personally I'm in the USA so I would not expect my not having
| heard of it to be in any way relevant.
| tempsy wrote:
| I'm in the US. If it's only popular in a few regions and
| likely pulls very little ad revenue on its own then is it
| terribly surprising that they are shutting it down? Seems
| like a failed acquisition that they didn't really do much
| with.
| [deleted]
| nikanj wrote:
| I'm currently in Scandinavia and never heard of it
| zibby8 wrote:
| > In Japan, it is head-on-head as the most used social app with
| Line.
|
| How is that possible? A lot of people in Japan use Line (86M
| MAU in 2020). With 40M MAUs in the entire world, Zenly is much
| smaller than Line. Anecdotally, I've seen young people in Japan
| using Snap. Haven't seen any Zenly.
| jdshaffer wrote:
| I was wondering about that, too. I straight up asked my
| students here in Japan (College, 1st year) what apps they
| couldn't live without, and it was almost completely YouTube,
| Line, and TikTok.
|
| I've never even heard of Zenly... nor seen it in the wild.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Exactly Line is like whatsapp and Zenly? Never heard any
| Japanese people mentions it or listed it along side their
| Line account
| redthrow wrote:
| Apparently it was popular among middle & high schoolers
| back in 2018, but probably not among adults
|
| https://twitter.com/livedoornews/status/1068834535838633986
| ?...
| cheriot wrote:
| Wow, like when Google shut down Orkut despite it being huge in
| Brazil and India.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| If Orkut got integrated into Google's ecosystem, spinning it
| out probably would've cost more money than they could've sold
| it for.
|
| I imagine they factored this in before deciding to shut it
| down rather than sell it.
| randoglando wrote:
| > If Orkut got integrated into Google's ecosystem
|
| It would have met the same fate as if it hadn't - i.e., it
| would have been killed off.
| grishka wrote:
| And then all those Brazilians flocked to VKontakte because
| apparently VK groups were somehow similar to what Orkut
| offered. I remember the rush to translate everything into
| Portuguese.
| madrox wrote:
| Often in these situations, there are a few reasons.
| Monetization of users isn't always as good as the MAU would
| make it seem, or those users have significant overlap with Snap
| and don't represent a net gain to the company. This is
| especially true if acquisitions are more of a defensive measure
| (buy a business so someone else can't gain access to the users
| you already have).
|
| Finally, sometimes in a bad market a business can be worth more
| as a write-off than a sale. Depending on Snap's balance sheet,
| they may get more money back in tax breaks than they would if
| they sold it (and, again, giving a competitor access to users
| you already have).
|
| This is all hypothetical, of course. I don't know anything
| about this specific situation, but it's why lots of seemingly
| successful products get killed.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| I'm from Southeast Asia, never heard of Zenly.
| Rastonbury wrote:
| 40M MAU globally is not head-to-head with Line (which way
| bigger), Line is also primarily a messaging app like
| Whatsapp, not sure if that commenter knows what they talking
| about
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| They probably wanted to bring it to other countries, ie: USA,
| but couldn't figure a way to do it without getting sued. People
| here are different. They'll abuse the shit out of an app like
| that to do all sorts of nasty stuff.
| collegeburner wrote:
| Nah man as a heavy snap user i can tell you the bots and
| scammers are _not_ native english speakers. Most of the abuse
| is targeted at America bc we have money but it 's perpetrated
| out of brazil, bangladesh, india, etc.
| twawaaay wrote:
| Whatever you think of it, there is probably good chance there
| was some reason for it. Companies rarely write off huge
| investment for no reason.
|
| Just because you or I don't see it does not mean it does not
| exist. The owners are probably much better informed that we
| are.
|
| More likely explanation is they did some kind of calculation
| and decided it is not worth it and very likely we will not get
| to know it.
| javajosh wrote:
| A: I don't understand why they did this. It makes no sense.
| B: Companies don't do things for no reason. A: What is
| the reason then? B: I don't know - most likely they
| did some sort of calculation.
|
| FYI, this type of exchange is information-free.
| echelon wrote:
| Oh, there's certainly information. It's conversation
| steering for some, mind expanding for others, and the
| hinting tasks the brain with reconciling this question with
| present understanding. Neurotransmitter flux is being
| steered one way or another.
| [deleted]
| vkou wrote:
| It becomes information-full when you add:
|
| C: The calculation that caused this was probably some
| black-box political battle that was won by Manager A, and
| lost by Manager B. It was probably decided based on
| personal preferences and biases of decisionmakers, as well
| as on who was friends with whom. Decisionmakers that run
| private corporations make these kinds of decisions all the
| time, and any attempts at reading the tea leaves, or the
| chicken entrails, to try to predict or explain these
| decisions is likely a waste of your time. If you'd like
| these decisions to be made in the open, you need democracy
| and transparency, which is not something that's is selected
| for in the modern business world. This is not a value
| judgement of the modern business world, it is just a
| descriptive statement about it.
| sitkack wrote:
| Most of HN is information free. Water cooler banter with
| 1:20 posts offering anything insightful.
| tomcam wrote:
| And yet here you are
| spydum wrote:
| 1:20 is better SNR than most interactions...
| drekipus wrote:
| Don't forget, you're here forever
| rexreed wrote:
| Often it doesn't make sense. They need to cut, so they cut.
| They need to spend, so they spend. They need to hire, so
| they hire. Is this usually consistent? No. They acquire
| companies and later shut them down. They hire tons of
| people then fire them, then later have to hire back people
| and start up projects that duplicate what they bought but
| later killed and then realize that the competition is in
| that market so they start it up again, but in a worse way.
| They allocate time and money into major moonshot projects
| and internal efforts and later kill off those projects they
| invested tons of time and money into. Startups are
| sociopathic in many ways.
|
| As I learned long ago, don't expect venture-backed and
| post-IPO startups to act "logically". It's all a big hustle
| and a scramble for market share and whatever other metrics.
| There's a lot of collateral damage along the way, employees
| and customers be damned.
|
| Startups aren't a "meritocracy" and management teams don't
| operate by best ideas win. Markets are brutal, management
| teams are opportunistic and often self-serving, investors
| are focused on growth at all costs and hitting metrics, and
| companies don't operate in ways that suit logic. They suit
| the needs to capture markets or do whatever they do to get
| ahead. Sometimes ethically, sometimes not.
| enumjorge wrote:
| I agree it probably made sense for Snap, but it is still a
| shame when a product people liked gets shut down when in a
| different context, their traction would have been considered
| a success.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| In my experience in the corporate world, the reason is often
| one that only makes sense for the person making the decision.
| Spinning it off right now would be a big investment in time,
| and thus attention from the higher up's. They have a lot else
| on their plate right now and would rather not think about
| that, and the amount of money they would make from spinning
| it off (in the current environment) is not enough to solve
| any of their other problems.
|
| It doesn't necessarily mean it couldn't have survived on its
| own if it were spun off. It just may not be what the decision
| makers want to be thinking about right now. It's not always
| about what's important to the company (i.e. the company's
| money), sometimes it's about what's important to the CEO (who
| really wants to think about other things, and if they have a
| major distraction that maybe doesn't go well it could add to
| board pressure on him to step down).
| twawaaay wrote:
| Good point. Focus is a resource too. If your the world
| suddenly shifts and you need to focus on survival it might
| make sense to cut things that might or might not be
| profitable but are unlikely to carry your business to
| survival but will for sure require a lot of focus to
| succeed.
|
| Of course, this is just pure speculation.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > one that only makes sense for the person making the
| decision
|
| And sometimes (often?) that reason is "I'll show _him_ who
| 's boss around here, don't care if it costs millions of
| dollars and tanks the stock price, I'm untouchable and
| they're not gonna forget it!"
| google234123 wrote:
| My guess for the reason is to make it possible to lay off
| people in france. Probably much easier to shut down the
| entire product than lay off part of the teAm
| rhacker wrote:
| d
| sashahrzg wrote:
| I don't see how those two ideas connect
| Kiro wrote:
| It's definitely not popular in the Nordics.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Was it profitable?
| jpollock wrote:
| My understanding is that it can be extremely difficult to
| layoff individuals/teams inside of France. It might be easier
| to shut down an entire company/line of business.
| diligiant wrote:
| It's gonna cost them a lot anyway.
| nerbert wrote:
| A judge can still refuse to shut down the company. If
| employees want to take action and protect their rights, they
| probably can. Especially if the company is profitable.
| crhulls wrote:
| I'm the CEO of Life360, another early and now at scale location
| app - I'm sad to see Zenly being shut down. The team there
| truly pioneered making rich map interfaces.
|
| If the rumors are true (I hope they aren't - I agree with the
| comment this seems myopic) we might be a good home for members
| of the team who still want to stay in the mobile location
| space.
|
| My email is chris at life360.com
| automatoney wrote:
| For anyone unaware, Life 360 is largely used as surveillance
| technology so parents can monitor their children's locations.
| Hardly comparable to a social media app - it essentially
| desensitizes children to pervasive surveillance, and sends
| the message that their parents don't trust them. I'm
| obviously extremely biased, but I'd suggest anyone looking at
| this company consider the implications of location tracking
| children, teens and young adults.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/10/22/dont-
| le...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/life360-location-tracking-
| famili...
| starik36 wrote:
| Yes, knowing where your children are is definitely
| surveillance. /s
| tharne wrote:
| Knowing someone is "at school" or "at a friend's house"
| is qualitatively different from being fed their
| geographic coordinates in real time. Kind of like if you
| were in the bathroom when a guest arrived at your house -
| There's a being difference between your spouse telling
| your guest, "They're upstairs" vs. "They're upstairs in
| the bathroom pooping".
| starik36 wrote:
| Neither Find My Phone or Life 360 doesn't tell you when
| someone is in the bathroom vs upstairs. It just gives you
| information like "at school" or "at a friend's house".
| Not sure what you are arguing here.
| t6jvcereio wrote:
| No need to be sarcastic, both can be true. It's
| reasonable that you want to know where your children are,
| AND this desensitizes them to surveillance.
| DerArzt wrote:
| To add on, Life 360 has gotten in hot water several times
| for selling the location data of the people who use their
| service to 3rd party data brokers.
| crhulls wrote:
| I'll push back on this a bit - we have always been
| transparent about our business model. We have always
| clearly explained how we use data to monetize. We did not
| have a single incident of abuse of this platform. When we
| started monetizing this way, it was not considered
| controversial, and the world has obviously shifted and
| evolved.
|
| That being said, it was a small portion of our revenue,
| and we decided to shut down this part of our business.
| Well intentioned people can disagree in good faith, and
| we decided the controversy wasn't worth it even though
| our practices were misunderstood and sensationalized. We
| shifted our strategy to using a purely aggregated model
| that does not use any type of device level identifier
| (e.g. no IDFA, no in-house work around identifiers),
| which should not be considered controversial.
|
| Trust is paramount for us, so we decided to stick to our
| core, which is subscriptions and devices.
| crhulls wrote:
| Hi, I appreciate the sentiment and agree that some small
| portion of our customers use the product for monitoring or
| tracking, but it is a minority.
|
| We have been one of the few family focused location apps
| where parents and kids are treated as peers, anyone can
| pause location, and we have a "bubbles" feature where you
| can obfuscate your location to a 20 mile radius bubble.
|
| When used properly, we empower parents to give their kids
| more freedom, not less.
|
| And, our safety features, such as automatic crash
| detection, have literally saved thousands of lives. That is
| not hyperbolic. We run on over 10% of all iPhones in the US
| and have had a very positive impact on a large number of
| lives.
| todd3834 wrote:
| To me there is a big difference between parent's rights and
| the government's rights. In a lot of ways kids could get
| more freedom because their parents can verify that they are
| where they are supposed to be. However, I do appreciate the
| concern for conditioning children into surveillance. I
| hadn't considered things from that perspective.
| automatoney wrote:
| Here's a thought experiment/rhetorical question - how
| much should kids (of various ages) have the freedom to do
| things their parents don't approve of? Taking into
| consideration the full range of parents (amazing to
| abusive) and full range of children (needing lots of vs
| little guidance). I think how one answers that question
| probably guides a lot of how one feels about this sort of
| tech.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Hey Chris! Just wanted to say that my whole family uses
| Life360. It's my 58-year-old mother's favourite thing to
| watch since my brother and I flew the nest. But also super
| useful with my fiancee and I when sorting out who can look
| after our 1-year-old on short notice!
| adaml_623 wrote:
| So do you and your extended family mostly know where each
| other is most of the time? What level of accuracy is
| involved?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| People in the Apple ecosystem use the Find My app. Tight
| knit groups of women, loose knit groups of guy friends,
| all the way to significant others, parents to children,
| children to parents, you name it.
|
| Its gotten to the place where people don't even
| communicate addresses, and if you don't know to look at
| the stalker app to meet up with them, you'll just be left
| out. Its ironic that _saying it_ that way still comes
| across as problematic (your _boyfriend_ /parent asked you
| to share your location!??!?) but its very common and very
| benign.
|
| You can stop sharing at any time and the recipients just
| shrug it off like "yeah that's understandable"
| DerArzt wrote:
| Based on previous experience working with Life360 data,
| the accuracy is probably within 10 meters or less.
| crhulls wrote:
| Thanks for your support. I appreciate it when people share
| stories that demonstrate we aren't a "tracker." I realize
| we are quite literally a tracker, but I think people who
| haven't used it misunderstand it.
| dnissley wrote:
| Will Life360 ever add an option for consent to share like
| google's trusted contacts did? E.g. I'd like it if someone
| could ask for my location and give me 5 minutes to respond,
| and give me the chance to deny that request (sharing if I
| don't respond for safety reasons). Feels more respectful
| compared to the current state of Life360 where you can always
| see everyone's locations at all times.
| crhulls wrote:
| We are largely focused on families vs the friends use case
| (which is why we were friends vs competitive with Zenly),
| and in the family context, always on makes sense. We are
| considering adding more features for close friends, which
| would include temporary location sharing as per your
| suggestion.
| eunos wrote:
| According to an insider, they'd worried Zenly could be used by
| Snap's competitors
| https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/156499481770840883
| scarface74 wrote:
| How does Snap monetize it?
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Looking at the posters of the shows I can't see how canceling
| those is a bad thing for anyone except people who's salaries
| depended on it
| johnwheeler wrote:
| That letter sounds like something you'd read to a group of market
| analysts--not employees
| ktta wrote:
| Would you rather some "Unfortunately, due to market
| conditions..." fluff like the rest of them?
| johnwheeler wrote:
| That _is_ what is sounds like...
| blantonl wrote:
| I'll never understand the reasoning for social media platforms to
| get into the hardware business.
|
| SNAP getting into drones and phones - you might as well just
| light stacks of money on fire, which is what happened here.
|
| Whatever happened to just doing what you are good at? Or is the
| end result for every startup global world domination?
| afavour wrote:
| The answer is lock-in. Once someone has spent $100s on some
| hardware that only works with your network it's less likely
| they'll switch.
|
| Also control of the market. Some people said Google was insane
| to buy Android when they did but now they're one of two players
| in the smartphone market. Meta would dearly, dearly like to
| have that kind of control (hence, IMO, the oversize focus on
| the metaverse)
| chamanbuga wrote:
| Snap will continue having an existential crisis as long as
| their platform is dependent on companies like Apple and Google.
| They are a camera company, and they need to use their expertise
| to beat Apple at the camera game, which is no easy task.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Underrated comment in my opinion. Snap's long term potential
| lies in differentiating themselves with their hardware and UX
| like Apple did with the iPod /iPhone in the 2000s. An
| extremely hard task, but a more visible direction than a
| trench war with TikTok and Meta over generic social
| communications.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| How's differentiating on cameras working out for Sony
| smartphones?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Considering they sell that investment to the other big
| companies that put their cameras in their phones...
| probably good. Do you know otherwise about their
| financials?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I meant market and mind share wise.
| jjulius wrote:
| >They are a camera company...
|
| Huh? Forgive my ignorance, and perhaps this speaks more
| broadly to a failure on Snap's own part to accurately convey
| that image, but the last thing that ever comes to my mind
| would be calling Snap a camera company. What makes them a
| camera company as opposed to a social media company?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| It's their own self-definition. They call themselves a
| camera company.
|
| That's the justification for the investment in hardware, in
| AR filters, etc. They do "camera stuff". To be fair, their
| camera stuff is good... their attempts to increase ad
| inventory (in app professional content etc) are not so
| good.
| adrr wrote:
| What is snap good at? What is their moat? Hardware is a logical
| step for companies looking to not put their eggs all in one
| basket. Amazon has Kindles, Echo, Ring etc. Google has Nest,
| Pixel Phone. Microsoft has their laptops
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| Their moat is Apple/Google promotion while they are the only
| Meta alternative.
|
| TikTok eats into that but not much because of the
| geopolitical issues surrounding it.
| hankchinaski wrote:
| Meta using the same playbook with their glasses and VR headsets
| and portal. Not owning the railways (the device) is a strategic
| risk and makes you always at the mercy of the device owners
| (eg. Apple cutting tracking for meta). So it's just like every
| other business, vertical integration, reduce risks and improve
| the "moat"
| randoglando wrote:
| That kind of device is very different from a drone camera
| though.
| rhacker wrote:
| Apps that are just database front-ends are eventually going to
| get less and less money. Even I would rather have more "things
| that are useful" than just another database schema surrounding
| my email address. Yes there can be room for some iteration of
| it, but increasingly investors want something more than
| database + react + app
| junipertea wrote:
| I think hardware is not a reason for their current downfall.
| Going into hardware is away to diversify and avoid the problems
| they are facing right now: TikTok.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Growth must be eternal, regardless of how unsustainable, or
| Wall Street will decapitate you. The bankers thirst for profit
| must be slaked.
|
| If this means burning giant piles of (other people's) money to
| maybe have a 2% better rate of return next year then you do it.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| This is backwards.
|
| Companies that cannot survive without massive infusions of
| cash go to Wall Street asking for money while promising
| growth.
|
| So if there's anyone to blame, it's companies who are unable
| to sustain businesses without raising massive sums of other
| people's cash.
| umvi wrote:
| > Growth must be eternal, regardless of how unsustainable, or
| Wall Street will decapitate you
|
| Note this is only for publicly traded companies. If you don't
| want your company to be like this, don't go public and you
| won't have to answer to shareholders and have to produce
| eternal growth.
| aeyes wrote:
| This would require that the company is owned by itself or
| its founders. Startup companies like Snapchat have raised
| capital from external sources and need to pay it back which
| is a bit hard with no meaningful profit. The founders
| probably don't even have a say in this, these companies
| usually have a board of investors which will force the IPO
| or sale of the company.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Choosing to give up control of your startup to investors
| is also a business decision.
| songeater wrote:
| Look there is a reason Wall Street focuses on growth: the
| thing (company, organism, population, whatever) that does not
| grow will (eventually) be overtaken by that which does, no
| matter how small the latter's growth rate is. So when the
| "market" is composed of 1000s of companies, one of the
| easiest ways to differentiate the good from the bad is to
| filter by PROFITABLE growth. Now here is the rub...
| "PROFITABLE" often becomes hard to define so we have long
| periods of time where just "growth" is used as a proxy... and
| at the ends of bubbles you typically have lots of companies
| with unsustainable growth trends being valued at assinine
| multiples. But again... there is a (good?) reason the
| heuristic exists.
| sleton38234234 wrote:
| look social media and all that online stuff is waaayy too
| saturated. nobody needs another useless app. people need real
| things that do real stuff. it may be hard, really hard, nearly
| impossible even. but, it's infinitely better for companies to
| start getting in on real world products, even if success is
| difficult, rather than keep producing the same useless apps.
|
| Humanity needs innovation and progress in the primary areas of
| living: housing, transportation, water, food, and health
| insurance. am i asking for the impossible? yes. but, do take
| those moonshots, otherwise, the next 50 years will just be more
| of the same nonsense.
| linuxftw wrote:
| SNAP couldn't make any money just being snap chat, so they had
| to at least look like they were going to make money with some
| new avenue when they IPO'd. During that time period, it was
| 'spectacles' and everyone around here was shilling hard for
| them.
| umvi wrote:
| > I'll never understand the reasoning for social media
| platforms to get into the hardware business.
|
| They probably felt like their primary revenue stream was built
| on a pretty flimsy, easily-copyable foundation that might
| crumble at any time due to social trends (i.e.: TikTok). Hence,
| they are desperately trying to diversify their business model
| using the cash they have before it's too late.
| dixie_land wrote:
| They should've embraced Snapcash and there wouldn't be an
| OnlyFans.
| fairity wrote:
| Content is king, and one of the primary objectives of this
| hardware is to capture more & unique content.
| Gasp0de wrote:
| When I read the headline I thought "Wait, Snap is developed by an
| own company and not canonical? I'm glad it's not that snap thats
| downsizing :D
| seydor wrote:
| A lot of people would like to see snap downsized entirely
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Snapchat had their own TV shows!?
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| Yeah I saw ads for that recently, a Snap documentary of the
| life of Bhad Bharbie or something (a female rapper I believe).
| I don't believe we're talking about TV shows that rival Apple
| TVs exclusives
| saurik wrote:
| Not sure if this is the same kind of content you are talking
| about, but I rather enjoyed Ryan Reynolds Doesn't Know
| Anything... though I was in a pretty dark place when it came
| out so it was probably ironic :(. The issue for Snap, of
| course, is that I only watched it on YouTube ;P. Here is a
| link to the first episode:
|
| https://youtu.be/MnR4P7205dc
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I do not understand how people can stand this type of quick
| cut content.
| adrr wrote:
| Every tech company has their own TV shows. Here's some other
| example:
|
| https://www.shopify.com/studios
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_YouTube_Premium_origin...
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| _Everyone_ is producing TV shows now. There are 'Amazon Mini
| Shorts' on my Amazon app, Swiggy and Zomato - two food delivery
| apps - also have their own shows. It's an explosion of content
| and I can't fathom who in the world is watching all of it. Or
| any of it.
| hbn wrote:
| I'm not sure why your first example of Amazon producing TV
| shows is Amazon mini shorts.
|
| They've been making Amazon originals for years, including an
| upcoming TV series on this little franchise called Lord of
| the Rings which was the most expensive TV series ever made
| with a $1 billion budget.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I know. But these mini shorts are placed right inside
| Amazon's app and you're encouraged to view them _while you
| 're shopping_. Which makes absolutely no sense.
|
| Prime Videos is its own standalone product. But these mini
| shorts are weirdly spliced in with Amazon's primary
| product.
| msallin wrote:
| https://www.theonion.com/overstock-com-announces-plans-to-
| de...
| gnz11 wrote:
| Behold Salesforce+ https://www.salesforce.com/plus/
| [deleted]
| Apocryphon wrote:
| They should hire these guys
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duJwGSUhRQA
| carabiner wrote:
| Yeah, even I am making TV shows.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Google Drive Deluxe streaming original series and anti-
| originals
|
| https://twitter.com/nickciarelli/status/1337205352027181056
| treis wrote:
| There was that 7 minute video start up that raised a ton of
| money and had a bunch of big names produce short videos. IIRC
| the answer to your question was "hardly anyone" and they shut
| down quickly after burning a bunch of money.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| Quibi
| paxys wrote:
| Calling them "TV shows" is pushing it. They are badly produced
| ~5 minute sponsored clips by a bunch of internet celebrities,
| barely more than random stories that they would otherwise post.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| They were making quick bites before Quibi.
| zepppotemkin wrote:
| It's crazy to me that they pretty much doubled their headcount
| over the pandemic, I know there are economic reasons for some of
| the recent layoffs but the hiring sprees some companies went out
| seem crazy to me
| petesergeant wrote:
| > It's crazy to me that they pretty much doubled their
| headcount over the pandemic
|
| Dunno, my impression was that selling stuff online (and thus
| adverts) went gangbusters over the pandemic, as did social
| media in general.
| omreaderhn wrote:
| There was an enormous amount of liquidity pumped into the
| system by fiscal and monetary authorities. That all these
| companies massively increased headcount is entirely rational.
| Wealthy people and companies did very well during the pandemic
| because they were direct beneficiaries of the fiscal and
| monetary support.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Cheap money and tons of new opportunities with everyone stuck
| inside. Social media companies realize how huge the first mover
| advantage is so they scaled as quickly as possible to take
| advantage of the pandemic.
| fullshark wrote:
| It was a bet that the world had changed forever and they didn't
| want to be left behind, if they were wrong they'd just fire
| some people and course correct. All in the game.
| bdcravens wrote:
| It's never surprising when companies try to capitalize on
| opportunities. The shock seems to be when they then trim back
| when those opportunities no longer exist.
| revskill wrote:
| Normally they hired talent to prevent talents join competitive
| companies ?
| azemetre wrote:
| I think it may just be taking advantage of the lose monetary
| policy of the last decade plus. It's easier to justify one-
| shots, experiments, or new product searches when loans are
| cheap and aplenty. The money spigot has dried up and you
| either adapt or die.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Just curious, are companies like Snap going out an getting
| massive loans to facilitate hiring?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Looks like snap has $4b in debt, up from around 1 before
| the pandemic.
| azemetre wrote:
| I mean they initially raised ~$5 billion in multiple
| rounds when first started in 2011. [1]
|
| I doubt they could raised an equivalent amount if they
| started in say 2018 in the current environment.
|
| [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/snapchat
|
| Snapchat just recently had its first ever profitable
| quarter, 2021Q4, since going public. That's a bad look, I
| also doubt this story will hardly be unique in the
| upcoming year (more tech layoffs from "unicorns").
| m1117 wrote:
| Snap!
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